meditations on safety
it is 2023 and you are screaming into the pillows while bombs drop at home. there is no metaphor here. two bodies apart. two worlds. you cannot touch them, cannot reach beyond the grip of grief and you cannot make it stop. you cannot. make it stop.
it is 1993 and you go home. you remember watching cnn with baba, asking him why the Palestinians were so dirty. you leave amerikkka soon after. Beit Sahour is quiet. you barely remember the checkpoints, the curfew, the searches, the border, the thick throat. instead you remember the boy, the best friend, the teacher’s ruler burning your palms when slap slap you cannot come to the answer you spent all night memorizing. you were safe then, all things considered.
it is 1997 and you do not recognize yourself in amreeka. you become shy again. you hide your body. bigger and more fragile and more. you hide so well you cannot remember where you left you. at school a white boy asks “did you have cars? did you ride donkeys?” you do not remember the answer. were you safe, then? a military recruiter comes to the high school. you ask baba if you should join, get college for free. he says, what will you do when they send you to kill our people? you live at home. pell grants and loans and two jobs and baba’s endless back breaking labor.
it is 2003 and you’re in college when a white boy in class calls you a dirty Palestinian. point blank. he says it over and over. no one stops him. you do not stop him. you are on a delayed timer. you don’t feel things when they happen. you have an answering machine brain. it will give you the message later. rewind the tape, please. play it again. what did he say to you, baba?
it is 2013 and you’re undone. you host people in your home and in ten years they will stand by idle while your community gets slaughtered. you didn’t know it then, but you were the same dirty Palestinian from cnn, from high school, from college, from gaza, from hamas, from terrorist, from terror, from god, my god my god. they bombed a hospital and the bodies are grey with soot.
you are safe now, you think. away from the bombs the guns the brutal. culled your friend group to its core. yes, three boys shot in Vermont. yes, that colleague that wants to see you fired. yes, they are doxxing and arresting and prosecuting and the dirt they have. the dirt isn’t even dirt. but watch, they will bury you with it.
israel claims the triple-tap bombing on nasser hospital which killed five journalists and medical workers was a “tragic mishap” targeting a “hamas camera”
every morning i wake up in my hamas bed and i drink my hamas coffee before brushing my teeth with hamas toothpaste. the tines of my comb spell hamas and i run it through my knotted hamas hair. it goes without saying that i get dressed in hamas and check my hamas phone only to learn about hamas giving birth to another new sibling. the Pope was hamas and the dentist was hamas and the journalist was hamas and the poet the teacher the child the father the mother the sister the brother: all hamas. i can still get eggs and bread which i fry in a hamas skillet and serve on a hamas plate. in Palestine hamas does not eat and in the soulless amerikkkan empire i choke. at work in my office i am draped in hamas and i know this because no one here cares if my family lives or dies in a “tragic mishap.” they cannot see my hamas tears on my hamas face and my hamas words are illegible to colleagues and students and doctors and deans. my dog is hamas when he climbs into my lap and nuzzles his nose in the crook of my neck. by the transitive property the cat is also hamas. everything the light touches is hamas and everything i feel is hamas and everything you don’t is hamas. yesterday i held a hamas vigil for my hamas heart by which i mean i screamed into the night and because my rage is hamas the police came to enforce the noise ordinance. the earth is hamas when it grows something despite every attempt to kill it. the sea is hamas because it refuses to be contained. god is hamas when she counsels mercy. after i die my body becomes hamas and the unmarked grave is hamas and my last will prays from the river to the sea and my spirit watches and waits for Palestine to be free.
