Yes for a no-fly zone over Gaza!

I, for one, hate to study with company. It’s 3:05am. I’ll be tested on American literature at 11:00am. Less than eight hours separate me from the exam, and yet I have plenty to cram into my mind but…

As usual, I got company. Company that is like no company. Company that I can’t even think of ridding myself of. Bullying company. Though American-made, they don’t seem to have the same interest to study American Literature. Indispensable company. Fucking company!

Yes, I got company.

In the presence of this company, I have to double my efforts as I attempt to memorize (I mean “memorise”, that one seems to be American-made) a line or a paragraph. I have to elicit a few parts of this anarchy surrounding me, block these parts out of my mind, elicit a few parts of the same anarchy, memorise them, and then cram them into my mind…etc.

But I am not a loon to do that crazy stuff. To hell with another “A”!

However…

I still demand a no-fly zone over Gaza.

Because why should my little sister (though I have no little sisters, so you can think of any little girl living in this part of the world) know such a word like “qasf” (shelling)? Why should this word be part of her early vocabulary along with “Mama”, “Mayya”, and “T’at’a” (meaning potato)? If you still insist on teaching her that word, I can do the job without her having to experience an actual animated presentation of the word meaning each time she wanted to pronounce it.

I, therefore, demand a no-fly zone over Gaza.

I am not in the money, and I simply hate the fact that my cousin’s wedding party in the open should be accompanied with such a grand military airshow in celebration of his marriage. Yes, sure we can do without an airshow. It is just ridiculous, we cannot have Apaches and F-16s flying over Gaza each time someone is having a wedding party. No need for that. We do appreciate it, but my cousin can definitely get married without military airshows. So we demand a no-fly zone over Gaza.

My father loves to watch Al-Jazeera, my mother loves the Turkish series al-Ard al-Tayyiba (the good land) and I love Barcelona. We love watching T.V. Why should you fly your drones above my house and obstruct the transmission of signals by my satellite, leaving me struggling with another anarchy inside my T.V. screen. You can’t do that to me each time I wanted to watch T.V. I am human, and I have feelings. I want to support my favorite team. You can’t go on violating basic human rights like that.

For that reason, I demand a no-fly zone over Gaza.

We, Arabs, are obsessed with music. It’s probably the only thing we can do without someone else’s help. I love the Oud. But each time I come to listen to my favorite music, you just send your planes flying over Gaza, playing me symphonies of various kinds. Worse yet, once in a while you send a whole orchestra of drones, Apaches, and F-16s all playing their music synchronously. Yes, a party! I appreciate that help, but I really never loved your sort of music. You can’t tell me what sort of music I should listen to. Please, you should stop violating my personal freedoms, else…(just saying!)

Finally, it is not necessary that each time you want to kill a Palestinian, they have to be torn to pieces, beheaded, or whoops…VAPORIZED! The paramedics would be grateful if the body remained in one spot instead of spending several hours collecting tiny pieces of flesh, remnants, signs of (once) a human being!

Why on earth should we have a yes-fly zone over Gaza. We demand a no-fly zone over Gaza because there is no fucking reason whatsoever that we have a yes-fly zone over Gaza!

Don’t keep BUZZING…I wanna FINISH reading this dirty American-made stuff!

The Palestinians’ “Land Days”

Illustration by: Abdul Rahman Al Muzayen

On May 30, 1976 while thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel were protesting against the expropriations of their homelands, Israeli security forces shot and killed six young Palestinian citizens of Israel and injured many. Had Israeli security forces been able to foresee the consequences of this foolish act, they would have practiced the highest level of self-constraint. They would have probably pleaded with these protesters to go home. They would have done anything but kill them.

Commemorating what they have died for, the Palestinians, for 35 years on end, honored the memory of these six young protesters on what has become “The Land Day”.

Politics has always been part of a Palestinian’s life. So unconceivable it is for Palestinians to disengage themselves from politics. When they are angry, it is politics that angers them; when they are hopeful, it is politics that gives them hope. Sometimes politics starves them. And sometimes when they die, they die due to politics. Eventually, they become politically experienced and sophisticated.

Yet, rarely are they aware of their tragic political status. A few of them know that they do not possess a state of their own. Try and tell them this fact. Simply, they wouldn’t bother. A state is not what Palestinians would feel worried to have or lose. To them a state is a meaningless enigmatic concept. A farmer never knows what “state” stands for, neither does a fisherman. A teacher would possibly know, but he would never feel it. All of them, however, know one simple word, one grand concept, one sacred entity. It is a reachable concrete and spiritual one. The land.

This is how they raise their children. They raise them to love their land and feel it under each step they take. These children soon start to see this land in the morning sky above, they soon touch it on the seashore, and feel it in the rainfall. A while later, they accompany their fathers to the graveyard and watch a relative embrace this very land. They would sink their bare hands into the sands and join in burying this very dead man.

And while they are still little children, they blend into this land. Their love for it becomes unfathomable. Beauty, to these children, is “an olive tree growing before their own eyes.”

As they grow up, their life becomes more complicated, and inevitably more political. They start to suffer and feel the pain of living under occupation, under siege, and behind the wall. The pain of crossing checkpoints, of being discriminated against, of being bombed and fired at, of watching their siblings buried under this land. The majority of them would start to hate everything around them. They would feel angry and worried to the extent that they would abhor their surrounding. And the would curse.

They would curse a variety of things: life, Israel, politics, Gaza, Egypt, and perhaps even Palestine. These all become to them base and immoral entities. However, never will a Palestinian curse the land. Gaza, when cursed, is miserableness, wicked people, crime, hellish nights, bombing, starvation…anything but never the land. Palestine, when cursed, is Israel’s security, political factions, the Apartheid Wall, settlements, checkpoints…anything but never the land.

To Palestinians, each day of the year is a “Land Day”. Each pulse is so land-loving; each breath soon vaporizes into the land; each tear soon waters it, and each body eventually embraces the land— on the real “Land Day”.

One Night of Bombing

I’m lying. The are two actually. Earlier, I tweeted, “I was lying all the time. I used to say I got used to it, you actually never get used to being bombed by F-16s!”

It was but another night penetrated with the brain-wracking constant droning mixed with the sounds of a slight rainfall. I didn’t bother, however, and continued my nightly chores, indifferent to the omnipresent presages of an “unappealing night”. Time and again, I was told this was going to be a hellish night due to the last bombing that took place in Jerusalem.

One would wonder what Palestinians in Gaza would have to do with a bombing that took place in Jerusalem. But to someone like me, and to Palestinians in Gaza, I’ll just borrow the words of another Palestinian, “If someone caught flu in Tel Aviv, we, Palestinians in Gaza, were to blame. We would have to bear the consequences!”

A few reports say this is part of a larger Israeli political conspiracy to relieve the ever amounting pressure they are put under by provoking Hamas into firing rockets onto Israel and showing themselves as the victim. Some say it is a desperate attempt to end any Palestinian effort to end the disunity between the two largest Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. Israeli media, however, report these attacks are just retaliatory. I’d try to understand if it were retaliatory, but it is Israel that started all of this mayhem.

I didn’t care, and whatever were the reasons behind this would-be hellish night, I didn’t bother for myself. I thought that I got used to it. But I kept tweeting and providing latest updates whenever the droning increased or lowered. Someone told me, “your obsession with the unmanned drones inspires me.” He thought it’s an obsession, but it’s not. It’s some mechanism to release myself from this nerve-wracking noise, which at some point, would seem eternal.

But it was not. Soon enough the droning ceased. The rain stopped falling. It was all quiet, and I started to feel worried.

A friend tweeted, “this must be quiet which precedes the storm!” I knew It was. So everyone was soon getting ready and preparing himself, psychologically and emotionally in case the bomb fell in his neighborhood. I was soon trying to envisage the bombing in my mind before it fell for real. Waiting for a bomb is far more torturing that the bomb itself.

A few minutes later, we started to call for ending this state of dreadful quiet by sending the drones back “People want the drones BACK! ” I tweeted.

We waited and waited, but no bombs fell at all. We started to feel extremely apprehensive about what’s going on! Had we been bombed, things would have seemed normal.

After what seemed to be ages, and as if conforming to our demands, F-16s and Apaches started flying in Gaza sky only to simultaneously start shelling various areas across the Gaza Strip. Once an F-16 shows up, a bomb follows. One doesn’t even have time to ponder its horrific blasting sound. A few were injured, two of them were children.

The night was up, and I went to bed.

The next night, at an unguarded moment, the nearby area was heavily bombarded by five F-16 bombs. I wasn’t prepared. I never thought it would come this early. As each bomb fell, the whole building shook back and forth, my heart dropped, and I cursed. The five bombs having fallen, I felt like screaming my heart out like a child. I felt as if I wanted to be as simple a little boy pouring out his heart to his mother, “Mom, I hate Israel!” But I kept silent and continued my nightly chores.

Illustration by: Zahraa Hassan

The Earth Woke Peacefully: in Commemoration of a War

For the first time in twenty-two days the Earth woke up without a start. Even though the sky was spotted with a few randomly dispersed clouds, it was bereft of the disturbing tones of the overhead drones which had now disappeared. The earth had woken peacefully, peacefully enough not to bear with the frighteningly gigantic burden of a new bomb to be dropped onto her surface bestowing on her some savagely massive shake. Peacefully enough not to endure the deafeningly immense sound of another bomb tearing down through its stratums. The earth had woken peacefully enough not to feign warm-heartedness as she embraces a new lifeless body laid into her deepness, and peacefully enough not to feel the insufferable pain of watching herself fight a losing battle against a huge bulldozer mercilessly extirpating a new sapling that had just issued from her sand. The earth had not woken with a start to mournfully open her arms for a new falling bird that had failed to estimate the looming dangers of flying amidst a sky that covered an unbending race of humans: the bird flew so as to bring his brood a few seeds to feed upon and yet had to pay the inexorable bill of love and care. The earth had woken peacefully, and peace obviously had known its way through the countless bullets, rockets, mortars and bombs which had been horrifyingly raining on this part of the earth, and, it seemed, it had finally been able to guide itself through the jet-black darkness of the multiple graves. Peace, as far as one could tell, had flown out from the bottomless earth up to the very heights of the sky where the soaring birds could finally replace the awful scene of mighty jets and warplanes.

Gaza, in Gaza, Fourteen Years in Gaza

Republishing a pretty old article of mine.

Gaza …

Fourteen years in Gaza have taught me to believe that it is inconceivable for anyone who, on a Friday morning, hasn’t been walking up and down the bustling aisles of a public market while the sweating traders, at each side of the aisle, are calling at the top of their voices in well-rhymed phrases with the prices of their commodities, it is unimaginable for them to appreciate the enormous capacity and the charming power of the small word, and that to perceive how far significant these four letters are is next to impossible.

Gaza … Fourteen years are too much for me to make me realise what an improper behaviour that is, having visited a friend, you leave your cup of tea, not untouched, but rather unfinished, your plate of candy, no matter how stuffed you are, not finished. The more heartily you devour it, the more pleased your host is.

In Gaza, you and your friends meet together at home; you take issues with them, and they yell at you, but you never yell at them; they throw the pillow behind their backs over at you, and you never respond. Meanwhile, your mother knocks on the door of the guests’ room and calls out to you from behind, rebukingly bidding you to lower your voice, although she knows it for sure that your voice was hardly audible and that it is your friends who are making all this fuss. All this fuss, in Gaza, is about the day of the “Tasha” – the Arabic for a small trip inside the town – you and your friends will be going on. The trip will be to nowhere special but to a street! A mere street. All that which makes it differ from other streets is a statue standing upright in the middle of the island separating the two sides of the road; the statue is called “Al-Jundy Al-Majhoul” The street is special, for it is a little wider than all other streets in Gaza. With all these privileges, the street, therefore, becomes a destination for you and your friends; and, for its own sake, you and your friends spend hours arguing to decide on a date where everybody is free that you can gather and visit the statue, together!

Gaza …

Fourteen years have taught that I should not be staying up late at night the eve of Friday. They have taught me how much I would regret if I dared to do it.

Gaza, in Gaza, Fourteen Years in Gaza

Gaza …

Fourteen years in Gaza have taught me to believe that it is inconceivable for anyone who, on a Friday morning, hasn’t been walking up and down the bustling aisles of a public market while the sweating traders, at each side of the aisle, are calling at the top of their voices in well-rhymed phrases with the prices of their commodities, it is unimaginable for them to appreciate the enormous capacity and the charming power of the small word, and that to perceive how far significant these four letters are is next to impossible.

Gaza … Fourteen years are too much for me to make me realise what an improper behaviour that is, having visited a friend, you leave your cup of tea, not untouched, but rather unfinished, your plate of candy, no matter how stuffed you are, not finished. The more heartily you devour it, the more pleased your host is.

In Gaza, you and your friends meet together at home; you take issues with them, and they yell at you, but you never yell at them; they throw the pillow behind their backs over at you, and you never respond. Meanwhile, your mother knocks on the door of the guests’ room and calls out to you from behind, rebukingly bidding you to lower your voice, although she knows it for sure that your voice was hardly audible and that it is your friends who are making all this fuss. All this fuss, in Gaza, is about the day of the “Tasha” – the Arabic for a small trip inside the town – you and your friends will be going on. The trip will be to nowhere special but to a street! A mere street. All that which makes it differ from other streets is a statue standing upright in the middle of the island separating the two sides of the road; the statue is called “Al-Jundy Al-Majhoul” The street is special, for it is a little wider than all other streets in Gaza. With all these privileges, the street, therefore, becomes a destination for you and your friends; and, for its own sake, you and your friends spend hours arguing to decide on a date where everybody is free that you can gather and visit the statue, together!

Gaza …

Fourteen years have taught that I should not be staying up late at night the eve of Friday. They have taught me how much I would regret if I dared to do it. The mere thought of doing it is terrifying. In Gaza, Salatu Al-Jum’a – the Arabic for The Prayer of Friday – is most sacred above all else. In Gaza, you commit vices and crimes all week long; you commit offences and misdeeds all week long; you are a thief; you have murdered someone; you have committed adultery; and you might have just taken God’s name in vain, but you do pray Salatu Al-Jum’a. In Gaza, therefore, it is never surprising why it is terrifying to think of staying up late on the eve of Friday. On Friday, in Gaza, you wake up early in the morning; and, while your mother prepares the breakfast, your sisters carry on arranging and tidying the house and its items in apple pie order unless you’ll be telling them off because you have heard your mother shout at them for not doing their job right. Shortly afterwards, when you have eaten your breakfast, you settle the matter with you brothers who is first, in preparation for the prayer, will be taking a bath, after your father finishes, and who is next!

Gaza … Not so little a word before has amassed such an immense variety of meanings in between its four letters. The city and the village, the happy and the sad, the old and the young, the large and the small, the far and the near, the poor and the poorer, and the good and the better!

Gaza is where you are never tired of shaking hands with others. You walk alongside a friend who pauses to shake hands with a friend; and you, unknowingly, find yourself shake hands with your friend’s friend; and on top of that, you answer to his inquiry about your heath: “Tamam, teslam” – I’m well, hope you are, too – as you put your hand across your chest as sort of respectable salutation.

A week or two later, while you’re hurrying along the street, alone without your friend, you hear someone hailing for you from a distance. Taken aback, you fix your eyes upon the approaching object and is soon so embarrassed to discover it was your friend’s friend— or rather your recent friend— whom you first met not very long ago to have forgotten this fast. Friendly reproaching you, he’ll part company with you, wholeheartedly inviting you to pay him a visit at home along with your mutual friend.

Nowhere other than Gaza are you wakened up in the early morning, rubbing your eyes, so infuriated with the thoughtlessness of whoever is ringing the doorbell unceasingly at this early hour, and you are struck to know it is your kind neighbour “Em Mazen”, stretching her hands with a large-sized plate on the end, piled up with fine fresh home-made bread. Enchanted by its smell, you cannot hide your admiration towards its baker. Its smell is reminiscent of the most renowned poet of the Gazans, of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Darwish as he says: ” We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April’s – hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn … ” In Gaza, at the doorstep, Em Mazen bids you a long, very long, good morning before she hands you the plate and leaves off, cheerfully as she always is.

Gaza …

The very word per se is evocative of a whole lot of irreconcilable senses: of life and death, of delight and misery, of excitement and wretchedness, of hopefulness and despair, of Hamas and Fateh; and, not understandably, of Al-Ahli and Al-Zamalek. Gaza, the word, by its own nature, and upon the mere pronunciation of it, automatically conjures up two images deeply inculcated in the memory of every Gazan: one of Fares Oda, unflinchingly facing a tank and throwing it with a stone, and the other Mohammed El-Dorra, embraced by his father, and crying for his life. The word, although light as it seems, weighs heavily upon the heart of its enemies.

Gaza is nowhere on the earth and is everywhere on the earth. Gaza is a pun where critics stand incapable of uncovering its near meaning, and which they think is the far hidden meaning. Gaza is a pun where illiterate peasants, drivers, peddlers, teachers and engineers are more knowledgeable of puns than literary critics: Gaza the heart, and Gaza the city. No matter what distance alienates you from Gaza, you are never alienated. Gaza lives in the heart of those physically detached from her as well as she lives in the heart of those who live on her sand.

Ghazza …

People in Gaza are synonymous of commendable naivety. Life is so easy and lovable. It is where my family visits yours when my children, out of boredom, suggest that we might break this monotonous routine of daily life by taking up this visit, and after a first feigning of not feeling inclined to go on with this visit, I just let go to my children’s demands and to my desires as well. Thereafter, I remember that this month is closing in its end which obviously means that I am lacking the sufficient money to buy some one or two pounds of banana so as not to visit you empty-handed, which, in Gaza, is not a very agreeable behaviour. I cancel the visit, therefore.

In Gaza, you pick up a book to kill the ennui which has been invading your life since you’ve grown up and people stopped calling you “ya walad” – come on, boy – since you were that boy who used to spend the day in the streets, having a jovial time among a convivial company. You pick up the book, and as you start reading it, you remember that you have forgotten doing something without which your reading is unworkable, or let us say you will be having a hard time carrying on reading this book. The case being so, you put the book aside, get up, and head towards the kitchen in order to make yourself a mug of strong tea with mermeria (sage). While you run your eyes over the lines one following the other, your mug of tea remains untouched. It is cold, now. The weather is awfully hot. And the sun is sinking behind the horizon in silence. And the power just goes off. A power outage. In Gaza, power outages control you and your life; they control your sleeping and your reading. In Gaza, no schedule is set without the power outages there in your mind as you set it up, humiliatingly restricting you to their oppressive rules.

Gaza …

A blackout as it is, you resort to a candle to light it up. In Gaza, you light up the candle. In Gaza, you read under a faint candlelight. In Gaza, you read; in the dark, you read.

Mohammed Rabah Suliman
6th May 2010