KERMAN, Calif. – On a recent Friday afternoon, the Kaileh family is breaking bread over a traditional Palestinian meal.
Rich, warm aromas of cardamom, cumin and black pepper drift in the air.
Najwa Kaileh has cooked a Mediterranean potato salad and malfoof, which is delicately rolled cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and ground beef. The main entree is musakhan – perfectly roasted chicken topped with sliced almonds, over a bed of caramelized onions and a slice of flatbread.
Musakhan is the national dish of Palestine – and it’s a meal the Kailehs often have so they can feel closer to home.
Like millions of Palestinian families across the world, Najwa, her husband Husam and daughter Rosie have been watching the destruction in the Middle East unfold right before their eyes – but thousands of miles away.
Their living room T.V. is tuned to a live broadcast from Al-Jazeera. It’s muted, but they don’t need sound to know what is happening – they haven't been able to look away since Oct. 7.
“The first few weeks, I was sitting here watching,” Najwa says. “I cried a lot. Now, when I'm looking, I feel that my tears are dried because [there are] no more tears. It’s too much. It's traumatizing.”
Even though they live in Kerman, a small agricultural city in the San Joaquin Valley, the Kailehs still remember Palestine. Their family is from the West Bank region.
The house they live in is built like the one where Najwa’s grandparents live. The feel and look of the home reminds her of a “mini castle.” It’s a piece of her homeland in the Central Valley.
“You have to carry your culture, your beliefs, and your traditions with you,” Najwa says.
The Kailehs migrated from the Middle East in 1969 and have lived in Kerman for 20 years.
While Husam has built a career as a well-known family physician, he’s also a farmer. Most days, he tends to a 40-acre raisin farm a short drive from the family home. He looks out at the agriculture that fills this region of California, and thinks of the farms that also grow in Palestine. He still feels pulled back there.
“Nothing is better than your homeland,” he says. “I love Kerman, but my roots are back in Palestine.”
But right now, his home is in war.
And as a physician, Husam finds the conditions people are living through to be “horrifying.”
More than 1,200 people were killed by the Hamas militant group during the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. The response by Israel to the attack has left nearly 35,000 Palestinians dead – more than double Kerman’s population.
“It hurts when you see people are getting killed, children on T.V., and you see their homes are demolished,” Husam says.
While the death toll and destruction of homes and fears of famine haunt families like the Kailehs, they still have hope that they aren’t alone. Kerman, in fact, is one of two cities in the largely agricultural San Joaquin Valley who have officially joined calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. Many more calls have been made across the country.
Najwa is no stranger to war. She was born and raised in Lebanon as a refugee in the 1950s. When tensions flared again and the Lebanese civil war broke out, a phrase her aunt once uttered became truer than ever. She was told Palestinians “were born in wars and will die in wars.”
Najwa says the conflict that started on Oct. 7 isn’t the start of their suffering – but part of a larger war that “has been going on for 75 years.”
Though there’s no telling when the war will end, the only outcome the Kaileh’s want is peace.
“To stop the suffrage,” Husam says, "you have to stop the war.”
