Palestine 2005

(Exile)

Eyes like birds

In the sky

Above the harbour

The barques of  the rain

Forgotten tomorrow

Ships on their way

From Yaffa

Into the night

Days on end

My heart flaps

In the obscure

I remember Haifa's screeching soul

Forever flooded

By rain

A day like a pearl of glass

Beautiful and meaningless

I once said

To the sabras out there

At the spot

Which you know

And what else than a glass pearl

Was your heart

In those days?

A straying cat was my pain

In the streets of

Um Al Fahm

Um an-Nur

As we sang

Before we died

Soon

Afterwards

Sea green and  submarine blue

With starving souls

The taste of mint

And coffee strong

As night's wordless current

With hearts clinging to the wind

Of unsatisfied longings

That flings us rough

Against the sky

Where, at night, the stars are the soil

In which we grow our roots

Transferred from downside

Up

Where Palestine extends herself

Into space

Into the spaceless

Growing inward

In negative expansion

Everywhere where the walls are

Thriving in vibrant implosion

With her eyes piercing and sad

She inexplicably smiles

A white lie?

Or a dark truth?

What can be said

More than that?

So long is it ago

That I felt your lips last

Caressing my heart

To drink Fajr's salt dew

What a bird am I now

With my wings flown away?

Must I deceive myself to believe

I could still laugh, cry

And live?

Reading your name on the map

I don't trust my eyes

Nor my heart,

That heart

Of which I speak

Like of a stranger

Or the pupil of a blind

And which, yet,

I cannot deny

If heaven was a garden

Its flowers were called Jersualem, Jenin, Yaffa

Haifa and Ghaza

Ramallah, Tulkarm, Al Khalil

And Um Al Fahm

Um an-Nur

Thousand names

Budding like roses

With the maddening sweetness

Of sabras in bloom

Watching them sing

On the shores of wide, glistening light

Like barges on fire

At that spot

Which you know

I feel it,

That scarred heart,

strike out
 

This poem is a very personal statement and a reminiscence from a very personal point of view. Yet, it has caused reactions which at times were profoundly political (which does not come as a surprise given the relevance of this set of problems to the political realities of the contemporary era). I would in this context like to state that if a peaceful coexistence is to be achieved, there is the basic need to recognise the cultural, ethnic, emotional and economic ties of Palestine's population to Palestine and the catastrophic impact of the imposed and pronouncedly coercive interruption of these ties (in the demographic sense) by the Zionist colonisation of Arab Palestine on her ancient Arab population, an effect which has traumatised not only the Palestinians and Israeli-Palestinian or Jewish-Arab relations but contemporary society in Palestine -and not only there- as a whole. This traumatisation extends to both sections of the population -Jewish and Arab- and is the root of the present conflict. One of the key deficiencies or failures of the Oslo model, apart from the colonial status of Palestinian autonomy, the strangling of economic development in the autonomous areas (which are geographically unfit to constitute the territory of a state) and the apartheid character of Israeli policies in Palestine, was the absence in its concept of an acknowledgement and recognition of this dimension to the conflict as well as a lack in preparedness to draw principal conclusions from it.

I'm not at all surprised, though, to hear that there is a critical attitude towards Prime Minister Sharon and the programme for which he stands in broad sections of the American population, a fact of which, in general, one is very strongly aware and which holds true no less with regard to the Israeli population, for the people are usually not blind to the mistakes of their governments (if even at times they may be to their motives).

In my opinion it can only be helpful to understand that realities in the Middle East, as everywhere in the world, are multifaceted and quite complex.

I want to thank you for all your reviews and would like to extend a special greeting to my colleagues Robert Jude (Ace)Forese, to the Lady of the Lights Karla Dorman, Lori Moore, (of course) Judy Lloyd, Karen Vidra, George Corroll, Ronald Hill, Donna Quesinberry and Claywoman.

With all  my best wishes

Mahdi