‘We don’t belong to a nation, but damn you all, we belong to a people’*

Because he says it better than anyone else. From Fawaz Turki’s The Disinherited, 1974:

1. Flight:

I am aware that I have been stateless for nearly all of my twenty-nine years; that I have lived and grown up in a refugee camp on the edge of the desert; that except for those freckle-nosed bureaucrats in the West who from time to time endorsed a shipment of food and warm blankets to me, I did not (for all men and for all they knew) exist on the face of this globe; that I was robbed of my sense of purpose and sense of worth as a human being and was forced to line up obsequiously outside UN food depots each month; and that when for two decades I feared, I feared only the cold of twenty winters, and when I dreamed, I dreamed only of the food that others ate. I am also aware that this knowledge has mutilated my reality and impoverished my consciousness; that I lived, as a million of my fellow Palestinians lived, silently walking hither and thither along the muddy paths of DP camps, in a void, in a state of non-being because everything had been taken away from us, including our tangible abstractions; and that as a result, our beings were engulfed at times by lunatic extremes of hate and bitterness and at others by frustrated resignation.

With our memories of places and times we had known before, rational and good, floating in the space around us and within us, we existed not in the present tense, the tense of reality, but the future imperfect, when next year, next time, next speech, the wrongs will have been righted, the grievances removed, and our case justified. We lay, as it were, supine under a tree; but in a world where men will calmly use historical reality to suit their own issues, Godot, for whom we waited, never arrived.

My generation of Palestinians, growing up alienated, excluded, and forgotten, rejected this legacy; yet when we looked around us we could see either the desert to shed our tears in or the whole world to hit back at. Having nothing and with nothing to lose, we proceeded to do the latter. But our struggle was for our place in history, our right to glimpse a vision, to search for hope, to return to Palestine. We struggled for the phoenix, not the phantom, that is our homeland. As de Tocqueville observed in his commentary on the forces that led to the French Revolution: “Patiently endured so long as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men’s minds.”

*The above title was taken from Fawaz Turki’s ‘Soul In Exile’ ; it was the title of the very first article he wrote in exile, which came as a response to a provocation by an American Jewish woman who asked him where he was from and upon discovering that he was Palestinian, pointed out ‘that he belonged to no nation’.

Dear Israeli,

Today is many things.

Today there will be people popping open their champagne bottles, dancing to the tunes of singers flown from worldwide to celebrate. Today there will be fabricated speeches spewed at the blinded masses. Faces alight with jubilation, hearts swollen with pride, eyes beaming with tears moved by the (apparent) significance of today. All gather up to celebrate, to commemorate, to rejoice our nakba. And the wedge between us is driven even farther apart.

Today is many things.

Today my father remembers. Or rather recalls - because he never forgets. And like him, a million other fathers. My mother, reading the newspaper with its special Nakba edition, inwardly sighs a million pained sighs. And like her a million other mothers. Between father, aunt, son, and grandparent - there is a collective ache that sears through us every time this day comes back with us still behind bars.

Dear Israeli, do you have any idea what it feels like to be gripped with an irrational fear every time you come face to face with a governmental authority? No one backs me dear Israeli. I am just a Palestinian. Do you know what it’s like to grow up feeling insecure seeing that your own father feels insecure because he lives, works, and strives not knowing if he ever will stand on solid ground? No one backs us dear Israeli. Palestinians have always been fair game for abuse.

So go on and celebrate your ‘independence’ dear Israeli. You have always given your back to us, save but a few of you who have a heart drenched in humanity. I’m not surprised. For 60 years, I have seen enough from you to immune me against your atrocities. Go on and dance in our streets, embrace our hills, breathe in our air, let our breeze caress your skin and live in our houses with the ghosts of our forefathers. For we will haunt you with our right, your injustices will oppress you - they will gather and form a burden, and it will kill you. That’s right dear Israeli, you are self-destructive. For every injustice that you inflict upon us, you inflict a greater injustice upon yourself.

Have mercy on your humanity and remember,

we will never forget.

Snapshot I

Reflective

by A.R. Ammons*

I found a

weed

that had a

mirror in it

and that

mirror

looked in at

a mirror

in

me that

had a

weed in it

* “Reflective” from The Really Short Poems of A.R. Ammons.

Run-on

Free writing is a technique I first learned in high school that was supposed to help me unblock all my thoughts and subsequently let them out on paper without even thinking about how logical or reasonable they may be just letting them all out aaaall out like a dam broken down to let all that water out I’m not sure this works well though because I seem to be more preoccupied by typing every word that comes across my mind without letting any go and sometimes I pause which I know is a big mistake when it comes to free writing because you’re supposed to write like you’re running for your life at least that’s what my teacher used to tell me but then in university in one of my philosophy classes my professor who was brilliant taught us this technique with a twist to it. He made us listen to a piece by someone I forget who will get the name later a piece that is purely instrumental and I remember what sounded like airplanes and car engines and everything mechanical which made sense then because we were talking about modernity and the impact of industrialization on our personalities and identities as human beings or machines or what have you so yeah my professor made us write on the notion of abstraction listening to that mechanically instrumental piece and it felt great letting all that energy out without thinking with just listening to your thoughts on the backdrop of machine sounds that felt very dry and cold yet warm and like they were embracing your thoughts the angry ones the confused ones the lost ones because that’s what abstraction and modernity are all about we all feel lost and swimming in a dark deep ocean aiming nowhere going nowhere because there are too many distractions that invite us but limit us because they’re just too many so what am I trying to say here this is so hypnotic I’m not even looking at the screen right now and am not sure where this is going but it sure feels liberating to just write what you think without having to worry that someone will be reading this and you have to sound intelligent and on top of things well I’m not right now I’m not on top of things and I don’t think I will be for a very long time until I figure out what it is that drives me my drive my niche what is it until I know I don think I’ll be together at all and I don’t think I’ll be adding value of any sort and it feels terrible to think that because I love writing and feels awful when I can’t contribute through words do you get me do you get me do you and I paused because I’m not sure you’ll get me through this I’m not sure why I’m doing this it just feels like the best thing to do given my state of mind at this point in my life at this moment that seems like it‘ll stretch for a very long time a very long time.

(1950-2008)

(to my late uncle)

My brother said, a good man in wild times.

And you were. And you are.

May you rest in scented grains; may they be your abode.

May His mercy envelop you; may it comfort your heart.

Your pain was not eternal;

may your bliss be.

Amen.

This is for you, Rachel

Rachel Corrie was 23 years old when she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer on March 16, 2003. She was working with others trying to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist from demolition in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine.

Today marks the fifth death-anniversary of Rachel ; activist, pacifist, human being. She was no legend, no pure genius that makes her any different from you and I. I imagine that if I had met her, we might have struck conversations on everything and anything - our favorite movies, food, war, people. That’s just what regular people do.

But what makes Rachel so special is, I think, the sincerity and passion that she had for restoring justice and her perseverance to fight for a people’s right to exist even though she had no connection to them - besides the humanity that binds them.
Martin Luther King said it best when he said, “..where there is an injustice somewhere … there is an injustice everywhere..”. Only when we realize that pain and suffering are not - should not be- private to the people enduring them, and that keeping quiet to them is as good as adding oil to fire, do we understand what Rachel meant when she said,

‘…This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide…’ [source]

This post sounds awkward to me. This tribute to Rachel is a meek attempt to put into words a message that is much bigger than any words can deliver.

May she rest in peace.

In my solitude..

The following is an excerpt from a self-portrait I had to write as a project a while back. A dear professor once said that one way to resist the occupation is to show the world that Palestinians are human beings that feel pain and love. People who laugh and cry. People who write and reflect. This is a piece written by one Palestinian as a daughter with thoughts on her father - the once activist who gave his life and soul to Palestine, but no longer does. Maybe one day, when I muster enough courage, I’ll post the whole portrait unedited.

…I believe my dad was an idealist who had so much hope for his cause, who actually believed that things would change in his lifetime, anytime soon now. It will change, he told himself. I will fight for it all I can; I will write, I will speak, I will call on everyone willing to listen because I believe. I have faith in justice and in life, in hope and in tomorrow. My dad lived off the fire of his cause. I can see him in the eye of my mind, with his classic pose- smoking over Turkish coffee, blowing the fumes from his cigarette into a haze of long lost memories and an irretrievable past. The look in his eyes; how can I begin to describe it? It’s a soulful look that speaks of a loss so deep, of a pain so strong, of a struggle so sorely inevitable. I think my dad was losing faith. The same faith that sustained his fight, that fed his resistance to giving up, the faith that whispered every morning in his ear that today, today things will change. Yes, that faith was dying. As he slowly but surely felt his dreams slip through the fingers that held his cigarette, my dad became hard with cynicism. It’s strange how hope softens our skin, how it shines through our eyes; a reflection of light, no matter how tiny and how far.

I don’t know precisely when it was that my dad reached a complete halt. I don’t recall when exactly it dawned on him that the place he called home will remain a slave to his imagination, or that his mother who gave birth to him, flesh and blood, will transform from a physical body into a wistful voice on the distance line. My grandmother died in my father’s imagination; she died in the homeland that became bound to his imagination. Like a mirage testing his sanity, my father’s life became a hazy mix of the real and the unreal. All of this lay heavy on his shoulders and the man that once felt he could conquer the world with his words suddenly had no more to say. My dad quit journalism and immersed himself in the commercial sector where he taught himself the techniques of trade. My dad the journalist became a businessman. In a way, I think, he wanted to materialize his existence because he felt like he was holding onto thin air.

I am sad for my father. I feel like he sold out on his cause and that he aches over it whenever he gives himself the luxury of reminiscence. The only thing that remains from that time when he had so much vigour is that look in his eyes- that soulful look that has become eternally linked with my image of dad. What makes this look so distinct in my mind is that it is this look that often made my dad seem distant to me. Dad would not let anyone intrude on what went on behind that look. That he still has the same look today only makes me believe that my father was a changed man forever. The person he was some 25 years ago only exists in his mind as a memory not as a self; a memory that resurfaces only when he has that look. And I know-I also feel- that in him there is so much regret. If you’ve ever felt regret you’ll understand that a lifetime filled with it is suicidal to one’s soul. I can almost taste the bitterness of my dad’s thoughts, as bitter as the Turkish coffee he sips. How can one go about forgiving himself for betraying what he stood for? Back then, my dad had absolutely nothing, yet he had so much. You can sense it in the way he moved, the intensity that illuminated his words, making way for more greatness to come. Yet he turned his back on his passion. Or did he turn his back on it after it seized being a passion? Still, I wonder how my dad decided to put down his pen once and for all. I wonder how much it hurt…

                                                                                ******

(Homecoming)

This summer, I had a beautiful experience. To feel so in tune with what you’re thinking - so much that everything around you seems to be a vivid manifestation of what your mind’s thoughts looks like - that’s what a perfectly beautiful experience feels like.

This summer I stood in a refuge camp and saw the meaning of home emblazoned on an old woman’s brown forehead .

Hajje Fatima was shy at the beginning. I noticed because she stood awkwardly in her tiny living room/bedroom, embarrassed because she couldn’t invite us to sit - she had only bed sheets spread on the floor. I felt embarrassed because here I was, a girl old enough to be her granddaughter, and I was causing her discomfort. But as I began engaging her in a conversation about how her house can be renovated, she warmed up and her eyes looked twenty years younger as they sparkled with excitement. She spoke of how she wanted just enough space for her granddaughter to play and a well-lit kitchen that wasn’t too stuffy for when she cooked meals for her tiny family. Her hopeful tone didn’t go unnoticed but what got to me, really, was how her eyes turned into star-filled skies, soft and hypnotizing. In her eyes, I saw how she imagined herself standing in her sunny kitchen; whipping up a meal from the available ingredients and love while her granddaughter babbled away her six-month-old vocabulary in the tiny living room.

Something else struck me in her eyes - dependency. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean the overbearing type of dependency in which one becomes a burden on someone else. This was more a…delicate dependency. Something in her eyes clung to me, seeking healthy compassion - humanity, not to be mistaken with pity. I guess that encounter was enough to hook me. That old woman was a breath of fresh air to me. In her face, I saw raw emotions that I’ve never seen or have seen occasionally and missed. Beautifully unrefined, that’s how I would describe her. I felt fervour. I felt a need to act unlike anything I’ve ever known. I felt my dad’s previous zeal now running through my blood. It was my priceless inheritance. I saw my dad’s words becoming my actions. It occurred to me, my dad has been indirectly raising me to become his translator, his mediator. Things fell into place in my mind so beautifully. I was unknowingly paying tribute to my father in that old woman’s house, because she represented my father, my relationship to him, and his relationship to home, his cause, and its effects. Everything made sense all of a sudden, even my infatuation with the image of abundant light drifting into a room because that was how I felt standing there and then - warmed by the rays of light seeping through, vision all clear.

 

Thoughts on Finkelstein & the good things in life

I stood there in the kitchen, simultaneously waiting over the tea kettle boiling with ginger and honey for my brother with a flu and reading Norman Finkelstein’s ‘The Rise and Fall of Palestine: a personal account of the Intifada years’ when one particular passage gripped me. Throughout the book, one could sense Finkelstein’s struggle to comprehend how his people could inflict so much pain on others who, to complicate matters, treat him with so much courtesy despite his ‘Jewishness’. At one point, an overwhelmed soul that bares the burden of his fellow people confesses,

‘For three weeks, I was treated with decency and generosity by Samira and her family. I was a virtual stranger, an American and a Jew. Although they were strapped financially, they still took me in. As I sat on the porch sobbing one night, Samira came out to comfort me. I had snapped. Shaking my head, I kept repeating that it wasn’t fair. In an odd reversal of roles, Samira reminded me that Palestinians weren’t the only people in the world to have suffered from injustice. True enough. And yet, in one distinctive sense, the martyrdom of the Palestinians was worse. It was usual for victims of injustice not to be accorded sympathy. Yet Israel had managed so successfully to invert reality that Palestinians had been collectively demonized. As we talked that night, my mind kept flashing back to a student in my English class. His face was perpetually lit up by a boyishly innocent, if slightly devilish, grin. Except once. What, he asked, did Americans think of Palestinians? Before I could reply, he sputtered with barely suppressed rage, “They think we’re animals, don’t they?” I didn’t have it in me to tell him it was true.’

I looked at the inside of the kettle brimming with ginger bits and honey and thought to myself that this is one of those moments, where somehow Finkelstein becomes linked with a certain waft of ginger and honey – the good things in life. I visualized this dignified being weeping, magnifying his humanity a hundred fold. You need to understand, at a time like this, what with Gaza under siege and the road to peace seemingly all but promising – I need this. I need to remember that real human beings need no passports, no demarcations, no ‘Chosen’ status to feel pain for their fellow human beings who suffer from the ugliest crimes humanity has ever known.

 

I think to myself, I now live a state of mental intifada, every thought surging up with an urgency to surface against the darkness that threatens to silence it forever.

 

Would you rather live a life of comfort, knowing that tragedies do happen around the world, around the corner, next door – but that they happen in a hazy sort of way. Never clear enough to hit you in the face and evidently not real enough to move you out of your reclining chair as you watch the day’s death toll on the evening news. Would it be easier to live life that way, occasionally sensing that mighty noose of hollowness hanging there in every dark confine of your mind waiting for you to get it over with already? Get it over with and kill every bit of yourself that makes you more human than some. Or at least less cattle-like than many.

 

Sure, the awareness that comes with witnessing suffering is painful. I bet it will make plenty of nights sleepless. But would you ever trade knowing with not knowing? Would you ever give up that smack-up with the brutality of our world for a daintier existence that is less meaningful, but hey – at least you can sleep at night – kind of thing?

 

Is it even possible to un-know what you already do because you just can’t take it anymore? More importantly, is it moral to do so? Once you’ve been exposed to human suffering, doesn’t that automatically burden you with the responsibility to take action?

 

 

Do you, in the ethical sense, have a choice?