From:
Third Scene.
...
Haya: In my dream I saw the earth opening its womb to devour me. I was a child, new-born, and in my cradle there was blood. I saw a woman give birth, instead of a child, to a gun. The earth erupted with fire and storms scourged its wounds, pulling out the trees of life by their roots. Hungry, I cried for milk, a child now, forsaken, and no none answered my cry. My words and my tears were like pebbles flung against tanks, like dust in the eyes of hurricanes. Hunger grew, devoured my being and outgrew it, until I had ceased and hunger alone was left to remain, using me as a means to manifest its own self; a huge body, grey and faceless, a vast emptiness ready to absorb every fibre of me. It was a hunger that had nothing in common with the craving for food. It was a darkness in me eager to swallow my light. It was a longing to fall and be embraced by the abyss. It was the feeling not to exist.
From:
Fourth Scene.
...
Story-teller: You have heard the words of Daliah Tal. I couldn't spare you that. Pardon me. I know they weren't easy for you to endure. I asked you to listen and take them in without any comment. Respected audience, I'm possessed of a heart like your own. What you're feeling, I'm feeling it - ten times as strongly, a hundred times as clearly, for I have seen this woman's eyes and felt the muzzle of her gun against my temples. You only see a representation on a stage. It's easy to burn an effigy. But let me relate to you an incident that happened not too long ago:
(During the following recitation the spotlights go dim, focussing on him like a floodlight.)
Travelling on a bus,
on the way home from work
in the company of four friends,
I was conversing with them when
a group of Israeli soldiers got in.
They sat down beside us
on two sides,
sitting so closely we could feel their breath.
As we were talking to each other,
they began fooling around,
throwing in their own nonsensical remarks
in a mock Arabic as miserable as only Israeli soldiers can speak it.
Doing so, they kept watching,
eagerly and impatient,
for the first sign of discontent.
Wherever we looked they followed us with their eyes,
forcing us to meet their looks,
forcing us to look their impudence in the eye.
Right and left they sat,
their uzis resting against their thighs,
their fingers never far from the trigger,
their provocative stares aimed at us like knives,
the steel of their guns warm like living flesh
hot with their hunger for blood.
The slightest move
would have been enough,
the slightest cadence
betraying exasperation
would have set the stage for a carnage.
Red flashes were dancing
before our eyes.
It felt like drifting and falling
into black clouds of smoke,
drowning out every sensation
but the sharp pain of fury
and the awareness
of its price.
In my pockets,
I pressed
my nails into
my flesh
until they drew blood.
Soaking the fabric,
its flow brought the coolness
of relief
and the presence of mind
on which survival depends.
This lasted
from Oum al Fahem to Haifa.
In my mind I recited
the verses of a song.
Life went on
at the margins
and we watched ourselves
quietly
as we kept the words flowing
on the outskirts of us.
Make of this what you will, brothers, but do not say I am reconciled with my fate.
But this is not the first day of my oppression. My oppression is mine and my father's and his father's before him. It's with me, every day of my life. We – have nothing to lose but our resilience. When the walls of our prison crumble we must be there. We must survive to claim back what is ours, for we are the only ones who possess the fitting keys to the houses which our ancestors built on this land. We must be here to bring in the harvest of these fields, to tend its olive groves and its orange trees, to bear within us its memory, the memory of centuries, which no one possesses but us. We must vest our entire being in the need for survival, for our hope lies in outlasting the oppressor. Our experiences must turned into wisdom and our struggle must be turned into hope. Wisdom and hope must be turned into a power and power must translated into method. What we must fight with our lives is the deliberate blindness and strategic destruction to which we have fallen a victim. If we allow our own thoughts to echo it, we are lost. The stunned silence of the first defeat and its wordless rage, the dark that still lingers, we must resist … –
The Man from Scene 3 surges back onto the stage. Again, the spotlights focus on him.
The Man (shouting): What I demand, is justice. And I will get it. I shall take what is mine with these my two hands. Today I shall have justice. I swear.
Story-teller: What's in your hands?
The Man (opens his hands so we see his bare palms. For a moment, he is helpless. The he says, irritated, in a challenging tone of voice): Nothing.
Story-teller: These are the facts, brother. Whether you like it or not. (He shows him his own hands.) My hands are like yours: empty. As you can see. With these two empty hands I must protect my house and the few things I possess against those who want to take it away from me and have the right to do so because their law is the law. They can fit it to their needs and mould it according to their interests, while to me it's a dogma into which I must believe or be finished. These two empty hands, my impatient brother, is all I have got. I must scrape a living out of them, provide for it and preserve it, and never give up, brother, never, ever give up. What do you say? Can they be tools for battle?
