At a recent sunset Family Soup Mutual Aid community gathering at the Believe Plaza, Joud, an artist from Gaza, was exchanging smiles with neighbors who had just tasted his freshly-made dolmas.
Only nine months since his arrival here in northern Nevada, Joud already volunteers, got his green card, has a job at the local Nevada Fine Arts supply store, and has given painting classes while helping produce a radio series on hospice care.
It hasn’t been easy for the 28-year-old, far from it, and part of his difficult relocation now feels thwarted by the current tragedy taking place in Gaza.
His journey away from his home which started three years ago took him through torturous times in Egypt, Turkey, Dubai, Malaysia and Ecuador before making it to Reno.
Underneath his quick adaptation to northern Nevada, there’s his burning drive to get his younger brother, 20, and mother out of Gaza as well. “It's been horrific and I don't know if anyone can do anything, but we have to speak loud about what's happening there,” Joud says of the civilian hardships in Gaza for displaced survivors under escalated Israeli attacks and bombings since the October 7th Hamas-led incursions into southern Israel.
“And you have to know that our people there they don't have any voice so it should be us to speak about what's happening there and the starvation that they live in,” he adds disconsolate.
Joud has started a GoFundMe to raise money for their immediate survival and eventual departure. People were being charged about $5,000 to enter Egypt before the Rafah crossing was closed several months ago after Israeli forces took it over, so it was expensive to do so, but doable.
Joud is pictured giving a watercolor painting class. Shared with permission to use from Joseph Galata’s Facebook page.
His brother and mother are staying nearby the crossing with hundreds of thousands of others now and waiting for it to reopen. The GoFundMe has raised nearly $10,000 of a $30,000 goal: https://www.gofundme.com/f/rescue-a-gaza-teen-poet-and-his-mother.
“I am from Gaza but thankfully an American man rescued me and I am now living in United States,” Joud writes in the description. “If I can raise the money, when the time is possible, they can leave Gaza and then to Egypt and finally live with my sister in Turkey,” he says of his brother who wants to become a humanitarian filmmaker and his mother, both of them spending entire days to find food, sometimes getting just a few spoonfuls of rice.
Joud in the podcast studio in the center of photo with Joseph Galata on the right. Shared with permission to use from Joseph Galata’s Facebook page.
Life for Joud and his family has turned dramatically in recent years and months.
In his early 20s, Joud was already a thriving artist and graphic designer, working for companies and as a lecturer at Gaza University.
“He’s an excellent cook too,” Joseph Galata, who helped bring him to Reno said. In turn, Joud calls Galata the “man who saved my life.”
Galata, who runs the Sierra Association of Foster Families, had grant funding for a children’s book on forgotten Nevada heroes and was looking for an artist for that project and other media endeavors he pursues. After joining a social media arts group, he found Joud, and after he did three paintings as a test, he says it was “exactly what I wanted.”
Having lived in Israel, and learning about the “world of oppression,” and trauma for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Galata said “I knew he deserved to have an opportunity to be an artist.”
Above, pictures of paintings by Joud he shared with Our Town Reno.
Galata had previously been able to get his ex wife’s parents out of Iran, which was also a difficult process, so even though there were many challenges on Joud’s journey to Reno he says he’s immensely proud of how he’s kept going and how he’s made so much progress in so little time.
Back at the Believe statue downtown plaza, as night falls on a crowd of volunteers and unhoused residents having conversations and healthy food, more and more people taste his delicious dolmas and notice his smiling, magnetic personality.
“This is in our culture to help our neighbors,” Joud says starting to feel at home here. “This is something that I would like to share with the people here in Reno, Nevada, and the United States.”
He then messages photos of some of his piercing art portraits (shown above) along with the link to his family’s GoFundMe and a video in which his little brother appears. He concludes with a folded praying hands emoji.