Listen to the voices of Palestine

Published in The NB Media Co-op

(*artwork: “Palestinian Resistance” by Incé Husain)

I spent my weekend reading poems about Palestinian resistance. 

I searched long and hard. I found poems that sang, that sucked my bone and made me forget where I was. 

These poems - some written decades ago, some written now - convey reality. 

They are how I defend my heart against Western headlines that brazenly side with apartheid, that flood mainstream news until they’re cemented on the eyes of those who’ve never pondered Palestine’s history. 

I have no words for the disgust I feel. I will never become accustomed to the audacity of the Western world. 

How it dares to erase apartheid through speeches spewed from the sunny turrets of parliament buildings. How it dares to preach moral high ground, ship weapons of genocide to colonizers, and thrust the word “terrorist” onto its victims of 75 years. 

For my sanity, I need voices that do not live in consciences made violent with nonuse. 

I need the voices of Palestinians. 

I need the voices of children who were raised by the prayers of their ancestors. Who walked childhood streets infested with armed soldiers and gazed at childhood skies spangled with drones. Who were born bonded to the olive trees that fist the land in their roots. 

Whose lives radiate power that thunder louder than airstrikes. 

I need proof that the history I know exists. I need it to live in me and through me, written on the pages of my blood for every newspaper that refuses it. 

Here are three such voices, chosen to accommodate the word limits of this article. A full collection of the poems I read can be viewed here. 

Hear them surge against Western and Israeli attempts to snuff them from existence. 

Hear them speak for the 2.3 million Palestineans in Gaza right now that lie trapped in Israel’s resurrection of an extermination camp. Size 140 square miles; population 50% children; justification “self-defense”. 

Learn these poems by heart. Consider them your most legitimate source of press. Consider the images and headlines the name “Palestine”  conjures in you. Consider how different they would be if these poems were emblazoned across every newspaper today. Would you dare not decry the West’s politicians and press? 

***

IDENTITY CARD

Written by Mahmoud Darwish in 1960. 

Darwish was a Palestinian poet and writer born in the Palestinian village of al-Birwa. When he was six years old, his village was invaded and his home razed by Israeli occupiers, an attack enacted to purge Palestine of Palestinians. He began writing poetry about Palestinian resistance when he was a child. His writings spread throughout the Arab World and are hailed as Palestinian anthems of resistance. 

Write down

I am an Arab

My card number is 50 000

I have eight children 

The ninth will come next summer

Are you angry?

Write down 

I am an Arab

I cut stone with comrade laborers

My children are eight 

I squeeze the rock

To get a loaf,

A dress and a book

For them. 

But I do not plead for charity at your door 

And do not feel small 

In front of your mansion

Are you angry?

Write down 

I am an Arab

I am a name without a title 

Patient, in a country

Where everybody else is very angry

My roots sink deep before the birth of time 

And before the beginning of the ages,

Before the time of Cypress and olives

Before the beginnings of grass,

My father belonged to the family of the plough

Was not of grand stock

My grandfather was a farmer, without a pedigree

He taught me the grandeur of the sun

Before reading books 

My house is a hut

Made of reed and stalk 

Are you satisfied with my rank? 

I am a name without a title!

Write down 

I have been robbed of my ancestral vines 

And the piece of land I used to farm with all my children 

Nothing remained for us and for my grandchildren 

Except these rocks

Will your government take them? 

So it is 

Write down 

At the top of the first page 

I hate nobody 

I do not steal anything

But when I become angry 

I eat the flesh of my marauders 

So beware… beware 

My hunger and fury! 

***

THE DELUGE AND THE TREE

Written by Fadwa Tuqan between 1946 and 2003. 

Tuqan was a Palestinian poet and writer born in the Palestinian city of Nablus. Her brother, poet Ibrahim Tuqan, taught her to read and write. Her eight poetry collections recount stories of Palestinian resistance and the empowerment of women. She wrote her final poem as Israel laid siege to her home city during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (“Second Infitida”), a Palestinian uprising in which Israel killed nearly 5000 Palestinian civilians. Darwish called her “the Mother of Palestinian poetry”.

When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge

Of dark evil 

Onto the good green land 

“They” gloated. The Western skies 

Reverberated with joyous accounts:

“The Tree has fallen! 

The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane 

Leaves no life in the tree!”

Has the Tree really fallen?

Never! Not with our red streams flowing 

forever

Not while the wine of our thorn limbs 

Fed the thirsty roots,

Arab roots alive

Tunnelling deep, deep, into the land!

When the Tree rises up, the branches 

Shall flourish green and fresh in the sun 

The laughter of the Tree shall leaf

Beneath the sun 

And birds shall return 

Undoubtedly, the birds shall return. 

***

THIS IS WHY WE DANCE

Written by Mohammed El-Kurd in 2021. 

Mohammed El-Kurd is a Palestinian poet and writer born in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. At the age of 11, his home was stolen by Israeli civilians, an act allowed by Israeli law. His life was the centerpiece of the 2013 documentary “My Neighbourhood”, which shows both Palestinian and Israeli citizens protesting for Palestinian rights. In 2021, he left the master’s degree he sought in the United States to join protesters in Sheikh Jarrah who resisted Israel’s plan to evict Palestinian families. These protests spurred Israeli airstrikes that destroyed hundreds of infrastructures and killed or injured over 2000 Palestinian civilians. El-Kurd writes about Palestinian resistance, Palestinian identity, and Islamophobia, wielding the English language to directly counter Western narratives about Palestine. He published his first book of poetry in 2021, named “RIFQA” after his grandmother. He and his twin sister, activist Muna El-Kurd, were named in TIME magazine’s top 100 list of the most influential people in the world. 

Home in my memory is a green, worn-out couch

And my grandmother in every poem:

Every jasmine picked off the backlash,

Every backlash picked off the tear gas,

And tear gas healed with yogurt and onions,

With resilience,

With women chanting, drumming

On pots and pans

With goddamns and hasbiyallahs.

They work tanks, we know stones. 

2008, during the Gaza bombings 

My ritual of watching TV

Ran between grieving 

And Egyptian belly dance music.

I fluctuated between hatred and adoration,

Stacking and hoarding Darwish’s reasons to live

Sometimes believing them

Sometimes dipping my bread in indulgence,

Knowing a child is breadless, in Khan Yunis,

Dipped in a roof’s rubble… 

If you ask me where I’m from it’s not a one-word answer.

Be prepared, seated, sober, geared up.

If hearing about a world other than yours 

Makes you uncomfortable 

Drink the sea,

Cut off your ears, 

Blow another bubble 

To bubble your bubble and the pretense. 

Blow up another town of bodies in the name of fear. 

This is why we dance. 

My father told me: “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.”

Be composed, calm, still - laugh when they ask you,

Smile when they talk, answer them, 

Educate them. 

This is why we dance:

If I speak, I’m dangerous

You open your mouth,

Raise your eyebrows.

You point fingers. 

This is why we dance: 

We have wounded feet but the rhythm remains,

No matter the adjectives on my shoulders. 

This is why we dance:

Because screaming isn’t free. 

Please tell me:

Why is anger - even anger - a luxury to me?

***

BORN ON NAKBA DAY

Written by Mohammed El-Kurd in 2021. 

The Nakba (“The Catastrophe”) describes the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that was officialized in 1948, enacted decades prior to 1948, and that continues to this day. It encompasses Israeli attacks that forced 750 000 Palestinians to flee or be ousted. It encompasses the killings of thousands of Palestinian civilians when they tried to return. It encompasses Israeli citizens stealing the homes of Palestinians, destroying their villages, and sentencing nearly 7 million Palestinians to refugee status. It encompasses the creation of laws that deem Palestinian citizenship and passports void, deny their rights to land ownership, deny their rights to return to Palestine, deny their right to work, restrict their movement in their land, and ensure their segregation in all aspects of daily life. It encompasses Israel’s enactment of apartheid. Palestinians wield keys as symbols of resistance to commemorate the homes stolen from them and the wait until they return. 

Your unkindness rewrote my autobiography 

Into punch lines in guts, 

Blades for tongues, 

A mouth pregnant with thunder. 

Your unkindness told me to push through 

Look 

Listen. 

I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba

To a mother who reaped olives

And figs

And other Quranic verses ,

Watteeni wazzaytoon. 

My name: a bomb in a white room,

A walking suspicion 

In an airport, 

Choiceless politics. 

I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba. 

Outside the hospital room 

Protests, burnt rubber,

Kuffiyah’ed faces, and bare bodies,

Stones thrown onto tanks,

Tanks imprinted with US flags,

Lands

Smelling of tear gas, skies tilted with 

Rubber-coated bullets,

A few bodies shot, dead - died

Numbers in a headline. 

I 

And my sister 

Were born. 

Birth lasts longer than death.

In Palestine death is sudden, 

Instant, 

Constant, 

Happens in between breaths. 

I was born among poetry

On the fiftieth anniversary.

The liberation chants outside the hospital room 

Told my mother 

To push. ♦

A modified version of this article appeared in The NB Media Co-op on October 16th , 2023:

https://nbmediacoop.org/2023/10/16/commentary-listen-to-the-voices-of-palestine/