As a child I sometimes used to travel to the West Bank to visit my family, so I know what the checkpoints felt like. I knew what it was like to live under occupation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.
I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.
One or two of the trips were a bit scary. Soldiers had me at gun point on one trip, locked me in my van all night and escorted me in and out of buildings when I wanted to wash.
I'm always intrigued when you are travelling through a place and there is somebody who has lived there and done the same job for years.
As a child marooned in a post-war South London backwater with no ready cash and a bafflingly dysfunctional family, I had to glean my amusement wherever I could.
I'm in a position to look back at my life, and I realized there were a number of experiences that needed to be documented.
My father was a military attache, so I've been traveling all my life.
My father ran a saloon in Kenosha, Wis., which is just about as rough a living as I can think of. It was brutal; it scared the hell out of me. I was so petrified all the while I was a child, I didn't know what I was doing half the time.
You know, we travelled a lot when I was a kid because my father was wherever the work was.
I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.