#252: To build a home
Dear reader,
I’ve been finding it hard to show up here. To articulate or concretise feelings in words. There’s been anger, numbness and a disturbing sense of privilege, sitting in the safety of my home, reading the horrific stories coming out of the West Bank and sitting with the helplessness. How do human beings do such heinous things to each other? Where will the millions displaced from their homes go?
Staying with Nayyirah Waheed’s words:
‘no’
might make them angry
but
it will make you free.
— if no one has ever told you, your freedom is more important than their anger.
Poetry Corner
Palestinian poets whose words need to be read:
1. I Belong There by Mahmoud Darwish
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own.
I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon,
a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.
I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey.
I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to
her mother.
And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears.
To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood.
I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.
2. Pocketful of Warding Stones by Rasha Abdulhadi (Excerpt)
“…we ward against the guilt of war
the blistered blessing of surviving our kin, and
around the undefused bombs our bodies hide,
we build a larger house to live in.”
Read the full poem by Rasha here.
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
+ My Palestinian Poem that “The New Yorker” Wouldn’t Publish by Fady Joudah
4. I am not a person by Abdulla Moaswes
I am not a person, I am a cause
I am the wind that rattles their towers
I am the water that binds minerals in their soil
I tolerate the scorching blaze, and the slow toil
Of bullshit.
*
We are not people, we are a cause
We are the earth beneath their feet
We are the northwest breeze that animates their sand
We speak in an unfamiliar cadence, but the history of this land
Understands.
*
I am not a resident, I am a cause
I am letters in the eyes of their children
I am the voice in their book of mathematics
I hold all the knowledge, but I must be pragmatic
To survive.
*
We are not a community, we are a cause
We are the ore in their forge
We are the cure to chronic pains
We are not ungrateful, and we asked for nothing in exchange
But dignity.
*
I have no towers, no soil
My oil comes from olives
There is no prosperity in the world, nor payback
That can make up for what we lack
In freedom.
5. Sometimes There Is A Day by Naomi Shihab Nye
Sometimes there is a day you just want
to get far away from.
Feel it shrink inside you like an island,
as if you were on a boat.
I always wish to be on a boat.
Then, maybe, no more fighting
about land. I want that day to feel
as if it never happened, when Ahmad was burned,
when people were killed, when my cousin was shot.
The day someone went to jail
is not a day that shines. I want to have a clear mind
again, as a baby who stares at the light
wisping through the window and thinks,
That’s mine.
Links
Kaveh Akbar reads I Didn’t Apologize to the Well by Mahmoud Darwish, translated from Arabic by poet Fady Joudah ^
Tirazain, an archive of Palestinian cross-stitch (via Austin Kleon)
October Playlist
The TAP October Playlist is out. Didn’t listen to much this month.
No to war. Always.
Rohini
These are such poignant and powerful pieces!