Tag Archives: palestine

Nahalin – Memories of a World Apart

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sunset outside nahalinSince 2007, memories of Palestine have been resting, sometimes silently, sometimes urgently, beneath the day-to-day breath of my life.

Having made a new friend who walked some of the same roads I did, the memories rise again to the surface, unanchored:

Sunset on the edge of the village of Nahalin, a family gathers on the rooftop of their cement and rebar home. Two ancient women. A beautiful young mother, striking yet modest in dark hijab, her child climbing onto her lap. Simply-dressed, elegant-limbed young men.

I smell the Arabic coffee from the car as we drive by, cardamom and sugar mixed with the earthy, deep smell of the Middle Eastern roast. I ask the men I am riding with, “What’s the occasion do you think?” They say, “Evening.”

The moment stops for me, a freeze-frame set in my mind’s eye. “This is what the world is like when it slows down,” I think.

Riding from a peace gathering outside Bethlehem back into town with a car full of Arab men I don’t know, I am grateful for having taken the road less traveled by.

The driver is jovial. He drives fast. The three men sing boisterously along with an Arabic pop song on the radio, laughing, for a moment entirely carefree.

I watch ancient terracing and olive trees flit by outside the window. The evening turns a deeper shade of shifting gold, horizon molten and the air dusky.

“I will remember this moment for the rest of my life,” I think.

This is only one petal, of one rose, of a garden of roses. Too many stories to tell. But slowly – shwaya, shwaya – some of them will find their way to my lips, ensh’llah.

What Middle East Peace Talks? (My latest at elephantjournal.com.)

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My latest at elephantjournal.com — please click the link below to read.

(Author note: This is an opinion piece. I am posting it in response to a lack of awareness around the Middle East Peace talks. I respectfully request that you click through the links included in this article before commenting. The links offer a background story that may allow you to understand the heart of this article more easily.)

Imagine you are sitting in your home. Imagine that when you look out the window, you can see a wall growing closer and closer, day by day, straight toward the walls of your home. You know that the larger wall will not correct its course. You know that soon, very soon, your walls will be gone, leaving only the larger wall standing.

I look forward to reading your comments over at elephant!

In Honor of Ramadan

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Reposted from Ramadan, 2007

Another part of my journey in Islam

Credit: http://arabiccalligraphy4u.blogspot.com/2009/04/zahra-and-mohammed.html

Ramadan kareem!

Yes, I am observing the fast of Ramadan. I never could have foreseen this, but I don’t know why. It makes perfect sense. Beginning after my first trip to the Holy Land, I started studying Islam. My most recent trip ended just as Ramadan began. My first day home was the first day of Ramadan.

While in Bethlehem, the excitement level was rising. I was invited by many to extend my trip and to spend Ramadan in their homes. (Yeah, the whole month. I have never met with such utter hospitality.) I couldn’t, though if I had been able to I certainly would have. Leaving was difficult as it was, and I would have loved to have spent this holy time in a Muslim community.

Instead, I came home, and have taken Ramadan by myself. I am studying deep into Islam, and have found many elements that speak directly to my heart. The spiritual side of Islam appeals to me more than any other religion I have studied. (Notice I didn’t say spiritual path, I specifically said religion.) The spiritual aspect is Mysticism. Direct relationship with God, no mediation, the awareness that God is both imminent and transcendent.

The law and politics side is more sticky, tricky, trigger-happy for me.

And for both these things I am exceedingly grateful. The part that makes sense with no need for translation. The part that is my home already, is my heart, my love, my life, my surrender, my path. The part where God is, and i am.

And, the part that is so alien that I can’t look directly at it without engaging in separation.

How does all of it “make perfect sense?” I could not have thought of a better way to pull “my self” outside of myself; outside of the known, outside of the assumed, outside of the easy, the comfortable, the illusory. Sometimes it’s too easy to fall into ease, and not even realize that Truth Eternal has been sacrificed in the offing.

Ego rebuilds itself moment to moment, assuming new shapes to hold, contain, divide, define itself by. Even the idea of enlightenment can stand in the way of our relationship with It.

Circle of Women, Tomb of the Patriarch, Al-Khalil/Hebron

Circle of Women, Tomb of the Patriarch, Al-Khalil/Hebron

So, the perfection lies in being stretched beyond my own edges in a way that I ask for again and again. Through the frame of Islam, I can see God unchanged, unchanging. The way I have come to know It. I can also see where my ego is attached to the way I encounter God, approach God, conceive of God.

One of the big jokes of it all (and there are many, many Big Jokes for me in the terrain of my dissembling soul), is that God cannot be approached. God is. Eternal. Everywhere present, but in no one place localized. Beyond our comprehension. So, even on the mental level, God cannot be approached.

As a Mystic, I can say that all paths to the Divine are equal, while knowing that “path” is a misnomer, and “to the” a misleading statement. Even naming It,  whether “Divine” or “God” is a veil.

“love is a veil between lover and loved
more than this I am not allowed to say.”
Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

Even the idea of love is separation. In claiming a beloved, earthly or divine, we put ourselves into separation. Through this separation we have the chance to seek reunion.

Just as delineation limits by virtue of fixing “some thing” in place, love and aversion limit by placing things outside of ourselves, which creates something outside of The Other, as well. There is a sense of “the thing I am”, or “the thing I am not.” Both reinforce division.

But where better to see my assumed flaws, faults, assumed strengths? Where better to see my attachments?

In this, the healing of the world.

As my sense of self lies shattered into pieces on the ground around me, I laugh, and I cry. Some shards melt into the earth and become cells of the ageless soil. Some wisps of vapor, becoming the unchanging air. Some become sparks of light and join with the unwavering light of the sun.

And even beyond the joining with the geological and universal, each element in its time fades and joins the eternal, returning to the first home, the last home, the home that is now, and always will be; the heart of The One.

In the midst of the agonies and the ecstasies of mergence, emergence, mergence…I come back to the moments of peace where there is no separation.

What if “that I am,” were true of everything. What if inside and outside were an illusion? What if there were no line between work and life. Relationships with people and with God. Spiritual path and life, just as it is.

Cessation. At the heart of it all is surrender. The moment where lover and beloved are not two, but one. Nay, are none.

Ma salaam,

-LaSara (Fatima ‘Abd-Rahim)

“The foremost in religion is the acknowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His Oneness, the perfection of believing in His Oneness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him.
Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence. He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence.”
-The oneness of god, according to Ali ibn Abi Talib

“I testify that there is no Deity (Lord) except the sole and matchless Allah. And the testification of the singleness of Allah is a word that Allah has declared sincerity (as) its reality, and made the hearts the centre of its contact and union. And has made the specifications and research of the oneness of Allah’s station obvious and evident in the light of meditation. The Allah Who can not be seen by the eyes and tongues are unable and baffled to describe His virtues and attributes. And the intelligence and apprehension of man is helpless and destitute from the imagination of his how ness.”
-Fatima bint Muhammad

A Poem for Palestine

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August, 2007

here,
in this place of unyielding hardship
the soil trembles
with subtle urgency
without moving

bodies quiver
electricity dancing on the surface of
straining skin

restraint
oppression
desire
fear
all held
in abeyance -
a sacred secret
voiced in harsh-edged whispers
in the dark of night
and lost to forgiving winds

here,
trees bend low
branches heavy hanging
with over-ripe fruit
no way to pick the figs
beyond the shadow of the wall

still,
roses grow
dawn kisses sweet-smelling earth
with blushing lips
breathes new life
into tired lungs

here,
figs drop
full of burgeoning seed
fecund and bursting
to visit a sticky dampness
on the waiting ground

life will not be held back
even in the darkest hour
the promise crowns
cock crows

new life is given spark
in darkest nights
we cower
sweating sweetly
under threat
of imminent annihilation

still
the oppressed pray
create life
touch with gentleness
cry with pain

still , we bleed
still, we laugh
still, we heal

and dawn
gives herself again
to this new beginning
no conditions
on this precious start

daily we are born
daily we die
this moment
a finite prayer
on the infinite lips of time
of timelessness

not fixed
but fluid -
death
gives way to life
life to death
this eternal dance
of
love, and loss, blood, birth, laughter, tears

the call to prayer echoes
from ancient hills -
sentinels
guarding deep secrets
the ones that reveal themselves
only in dream

and the call is answered
as it always has been
always will be

each of us
answering
in our own private language

lips forming the sweetest words -
hidden, secret words
that only God
will ever hear.

The Wall — Palestine, 2007

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The wall coming towards Beit Jala.

Beit Jala, The West Bank, Palestine, 2007

(Author note: This is an opinion piece. I am posting it in response to a lack of awareness around the Middle East Peace talks, 2010. I respectfully request that you click through the links included in this article before commenting. The links offer a background story that may allow you to understand the heart of this article more easily.)

Imagine you are sitting in your home. Imagine that when you look out the window, you can see a wall growing closer and closer, day by day, straight toward the walls of your home. You know that the larger wall will not correct its course. You know that soon, very soon, your walls will be gone, leaving only the larger wall standing.

I sit on a terrace that was probably built centuries before Columbus set sail…and am spitting distance from the wall, grey and shocking, monstrous, prison-like, stark and hard-edged. I am so close, in fact, that I can hear the machinery working tirelessly beneath in the large shadow – you have to be able to imagine this wall to understand. It’s built like a prison wall – about twenty feet straight up, and then another 20 at a slant, built to keep the prisoners…uh, I mean terrorists…in.

From what is to be known as the Israeli side of this “fence,” (on illegally seized land), you could perhaps scale the fence, with the right high-tech climbing gear. If you were to stand beneath it on the occupied, aka Palestinian, side of the fence, it would tower over you, insurmountable and oppressive.

I sit on the edge of Beit Jala, just east of Walaja, outside Bethlehem. The wall is heading straight into the heart of Walaja. There is no clear path. Houses have fallen before the blade of the dozer, and will continue to fall.

Right now I can hear the “screeeee” of earth and stone being torn by machines. If I were to stand, I would see, beyond the wall, on the occupied side, carcasses of olive trees, still drying in the late-summer sun. The leaves are not yet brown, death is so fresh.

According to the Qur’an, to kill a tree is forbidden even as an act of war. Yet the trees come down, the houses come down. Families are separated by tons of concrete. Lives fall to the way-side.

I cannot even hold the reality of it. I sit and there is nothing but “us” and “them”. It is impossible for me not to take on the grief, the anger,
the frustration.

Being a “landed” person, I tell myself that I would die to protect my family home if it came down to it. And even at that, I know I would not. Life is more precious, freedom more precious. What freedom there is.

To my immediate left is the settlement of Gilo. It stands, stately and rigid, on the highest peak between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. You can see it from everywhere. It, like all the settlements, stands as a brick and stone taunt to the (lack of a) Palestinian nation.

Where is the justice? Where the justification? How can anyone look at this wall, these settlements, and think these are okay, much less a good idea?

Fighting a “war” against “terror” is inhumane. Who are the terrorists? Walling a nation is ghettoization. The wall is breeding terror, and those who live in terror may choose to die by it. This wall is terrorism. These settlements are terror impersonated.

Imagine you are a young woman or man who has no citizenship, no country, no right to travel, no right to own land, no work prospects within the land of your birth, no easy way to leave. Imagine you are an old woman or man who has lived for the past sixty years in a camp run by the UN. Imagine the complex emotions that pull you between wanting your children to find a way out, and knowing that if they do get out you may never see them again.

Imagine you are a young person with nothing to lose but life itself. Imagine you are a young person with nothing to gain but paradise. What is terror? What is terrorism?

My third night in Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers came illegally into the center of town. Young boys picked plastic bottles from the trash cans, and began throwing them at the cavalcade of army vehicles. Empty, plastic soda bottles. Not even rocks. The jeeps stopped, and the boys ran.

A simple game of cat and mouse. What else is there to do? How should these boys react? Even in “Area A,” which is supposed to be solidly in Palestinian control, the Israeli soldiers make their presence known at will.

What is terror? Who is the terrorist?

Palestinian people are arrested by the Israeli government everyday for nothing. People are afraid to walk the streets after dark, not because of crime (which seems to be virtually non-existent here), but because they are afraid of being harassed, picked up, arrested, beaten, killed…by Israeli soldiers.

I see the walls, internal and external, and I find myself asking, where is the third intifada? How else will the strangle-hold be overcome?

Really, the question is, where is the hope for peace? I have yet to find it. Without justice, no peace. Just walls. More, and more, and more walls.

Sixty Years of Temporary – Arroub Refugee Camp, Palestine

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Entry to Arroub Camp (Al Arroub).

August, 2007

Yesterday I went to Al Arroub Camp. Remember, you take the bitter with the sweet…

In 1948 the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands began. Palestinians were driven forcibly from the homes their forefathers had built, whole villages were emptied of the Arab population. Villages that had been built of the blood, sweat, tears, life and death of the Arab people were torn forcibly from them in six days that changed the political terrain of the Middle East for ever.

Throughout the land of Palestine, the villagers who were not killed were displaced.

Al Arroub was built by the UN in 1948. It is peopled with Palestinians who were run out of their villages. Many still hold keys to homes that no longer stand, or homes that now hold three generations of Israelis, while the same three generations of Palestinians live in homes of concrete…windows opening into other windows. No space for thought, no space for breath, no space to stretch…

When things are built to be temporary, and in a crisis situation, the process of planning is different. One could say short-sighted perhaps. Starting from here; sixty years ago the standard of living was different. And, the population was lower. Life will not be held back, and even in these dire conditions, people breed.

We breed as if our lives depend upon it…because, of course, they do. In times of crisis, where you never know which of your children will survive the terrors of war, which will survive the threat of arrest or assassination, which will survive the rigors of poverty living, which will decide to stay in the country of his birth and care for you in your old age…perhaps we breed more.

Add in the value that family holds in Middle Eastern culture, and especially Moslim culture, and yes, you have rapid population growth. Arroub camp is less than one square km (roughly 1/2 an acre), and is home to around 9000 refugee families. A third generation. The camp is moving into it’s 4th generation of habitation. The buildings grow up, slowly, as families can afford to add rooms, generation stacked on generation.

Across the road you can see the settlements grow out from centers, expanding like a crab grass, taking over as much land as possible.

Arroub Camp is in Area C, the area controlled by the Israeli government. According to the Oslo agreement, Area C was supposed to be in the control of the Palestinians by now. However, since the second intifada, all roads into, or out of, Arroub have been closed, except for one. And this one is guarded by Israeli soldiers. No one can come or go without the permission of the soldiers.

Many are unemployed, but most of those who have work are employed outside the camp in near-by Hebron (Al-Khalil), Bethlehem, or another municipality. Every day in the camp children, workers, students, were forced to recognize the authority of the very soldiers who’s families live in the homes the refugees families built centuries ago.

In the camp, children play in streets that run with dirty water. There are no parks, no playgrounds, there is no open space that is safe for the children to play in. Until this year, there were no schools in Arroub Camp. The children had to be bussed to the surrounding municipalities daily to attend school.

Inside the “popular office” – the office of the popular representative of the refugees who live in the camp, and serves as interface between the refugees and the UN – I’m sure there is a better English translation for this, but it’s how it was explained to me – there are murals. Each one has a story.

Keys Without Locks - each pad (leaf) of the cactus is a Palestnian city that has been lost.

Keys Without Locks - each pad (leaf) of the cactus is a Palestnian city that has been lost.

One is stark black and red, and has the names of the martyrs of the camp. (A word about martyrs, before reactivity sets in…martyrs may have been killed in a confrontation with the Israeli army, may have died in custody in Israeli prison, may have been killed defending one of the villages, may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have yet to hear a story of a martyr who was a suicide bomber…perhaps I could use the word Hero instead, and sidestep the whole discussion…)

Another is a painting of doorways, keys, desert…and the names of all the villages that the refugees come from. Village names that have been erased from every map, from every street sign…but the names live on in memory. Only keys remain…keys that have no lock. Keys that remain a symbol of life stolen, promises broken, and sixty years of temporary.

Onto the sweet; what there is to be savored. An amazing women’s center has sprung up in Arroub that houses a day care and many programs that encourage womens’ independence; financial, cultural, personal, individual. There is a computer lab, and a craft room, as well as a day care and kindergarten on premise. There is a small playground in the back yard…a sand pit, really, with a few toys, but a place for the children to be outside and not directly on the street.

And the popular office is building a park, with a swimming pool, gardens.

The funds are a struggle, and the political situation with Hamas has strained things further. Many international funders are wary of putting finds into projects with things feeling as precarious as they are.

I hope to find funds to help the women’s center. And I have faith that as Abu Mohammed, the head of the popular center, believes, the park will be finished within the year.

Ensh’llah.

Arab Cawe

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The Arab cawe (coffee) is thick and bitter-sweet. Dark and steaming, I take a sip, sitting in the square in Bethlehem. I love this square. The vast expanse of worn marble in front of the church, the seats of carved stone.

When seated in front of the church, you see a mosque at the other end. This is a perfect image of my own journies in Palestine. I found Islam through Christ. Muhammad was not my first doorway.

It amazes me how marble feels alive, buttery, warm. The ancient marble holds stories. The living stone that has seen so much history unfold.

The marble seats that line the wall of the church in the square in Bethlehem hold memories for me now. Sitting for hours, watching Muslim girls and women walk by, Sheiks, Priests, street boys running in packs.

The world there feels more ancient. Architecture tells stories, and orchards of olive, fig and pomegranate trees hold ancient secrets in the crooks of branches, gnarled like an old man’s fist.

There is an image I saw in a shop in the hidden markets of Bethlehem – the places where only locals wend their way through shops offering cawe fresh ground, school uniforms, and the occasional gift shop.

The image; a photograph of an old Palestinian woman hugging an ancient olive tree that has been dismembered, with an Israeli jeep in the back ground. All that’s left of the tree is the trunk, and she’s holding onto it like it’s her dead lover.

Tears are streaming from the woman’s eyes, her face contorted in agony.

This image is not for sale. It is there as a reminder. A reminder of what’s been lost. A reminder of what’s being taken. A reminder that there are bulldozers tearing trees from the ground at this very moment.

And as always, the shop smells of cawe, and the owner asks us to sit, sit, enjoy a cup before you move on.

The scent of the coffee, the taste of it, tells stories. It calls to mind the poetry of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish:
Here, where the hills slope before the sunset and the chasm of time
near gardens whose shades have been cast aside
we do what prisoners do
we do what the jobless do
we sow hope
…
You who stand in the doorway, come in,
Drink Arabic coffee with us
And you will sense that you are men like us
You who stand in the doorways of houses
Come out of our morningtimes,
We shall feel reassured to be
Men like you!
…
-State of Siege

The smell of Arab cawe calls to mind the Bedouin tents and shanties, the markets in Jerusalem, every home I entered in all my travels through the Arab lands, the Arabic tongue like music, rough and guttural, with melodic overtones.

It calls to mind a night spent in the courtyard of the only Mexican themed restaurant I saw in all of the Holy Land. My friends and I were sitting at a small table, coffee steaming in front of us.

At the next group of tables was a group of young Palestinians. They were obviously liberal, reformist. Young women sitting with young men, the hookah shared with ease in a way that older Palestinians do not posses.

But if they were liberal, so were we. I was a woman at a table of men. We were out sitting together, drinking together, talking politics.

There were other tables in the courtyard, quiet conversations echoing off the walls of the enclosed yard.

After urging from his comrades, a young man stands and recites. Everything but his voice falls silent, still. Not even a cup or bottle is raised to mouth. The hookah burns itself out.

I don’t understand Arabic with any fluency, but in my blood and bones I understand every word he says. I feel his meaning in my core. I don’t know how, but I recognize that it is Darwish’s words that stream with urgency from his lips. From his body. He is lost in the words, and we are lost in him.

He ends his recitation, and there is silence, then applause. Then requests called out from tables scattered around the small square we all share. We are lost in a moment purely poetic – not just in word, but in spirit, too.

He recites more Darwish. Then, in the next silence, he gives himself over to something new. Though I recognize nothing of the meter, I recognize the pain. It is his own; his own pain, his own poetry.

For bordering on an hour we sit still, rapt in a moment purely Arabic. A moment that lives in a culture that will still stop everything for a poet, for one who recites. A culture that holds the space for images and words that will someday stop the tanks, the jeeps, the suicide bombers.

Perhaps the pen is mightier than the sword. And an image, it is said, is worth a thousand words.

If these things are true, than someday – someday soon ensh’llah (God Willing) – these weapons that lead not to blood but to tears of understanding, a shared understanding of the human condition, these weapons that are tools, will win the war without end.

To Darwish, to the memory of him, to Palestine and those who love her,
To the Israelis and the Americans,
to the world, I offer this;

I invite you
to come inside
the sitting room
of my life

to smell the scent of the dirt that holds
the roots of jasmine
to smell the flower
to smell
the coffee brewing in the kitchen
strong, bitter, sweet
cardamom and sugar

(From Filistina, Ya Habibi – in memory of Darwish. Click here to read the rest of the poem.)

Send me the Sunset

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I ask you to
send me Arab coffee
but i want to say
send
the coffee vendor
crooked teeth and gentle smile
who stands with burnished cart
at the far end of the square

I ask you to
send maramia
but i want you to
send me
the scent of water and wild weeds
at Solomon’s Pools

I plead
send me a
strong smelling, rosewood rosary
frankincense
and myrhh
zatar

but deeply,
I long to walk again
in the Arab markets
of Jerusalem
Bethlehem
Al-Khalil

send me the
sights and sounds of
markets beautiful, bustling
over-abundant with riches crafted
by hands that hold, remember
ancient arts

send me
the greetings
arab coffee
sweet and tangy tea
friendly haggling
and gifts of the heart

send me
tender goodbyes shared with
strangers
made friends, in a quiet,
endless quest
for peace

“When you return to America
Tell them we shared coffee at my table
Tell them, we are not monsters.”

I say to you,
send me peace bracelets
sewn in the
Palestinian manner
crafted of the colors of the
flag with no country

but my heart cries out
for a day full of the smiles
that greeted me on the road
between the arch
and the tree

I ask for artwork from the market
when what I long for
is the call of the muezzin
adhan echoing
off ageless hills
and stone

send me the
sacred moments
how you and i would pray
your forehead touching the ground
humility washing you clean
five times a day
(your devotion to Allah inflaming
my own devotions
to my nameless, faceless
god)

send me sweet memories
how
tears graced my cheeks
at sunset
grateful for one more day
standing on the soil
of that land

I want to ask

“Please, send me the sunset.”

In Memory of Mahmoud Darwish, 13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008

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I wrote this piece on the day Mahmoud Darwish, Poet Laureate of Palestine, the voice of the Palestinian people, died. It is dedicated to him.

Filistina, Ya Habibi

(Palestine, My Beloved)

I invite you
to come inside
the sitting room
of my life

to smell the scent of the dirt that holds
the roots of jasmine
to smell the flower
to smell
the coffee brewing in the kitchen
strong, bitter, sweet
cardamom and sugar

I invite you
to dine with the ghosts there
all the poets
of an age gone by
breeze
is a breath
bone-chilling

listen
for the quiet keening
coming in through the shutters
as sun sets
on another shadowed, haloed day
these clouds you see gathered
they are dreams
resting out of reach

remind me who i am
as you
tell the stories of struggle
of a people
older than the dirt
that settles
on the concrete and rebar
of a thousand refugee camps

come have coffee at my table
and sing the old songs
the Jahili poetry
reminding us that
we had stories
before this one
we had stories
long before this one

the blood of my heart
spills on the soil
and feeds the fig trees
that have forgotten
not to grow