Noland was born to an itinerant Palestinian mining engineer whose job took him across several continents - from Europe to South America to Asia and onwards to Africa. By the time Noland was twelve years old, his mother's culinary skills mirrored exotic cultures as diverse as Palestinian, Brazilian, Indonesian and Nigerian. However, all it took was an unexpected jolt at his new school in Lagos for him to learn about his ancestry from his father, and to form new bonds in a highly competitive environment. Olu, a visually-impaired Nigerian boy helped him to 'see' the world in a different light. Moshe, an American Jew, provided an emotional backdrop for his exposure to the millennia-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forced to grow up faster than he might have anticipated, not even Noland could have predicted what was in store for a roving Palestinian boy destined to become a renowned scientist.