It took Hisham Awartani some time to realize he'd been shot after falling to the ground during a walk near his grandmother's house with two friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad.
"I didn’t quite process the fact until I, like, looked at my phone and I saw my phone had blood on it," said Awartani, who along with Abdalhamid, spoke exclusively with NBC News about that night. "I was like, 'Oh, I’ve been shot.'"
But having grown up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinians often face violence and aggression, it came as no surprise to the 20-year-old U.S. students that something like this would happen to them.
"It’s odd because it happened in Burlington, Vermont. It’s not odd because it happened, full stop," Awartani said about the Nov. 25 shooting. "In the West Bank growing up, it’s just something that’s normal. Like, so many unarmed young men getting shot by the Israeli army, and they’re just left to bleed out."
"Therefore, when it happened to me, it was like, 'Oh, this is where it happens. This is it,'" he said.
The friends, who have described themselves as family, sat down with NBC News in a conference room at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where Awartani is receiving treatment. Awartani sat in his wheelchair. Abdalhamid next to him in a chair.
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