I opened up. I told him how some students looked at me differently and sometimes mocked the way I spoke. He told me not to let those people get to me – that what defines a person isn’t where they come from or how they speak, but their decency and values. He said that everything a person becomes is, in one way or another, a reflection of the place that shaped them – and that we don’t rise despite where we come from, but because of it. “Always be proud you’re from Jabaliya refugee camp, Khaled,”