To You, Palestine: Twenty Years Prior and Twenty Years Later

My head holds my body down. It burdens my shoulders for my skull feels as hefty as the bullet that sunk into my ancestors’ skin. It bears memories of women born on borders, in between different soils. Women that have died on borders, in between torn banners and apartheid walls. I cannot but carry them every day with me.

I look at a rifle as it speaks to me; it implores to be my most sacred friend.

I look upon strange rivers and wonder what it would feel like to hold mine. I look upon strange rivers and wonder if my reflection would change when the time comes that I look onto mine once I reach you. Even within the realm of transparent waters, I know my land’s would taste different. It would embrace me before I do. It would beguile me into thinking it is the nectar of the Gods. And it would be. It is.

Wherever I go, I have this hole in my heart; a hole that can never be sealed so long as I am away. I talk to the trees of Lebanon and ask them if they know yours, if they are both in contact and connection. I ask them if their taste is as sweet, if their aroma as redolent. I ask them if they will be secure and safe, if they will still be around the time I arrive. But the trees fall silent for they are not God.

I look inside of me for blood that could easily be wasted, for blood that could easily be drunk; consumed like the money they make out of murdering us. I look inside of me and I detect a quill. I need not paper, for words can be engraved anywhere.

I look inside of me for a grip strong enough to carve my heart out onto the wood of that fine tree. If this is how they convey touch with their sister trees, then I must salute my children so they remember their forever-gone, lost, neighbor mother.

Their mother of just a few kilometers away. Unable to reach, no matter how long she stretches that hand into infinity.

And I spoke the language of my enemy, and I wrote with the impotent alphabet of my foes. Yet in between language and treason, my feelings paused for they could not find a proper refuge to pour themselves comfortably in.

I translated what it was to be a refugee, I interpreted what it is like to be born of violence and blood. I wore my fanciest silk and still stood bare as I wrote about my birth and future.

I confided in nature yet never sought sanctuary between each branch because my place is not here. I was to be born there, but I found the miracle of my birth and the force of my soul not vehement enough to shove those borders. I blamed the ground for not shuddering, I blamed the earth for not breaking.

I read letters, poems, books and wonder how much rage can one perpetuate before fulminating like an illuminating thunder flash, like a dozen lethal flowers.

I read the news and wonder if one can cease from grief. From the wrath you can hear as it weighs on my chest. I feel better when I remember how both these emotions are one and the same, just of different stages. I cannot but think of how their faces could have been mine, of how even a refugee camp can be of refuge in moments like these.

But what I really feel is resentment. I resent those with a land to freely embrace because all I have is a neighboring city to watch over the beginning of my land. I cannot pass further, they tell me. I resent the occupiers for banishing Adam and Eve from Eden and settling in my paradise, for wearing my land’s outline on their chain, for robbing my culture and my food. I resent those with angel wings watching over their safety when they have never had to listen to the sound of drones the way we were born to.

I resent everyone that turned around and went with their little daily lives. Another proof that the powers of imperialism are alive and embedded in even the way you think. Even the language you speak and form thoughts with, even the ways you dream in your slumber.

To You, Palestine. You have my all.

My morbidness and health, my indigence and wealth.

Resistance runs through my veins like the waterfalls in Bisan.

Bathe me the way you would do- the only way.

Take over me, possess me.

In my head, you have never not been free. It feels like I am just always in a never-ending journey around the sun, my mind likes to play that game. Knowing me, an entity that places the most exquisite of them all as the last to visit, I want to enjoy my big finale eating and living off of your rich olive trees. But my visit is not a flee, it is not a time stamp. My visit is eternal and I have come to enrich my blood with your soil. I have come to add another tomb into your crowded cemetery. I have come to become one with you. You and I are one, and we will always be. We have always been, for I have come to know your sky, your leaves, your thyme, your tea, and your time. I have grown accustomed to your rocks, your poppies, and your flocks. I have memorized the songs of your birds, the wailing of your cattle. I have always known you, and I am your child.

When you hold me in my death, you will be holding me in birth.

And that is eternity.