This month, I urge you to continue taking action for the people of Palestine. The following works, of art and of reality, are best presented without my commentary. Each has moved me greatly. Please click through and learn more about any that move you, too.
We Shall Return, 2014, Imad Abu Shtayyah
“Leve Palestina,” c.1976, Kofia
They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.
“Running Orders,” 2017, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
“We did what we could. Remember us.” October 20, 2023/c. December 6, 2023, Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila (d. November 21, 2023)
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself–
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
“If I Must Die,” November 1, 2023, Refaat Alareer
translated into 54 languages, primarily since Israel murdered Alareer on December 6, 2023
“To younus, i will kiss you in heaven.”
As wildfires rage beneath the sky where missiles fly, family trees have been set ablaze! Entire families and ancestral lines of Palestine have been wiped out! The loss of entire lineages of resistance to displacement, who lived on their land for centuries and millennia gone with a single strike is incomprehensible! We are rageful at our inadequacy! Writing as though a single strike of this pen could bring back the generations and generations and generations and generations and generations and generations that had tilled the soil, watered the graves, and tended to those also gone! Families that have not just been fragmented and forever changed, but entirely eradicated — ended! No amount of grief, no paragraphs of prose, no sophisticated analogy can pull centuries of ancestry from beneath the rubble and within the flames! Ending every sentence with an exclamation point cannot convey how the heart breaks! WRITING THIS IN A SHOUT CAN’T EITHER!
from “Grief Beyond Language,” 2023, Nicki Kattoura & Nada Abuasi
from A Child’s View from Gaza, 2011, photographed by Mona Damluji
Oh rascal children of Gaza,
You who constantly disturbed me with your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning with rush and chaos,
You who broke my vase and stole the lonely flower on my balcony,
Come back –
And scream as you want,
And break all the vases,
Steal all the flowers,
Come back,
Just come back…
“Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” 2014, Khaled Juma
Nativity scene in Bethlehem, Palestine, 2023
