from the river to the sea

why I'm taking palestine so personally

via Divaz of Arabia Instagram page

I’ve called up various family members this week, my parents, my grandmother, siblings, trying to hold them close and affirm my love for them in this one precious moment of time. They ask how I am and I say,

“you know … I’m ok. I’m so so … Well, pretty bad actually, you know, the news.”

But then, I walk it back.

I say “Personally—personally I’m fine. You know, I’m getting along, I have work, I come home, I cook for myself, I have love in my life.”

And in that moment I feel ashamed for claiming Palestinian pain as my own. But I can’t extricate myself from Palestinians pain. While media outlets and the US and Israeli governments have been trying all they can to dehumanize them, to make it so that we either have no empathy for them or so that we lose what little empathy we had for them, my heart has been growing stronger and deeper ties to Palestine and their struggle, to their desire to live in safety and dignity.

I want to tell you a story that I’ve told almost no one. On the night of March 20 in 2003, my life changed forever. I remember the prelude: my parents talking about it in hushed tones, schoolmates quietly disappearing — without warning — from the country along with their families, the sudden appearance of canned meats and ultra pasteurized milk and several five-gallon jugs of water in the kitchen. I remember the night before when my parents prepared my father’s ground level office with a couple of mattresses and bottled water. I wanted to help but was told to go to bed.

And then, at the break of dawn, I understood what the preparations were about. I remember trying to quickly find my slippers from under the bed, clutching my favorite stuffed bear, while air raid sirens raged everywhere. The air raid siren is unforgettable: it sounds like it is coming from an immeasurably long distance away but from within our house at the same time. I didn’t understand what speakers could possibly be big enough to emit that loud a sound.

We hurried to the basement and I spent the next several hours glued to this mattress on the floor that my parents had placed there the night before. The house was shaking so hard from the nonstop shelling that I didn’t have the strength to get up off the floor, sure I’d come flying back down to the ground the second the tremors of the next blast hit. It was an endless earthquake for a child who had never experienced even a tremor. Our beautiful panoramic windows facing the Tigris river came crashing down to the floor in glistening sheets of broken glass. The heavy metal door to the roof clanged so violently that I felt it reverberate in my bones. And we knew pretty quickly that staying in our home was not safe. We knew that we were at risk because of the neighborhood we lived in, too close to an oil refinery, too close to a mansion suspected of belonging to a relative of the dictator. We knew, already, already before it happened, that the intruding troops had no qualms of missing the mark, no problem burying a few hundred civilians if it meant the possibility of hitting their specific targets.

It was obvious that we were at risk of the next missile landing in our back yard. And so we left as soon as the dawn broke, we left, we took barely anything and we drove to my stepmom’s parents’ home, where we sheltered for a long time. I remember having very little with me for several weeks: none of my usual comforts, none of my clothes, none of my hair ties and headbands, none of my notebooks and coloured pencils and modelling clay and Barbies. And I remember everyone trying their very best to shield me from everything that was happening and make me as comfortable as possible. I remember when the water stopped running through the faucets, when the electricity only came on at night, and how silent life became in the day. I remember not being allowed to watch the news with the grown ups and missing my cartoons.

What I don’t remember is finishing the first grade, although I must have. Or maybe the nuns running my school gave us kids a pass when our country was being so heavily bombarded. But I do remember eventually having to go back to school. The entire block of my school was now barricaded. The school’s high concrete walls were covered in barbed wire, and the only way to get in was through a narrow entrance at the end of each side of the street, guarded by members of the Iraqi army. Every morning going to school started with me walking through these barricades of barbed wire past men with assault rifles. They were the good men with assault rifles, the ones who allowed me to approach them and allowed me to speak to them, I knew this, but was terrified still of their guns.

I understood this is what they had to do to keep us safe from the men in U.S. army uniform, the ones who paraded their tanks along the street in front of my home, so proud of themselves for managing an ugly “marhaba” while passing out candy to the Iraqi children on the street. These same men would, a few weeks later, shoot several bullets towards our family car one early morning, early before the previous night’s curfew had been lifted, while my dad was driving me and my very pregnant stepmom down the street for an emergency.

I was intimidated by the men in the Iraqi army but these men, the foreign ones, these ones petrified me. We knew there was no speaking to them, no chance of approaching them without reprisal.

Even then, I knew my school’s safety measures didn’t matter. Because every day throughout class, you’d hear the missiles landing in the distance. You’d hear their demonic whistle through the air and then you’d hear them touch ground, pray that it was someone else who’d lose their family that day. I remember when things calmed down a few months later, there came a point when there were only three missiles that I could hear in any given day. In school while learning about the multiplication table I’d daydream about what would happen to me if my parents were caught in the aftermath of one of those rockets. And I remember wanting so badly—I made this decision that if they were to go, then I wanted my body to be found right next to theirs in the rubble. I was six, and I didn’t want to go through my life missing them.

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In Arabic the word for martyr is shaheed, a witness. I ask you: what does genocide do to the bodies it doesn’t kill? What happens to the witness that is forced to stay on this earth and see the bodies resembling their own lying in the streets?

— paraphrased from a woman’s speech at a rally for Palestine in Copley Square, Boston, MA, October 25, 2023

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Every day I would count these rockets, I’d listen for the first one, I’d keep track of the second one, and then after the third I would finally let myself feel relief. I knew that it wasn’t logical but there was a twisted assurance that our daily dose of shelling had come to an end, that my family was ok, that I’d live another day. This was my assurance, my blessing, this is what I came to feel grateful for: that there was a pattern to the violence.

At night I fell asleep to a shower of gunfire, letting myself drift off once I heard all three American military helicopters pass our home. In the morning, I’d go up to our home’s flat rooftop, carpeted from end to end with bullet casings, glimmering copper in the sunlight, so mesmerizing it made me forget to wonder what damage the bullets committed before their shells landed here.

This was my life under occupation once the US Army found pretense to invade Iraq. Twenty years later, we’re sitting on the sidelines again, allowing the US to fund and support an ongoing genocide of another innocent people, under the false guise of exterminating terrorists.

I’m telling you all this not because I’m trying to play victim, or equate my pain to that of Palestinians, and it’s definitely not because I want any sympathy at all. I’m telling you this story because the traces of something like this—they never go away. The survivor guilt fades but it doesn’t go away. Every one of my failures is so shameful and cuts so deeply not because I feel like I’m failing myself or my family’s expectations of me but because I believe that I’m failing everyone who didn’t get a chance like I did, every child who didn’t get a chance to escape. It cuts deep because I wonder if the roles were reversed, if another child had gotten out instead of me, then maybe they would’ve been able to do more for the world than I ever will.

I’m telling you all this because you know me, if you’re reading this. We’ve likely met, maybe we’ve been to one another’s homes, maybe we’ve had a meal together. By sharing this, I want you to walk away knowing that you personally know someone who has been through this, that what is happening to Palestinian children is not happening in the abstract, that those kids don’t look that different from me or the children in your life.

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If it makes you uncomfortable when we say “Free Palestine” then it must mean you stand to benefit from the suffering of Palestinians.

— paraphrased from a protest speaker at a rally for Palestine in Copley Square, Boston, MA, October 22, 2023

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The scars of imperialism and colonialism and western violence are ugly and permanent and they’re not numbed by the fact that the Middle East has been in tumult for decades. The pain doesn’t go away. Arabs are not built different, we don’t have a higher tolerance for tragedy. Muslims feel pain and loss and love just as vividly as you do. We don’t devalue one another’s lives the way western media devalues our lives. If you’re reading this, I need you to fight like hell for everyone in Palestine. I need you to call your congresspeople and representatives, to call in any favors you have if you are related to a politician. I need you to show up to the rallies if you physically can. I need you to keep talking about Palestine. We can’t forget them.

The last few weeks, I’ve felt such guilt over the basic need of having to care for my human body. I can’t stand that I have to wash and feed myself, and I am ashamed of the privilege of getting to wash with hot running water and eating plentifully. I can’t stand that I have to go to work and deal with customers and smile when all I want to do is scream. I can’t comprehend how the world is still moving forward when it should stand still for Palestine. What I want is to cry, I want to commune with others, to grieve, to protest, to disrupt the daily goings on of this city and every city until Palestine is free.

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I want to express my gratitude to every single person who continues to use their voice and social media platforms to talk about Palestine, everyone who has attended a rally or called their state and city representatives to demand a ceasefire to the genocide before our eyes. I know some of us face personal and professional repercussions (and I’ve avoided bringing this up in the workplace) but please continue to practice your courage by using your voice to stand with Palestine.

To call my representatives in government, I’ve relied on this tool that Jewish Voices for Peace put together. The phone system connects you to your correct representatives and you can leave several voicemails in under 5 minutes. Another option is their email system, if a phone call is not in the cards for you today. Call today, call daily, and tell your politicians that your future vote relies on their actions in this moment.

Please call your government leaders today. The US is the main financer of Israel’s army (sending a mind boggling $3.8 billion annually), as well as the only body in the UN security council that has vetoed a resolution that called for a “humanitarian pause” while lifesaving aid (water, food, medicine) can reach Palestinians trapped in the concentration camp that is the Gaza Strip. We are all culpable, so we must all call for an end to the violence against Palestinians.

There is a lot wrong in the world, but continuing to kill innocent civilians will only lead to repeated violence in the future. We need to end the cycle of violence and address Israel’s oppressive, racist regime. Please call your representatives now, and share the link with others.