Category: Bits & pieces of everything

I cannot stop watching the video of the guy pleading for help under the wreckage as he hears his mum heavily breathe, clutching for air, and begs her not to leave him. “Mum, Mum, Mum,” he keeps saying, begging her to stay alive.

Ya Allah, how can we move on with our lives after this? How am I expected to normally go back to my life as children lose their mothers and brothers lose their sisters? How can we stop crying and live in a world a few kilometers away from destruction and genocide?

The mother and son were rescued from under the debris, both alive and doing well, but the father didn’t make it. Yet, some are not as lucky, and the son might not remain as lucky as death lingers by in every corner of Gaza, and even if they are okay today, they may die tomorrow.

How can we move past this? I don’t feel like I can breathe. My days are spent listening to Palestinian-resistance songs and reading about Palestine, watching videos of the massacres and the previous wars, and I feel distraught, haunted, hand tight.

I want to help; I need to help. My tears won’t save the children from the fallen building, but I need to do something, anything. I need to be somewhere, anywhere but here.

When the 2006 war ended, I was almost nine years old, and I cried every day because I was too scared to lose my mum. I had a friend at school that lost her mum and siblings in the war, and the idea that that could’ve been me killed me.

For months, I cried out of fear and agony, and I would not let mum leave the house without me. I lived through daily terror, and I did not even lose any of my relatives or friends, but the children of Gaza are not as lucky.

I remember once my friend with the dead mum asked me; “do you love to have your mum dead?” to which I misheard and thought she said: “do you live your mother to death?” and I said: of course! But then I understood her question and it left me in horror.

Here I am, in the comfort of my bed, with a high fever, because of the COVID-19 vaccine I was lucky to get. Here I am with a headache not because of the loud sounds of bombings and murder, but because of a luxury that protects me from sickness when the people of Palestine are not even protected from death. Here I am, with both of my parents alive and healthy, while a child is committing suicide in Gaza because he lost all his family.

I know it’s not common to remember events from when we were 3 years old, and I really do not remember anything from my early childhood, except for the recurring nightmares of Israel. I was 3 when the South was liberated, and I can still clearly remember when my dad would take us to Naqoura to see the land we so proudly belong to.

I still remember the feeling of being scared as my dad would get lost on the way back, and we would think we might end up in an Israel-occupied land.

I still remember the recurring dreams of being stuck in a field full of landmines, of Zionists invading my home and us hiding behind the door, of my mum being imprisoned for doing nothing.

As for the 2006 war, my sister and I suffered from PTSD for almost two years; major fear of darkness and being alone, waking up in the middle of the night crying and sleeping next to each other on one small bed, and the piercing anguish of losing my mum. My little cousin, who was 4 at the time, would sometimes sleep over at our place, and she would cry to sleep because she was so scared to close her eyes because she thought “they will come and take off her pupils.”

I don’t remember much from my childhood, but I remember the fear. I remember the trauma of waking up scared of losing a parent, or a sister, or a body part, for a crime we didn’t commit, for a reality we never asked for. They took away our innocence, our childhood, and are still taking away the childhood of Gaza; they are taking away the children of Gaza.

Ya Allah, is there an end to this pain?

“Yet the poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war.“

It pains me to be waiting for over a week now for a firm step forward towards the aggression of the terrorists in Palestine, because I trust the system, and because I have looked up at the system and the international body since I was young, believing in the salvation and the formation of a body of human rights that protects the weak and vulnerable.

And I am still waiting, because I cannot bear to read the atrocious statements that not only do not condemn the 73 years of terrorism, but also calls for an ‘equal’ ‘cease’ of fire. I refuse to fathom that this is what the international entity chose to do in response to the violent attacks on stone-throwers and penniless youths.

It is a stab in the heart to read a ‘neutral’ statement that calls for peace and civil security, weighing heavily on diplomacy but siding with the aggressors. As if when faced with apartheid, you get to choose to side in between.

Of all the international human rights courses I have taken, they have admitted to many mistakes done by the bureaucratic organization, including Rwanda and Iraq, but never mention Palestine.

As if all resolutions and international laws ‘endorsed’ have been so successful, as if the sieges and the sanctions and the murders have been long stopped by the mythical charter. Even Plato would laugh at the idealism.

As a journalist student, I have idolized, religiously, the men and women of the pen, those who were killed for writing, those who threatened the oppressors so much that the enemy decided to eradicate them, those who killed using words and figures more than bullets ever could.

I stand here remembering Ghassan Kanafani and Naji Al Ali, struggling to keep Handala alive in everything in me, holding my Handala necklace close to my heart and the real cartoon under my pillow; I am fighting for the ten years old boy that has not grown since the exodus, the boy who looks down at the human rights international entities in dismay.

I sit here, 15mins away from where Kanafani and his little niece were murdered, unarmed, in the middle of my city. He never used a gun, never held a rifle, he had his pen and a typewriter and he frightened the nation of thousands armymen.

To dismiss the international laws, charters, and resolutions is a habit we have normalized. If the international entities really think that what is happening in the land of merciless does not violate the human/e laws, let us remember the one law that matters most: resolution 194, the right of return.

Adopted in 1948, not only does resolution 194 stresses the importance of Palestinians returning to their homes-not lands, homes-but that “compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible”

73 years of violations, yet the international societies remain perturbed. It is sickening to the bone that not only is resolution 194 thrown to the mud, but settlers now dare to occupy the homes of Palestinians, 73 years later, and we remain unfazed. How cruel the world is to be so good at human rights in writing but never in practice.

I remain hopeful of the system I belong to; I remain hopeful because I believe in the better good. I believe in the salvation of the nations and the eradication of starvation and poverty and injustice. I am ignited by the yearning for a painless world where children are happy, so I need to believe in an earthly system that is also working to achieve this.

To end this, I will forever recommend you read Ghassan Kanafani because he is the only one who does not romanticize the cause; he tells you the story from all sides, the ugly and the right ones.

Pride and prejudice really? I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve just learned something, and I can’t tell anyone about it because the people I can tell are directly related, and it’s so aggravating.

It’s just; I need to tell someone so they can tell me I am not being used, that it’s alright and it’s only big in my head, that I am not just being dragged around just for being the way I am and that it actually is much simpler and makes a lot of sense.

When is it time to walk away from deceiving people, even if that means giving away the things we love most? Where can we find the fine thin line between giving others our all and not letting them use us, or worse, drain us until we’re dry?

I’m hoping, praying, that there is some kind of explanation behind what I just discovered and that it is not that I am being used for whatever reason they think it makes sense to use me.

I’m hoping that I am wrong because if I am not wrong and this is the reality, I’ll have to walk, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that.

To be sitting on a wet grass – it’s 3:05 pm, and I’m at the office with a million things to finish, but I feel like if I didn’t write now, I won’t later, and I want to write because I’m the happiest I have been in for weeks. Happy enough to skip Metallica, at least.

Sunday was ideal. There was this moment when I sat on the grass next to the muddy river and just did nothing. We sat under a shadow, away from the humidity and the sun, and a warm breeze brushed my cheeks, and I could feel the coldness of the river under my feet, and someone was probably talking to me, but all I was aware of is that at that moment, on the wet grass, I found my peace of mind.

How frivolous it is to make all the noises go away, and I don’t mean the noises around us, because the waterfall was too loud that I couldn’t even play music, I mean the noises inside us that keep pushing us down when all we want to do is walk away.

I remember that moment right now, as I sit and laugh with my coworkers, as I talk about the most random things and make fun of the absurdity and atrocities we live through every day.

At that moment, and even though I still have a good amount of work to finish before the end of the day, I couldn’t but feel reminded that serenity exists in the darkest and mustiest of all places, that even though there is so much to bear and so much to feel, there still can be a moment of idyll whether near a muddy river on a warm Sunday, or when hearing the sound of laughs of people, or deep conversation with coworkers, or simply thinking of the food you will eat after work.

I have a big week ahead, mainly FoodBlessed long hours, but I’m almost apathetic to whatever might or would happen. Tomorrow is my last working day of this week as I’m on leave this Thursday, and Friday is a day off, so it’s basically a few more hours of fighting for women’s rights and gender equality, and then I switch to fighting hunger and poverty.

We spend our years fighting, if not for ourselves, for others, and it never ceases. We never cease to fight, and sometimes it’s not that worth it, and I ask myself, when can I stop fighting? When do I let go?

I think i’ll miss you forever

i know you’re not okay now, and i know we’re going through very difficult time, and i know what i am going through is maybe a very small percentage of your pain, but i’m here for you, there’s nothing that i won’t do to see you well again.

i know you’re scared, even though you don’t show it. i know all of this is scaring you, and even creating anxiety. the doctor told us that a certain thing in your tests were high wich is most likely due to you being scared, why don’t you tell me that you’re scared?

i saw that look in your eyes on monday, i know that anxious look, i saw how you reacted at 1am in that ugly sad emergency room, as if the wall was closing in on you; you were panicking and i could see it. and i am so lucky to have been there with you, i am so lucky to have you in my life.

this will pass, i promise. it won’t be the end, i need you to promise me it won’t be the end. i need you to pull through, i need you to fight harder, because i cannot bear the idea of losing you. i’m so weak, and i can’t do it on my own. there’s still so much i want to learn from you, so much i want to hear, there’s so much i still want of you and i am too weak to lose you.

stay here, don’t leave me. stay here for a couple of decades more, stay here next to me as if there is nothing better to do than hold my hands and offer me oranges. stay here because everything i do and everything i’ve done is revolved around you and if i lose you the earth will stop spinning around me.

i promise i’ll behave. i’ll be good. i’ll listen to everything you want to tell me, even all the things i don’t like to hear. i’ll try to eat healthier, i’ll reduce my caffeine consumption. i promise i’ll stop doing all the things you don’t like.

i promise to stop wearing your sweaters, or at least put them back in your closet when i’m done. i offered you one of my sweaters, which would look great on you, but you wouldn’t take it. so really, it’s not my fault that you didn’t accept kind favors.

what do you want from me? please let me know. tell me how i can help ease the pain, tell me what i can do to take all your sickness away. i swear i’ll do it, i’ll do everything to stop the sadness in your eyes and the fatigue in your bones. i’ll do whatever to crush the thing that is crushing you.

i look at people who have lost a family members and years later are smiling and doing well. how do they do it? how can the sun shine in the morning? i don’t know how people do it, but i can’t. i’m not strong, i’m very weak.

i promise to be better. i promise to be everything you ever want me to be. i promise. but please, please, please, come back to me. please feel better. please defeat this and come back to me healthy and so almighty.

i love you, please stay with me now and for infinity. please