From the Heart
Palestine,
I sense you stray beyond my range with every gasp that ravages me in this strange place. Do your ears resound the heartache of my thoughts? Destiny had deceived me and sent me on my unremitting course to unearth you. . It is heartbreaking.
I remember a time when I felt your memory near me. I remember the fading taste of black olives that stained my fingers. How I wish that I knew then what I know now. I would have savored the memory of every taste that unearthed from your soil.
You know the downcast spirit of your children. You know the famine that lies within our dejected souls and festers every time your virgin skin is bloodied. We need to see your face, we feel lost and aimless without it. What I would give to see the map of your existence untouched by the insult of time. How precious it would be to take the first step towards you, our home.
I long for the days with you. I long for the haze of peace that once encircled your face. I long for the time when I saw peasants smile through the prickles of sweat upon their brow. Mostly, I long for the scent of Jasmine that embraced your hair and nested the doves. These memories course through me like angered blood, awakening my senses… I draw your face in my every reflection. I pray that I will always have the might to resist and to struggle in your name…
Palestine, even though they hear you, it doesn’t matter that they’re not listening- We hear you. Deaf to remonstrances- We listen to your beauty as it claims us.
With prayers still,
Your children.
It’s Not a Big Deal
But it is to me.
A silly quiz, a random quiz on Facebook… A picture personality test, choose a photo that you think describes love… A photo that represents your favorite meal… A photo that represents success. But this quiz, it’s not tailored for Palestinians… Choose a photo that represents freedom… An image of beautiful horses running through the wild, a photo of a fresh graduate looking ahead at the roads diverged, awaiting the sound of his stamping feet to choose the path that will determine his future… Or is freedom the image of money, or is it the image of a rock climber hanging of a cliff… I want to choose all of those and yet I cannot but choose one, because that is my fate. My fate is to be uprooted from my land, my fate is to be a refugee, my fate is to be without an identity card, my fate, is to live between borders, not allowed to proceed into another nationality, not allowed to go back to mine, not allowed to move forward, not allowed to travel. My choice, and I never really had a choice… was to choose the image of a passport.
It’s the things that you take for granted, that mean the most to the doomed. Shelter for the homeless. Food for the hungry. Passports for the refugees.
Human Fallibility
“There are very few in the Arab world who think about war, leaders, Bush or Israel to begin with. Despite the little honor restored to the Arabs by the Palestinian, Iraqi and Lebanese resistance, they remain the object of ridicule throughout the west, thanks to the absence of any countervailing challenge to the dominant racist Orientalist dogma. And it has all to do with the egregious Arab apathy.”
I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. I have, on numerous occasions, tried to discuss the diurnal news with people I see in my daily life, and most-, if not all of them, would sternly say, “I don’t like to talk about politics.” What a timid, unprogressive, elementary and bourgeois thing to say. “I never get involved in political discussions”, and why not? Why don’t you? Why not get involved? Maybe what you should be saying instead of, “I don’t like, “ is, “I don’t know how…”
Politics? What is Politics? The word politics, as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary, means: The art or science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs.
But wait a minute. We switch on the TV, and we read the newspapers and we hear of people dying, we see bloody/graphic images of leaders being hung, babies being shot, Armed militias in resistance, A complete religion scandalized and abused, terrorists blowing themselves up, Zionists bulldozing houses and building apartheid walls, building illegal settlements, refuges scattered on the Arab borders unable to go back and not allowed to move forward, children starving to death… And all of these things are either happening in our own backyard or in our neighbor’s backyard… and yet, you have the selfish and utter audacity to call the realistic and serious human suffering and injustice… Politics? No it is not Politics. Personally, my respect for you plummets every time I hear you proudly state that, “ you don’t like to discuss politics”. As if this makes you seem modern, elegant and genteel because you refuse to dirty your mind with the blood of the innocent that constantly quench the dry sand of the Middle East. You are heartless. Wimpy. You are selfish because you refuse to waste your effort on timely matters that are defining us as human beings in this day and time. There is nothing to gain from being selfless except your own personal gratification in the fact that you may have done something that might have stopped the murder of one more innocent child. I truly believe that each and everyone one of us will one day be held accountable for our indolent, slothful, unindustrious, comatose and apathetic behavior when finally facing God. How much more misery and destruction do you need to see to before you are moved into any sort of positive action? How you belittle yourselves to think or believe that nothing you can do will make a difference… If you can’t make a difference in the world, let the difference be you. Life is not about slaving during day time to make money so that you pleasure yourselves in the weekend, there is more to life than that; there is a bigger purpose to our existence. I t will make a difference. This is not something that you are doing that deserves praise from anyone; it is your duty as a human being.
No it’s not a discussion about politics; it’s about humanity and morality. Are you in, or are you out?
“It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us…
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking
so that others won’t feel unsure around you.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.”
Nelson Mandela
Around the Corner 