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

When I found out about the reality of my birth, I was newly a descendant from the family tree. The age of understanding what is not to be understood. My life, afterwards, surrendered to a sphere that is to be broken down. The pieces, however, like a worm, would continue to regrow their own circles. The birth and the future.

The birth and the future place no importance in the present, hence the void of such a space. This disappearance has placed me as not a passive watcher, but an active agent in a land that is not mine. The presence is not of relevance as there is no moment of pure presence; I immediately fall back into the future, and the second pulls away from the past.

That is me. My refugee status, that is of no authentic refuge, prompts me into conflicting my birth with the never-fleeting knocking shadow upon my door, with the name of ‘Death’.

I ask: Why ‘us’? Not Why ‘Anyone’? Because it’s never ‘anyone’. Very few suffer like this. Most will never taste this bitterness, this hole.

Did it have to be us that are cursed by a lightning that colors the sky poignant each day?

I think of all the men, all the children, all the women that could have enjoyed all your graces, yet, because of this occupation, had to be separated from you.

I do not know if I grieve more for my loneliness without a country, or for my dying people for the land.

I fear of perishing and never finding the bliss of one glimpse. Palestine, please, one glimpse.

I fear of growing old and finding that bliss when I am not awake enough to feel it all. Palestine, please, another chance.

Choose me. Today.

In this age. I want you like I have never walked the earth before knowing you, like I have walked barefoot and been plagued by thorns.

Every time a family member dies, I attend two funerals. Their death, and the death of their dream of visiting a Free Palestine. I grieve two times. I weep two times.

It haunts me that I have yet to taste your fruits, walk the hidden roads that even the Zionists now will never know. I hate that they have grown accustomed to waking up to your roosters whilst I wake up to my neighbors’, whom are as much of refugees as I am.

A refugee. That is all I am assigned to be. The letters in R e f u g e e come before the ones belonging to my name, and so all my life has been a fake play of a chance to act out a part that isn’t even mine. I cannot grow this tree here, this is not my land, mine is Palestine. And it is not far away from here, but it is far away.

I cannot walk this road, I have plenty of unspoken roads in the country of my origin, waiting to be unraveled.

I cannot speak the dialect of this country, my parents warned me about the fatal consequences of losing my tongue to another: I would be erasing ancestry, soil, nature, people. My very own. My grandmother, my grandfather, and hers and his, and hers and his.

I wonder how my tears have never burnt me when they are grieving you. A couple fall now as I am writing, and I wonder how I am still alive. I look at the portraits of my tormented and dying people and I succumb to an existential cry. It was never sadness that affected me, it was anger. And you make me grow mad for you are so desired yet so out of reach, so striking that false messiahs are yet to seek your very heart.

But they never will.

And you keep count of your children, I know. Your soil is drenched in the blood of your martyred prophets, gone too soon. As to the blood of your enemies and mine, you reject that blood. You claim it was never blood, it was waste.

I know you. I know how you perceive things.

But I want more of you, I confess I am not greedy. I mourn all those years where I had to grow bigger limbs and thicker bones and you were not a witness. I lament the growth, the dresses, the hair length, the sound of my distinct footsteps. My singing, my drawing, my writing, my screaming, my laughter, and my smile. Twenty years have passed and you have no collection of any of that and it hurts my core.

You know the spiritual aspect of my presence, but I want the physical just as much. I want it all. I hope you have witnessed me in one of your dreams. Just one, I plead.

It has been seventy-six years since we lost you, and I know that I was weeping at that time before my consciousness was even born. I know it deep down my soul that I was a witness, that I felt the sharpest of knives as a heartbeat, that I fell to my knees and cried. Granted, perhaps I never had any soul, any heart, any knees, and any eyes. I know, however, I needed not any of them to feel the breaking of each.

Lands are especially peculiar; a void that can never be filled when lost. I hear about a displeasing platonic love, a romantic one of void, and a dysfunctional family’s long-lost affection. Though none can be cloned, they can be fulfilled in other ways. I cannot, in any shape or form, fulfill you in any other way that is not you.

I yearn for you.

I fear never seeing you and stop writing about you. I fear never seeing you and keep writing about you.

I fear seeing you because I will spend my time writing about you. Your grace, haze, and clarity, your love and your solace. Your beauty and how you complement mine, or rather how I complement you. You made me this way; I am simply a mirror of your own.

Yet I want this last fear.

I have no fear of losing you to memory. You are too monumental to be confused by anything else. In the camp, I heard of an elderly woman with Alzheimer whom my sister interviewed about Palestine a few years ago. This woman has forgotten her own children’s existence, even. She still remembers Palestine. She still speaks of Palestine as if she had never had to leave that holy piece of land.

This is not the first story I hear of an elderly person not losing sight of Palestine when they have lost sight in all other actions in life. I find that incredible- prophetic, even. It was more than just deep desire, it is otherworldly. As if Palestine herself has come and possessed those people. A haunting with unsuccessful exorcisms, and they shalt remain infertile.

This is my hope, and I will carry it with me. This is my legacy, and I will make sure to fulfill it.