I Curl Up into Myself

Toronto, ON I curl up into myself, and place my hands on my ears in an attempt to shut down the sound of the bombardment. I refuse to witness any further destruction, so I close my eyes and become one with the darkness I see inside my eyelid. Deaf and blind, I become senseless like the rock I sit on. I hear nothing from the outside except my own voice humming childhood songs. I seal myself tightly until nothing can penetrate my inside. I hum louder and louder until I hear nothing but my voice. I fear nothing. I acquire a strange sense of courage. I slowly move my hands away from my ears until they become free to hear everything but they hear nothing. I raise my head as I open my eyes after a long time of complete darkness but I see nothing. I turn around and I see a few rocks, beneath them some weeds looking for an escape. I walk in the alleyway, searching for someone to return my gaze but find no one. I resume my walk, until I reach the end of the alleyway and the beginning of a wider road. I see nothing as if earth is engulfed in a complete vacuum. Suddenly I feel the touch of another hand; I look beside me but no one is there. I sense the presence of another body adjacent to mine and I feel tears running down my face and my shoulders. I smell the scent of blood and gradually the warmth of that embrace fades away and in a very Palestinian way I know that one of us has died. Perhaps me, perhaps him or her. I resume my walk, wondering if I was the one who died then can this be heaven: a pile of stone, dust and blood? And if someone else had died, can this be life: a pile of stones, dust and blood? I enter another alleyway and before I turn into stone once more, I unseal my self. A loud cry is heard to which earth trembles and shakes and before I could hear anything else I seal myself off tighter than ever. I curl up on the first rock I find and in the midst of nowhere I begin searching for you. * * * You were never an anchor, for mist knows no location. Like you, it comprehends not the logic of space, and like it, you always resisted the rules of place. So what renders me today a broken ship in a desolate port, no one speaking to it except echoes, no one living with it but rust? For some time, the port of Acre has been closed. And yet, the sounds of waves searching for their ships go on trembling the rocks there. The port of Jaffa has also been closed. It too was suffering from its Palestinian disposition. Those lost waves searching for their ports, their ships and their people continue to stifle themselves there on the rocks. Nothing that you know of Acre is left, except a rock or two, the sound of waves, some weeds, an old wall, and a few alleyways. Acre, the broken port, I know only when engulfed in darkness. Jaffa I never knew. I know the world in the absence of Jaffa, Gaza, and Jenin. When does home cease to be home, when we forget it or when it learns to forget us? Can they erase us from the memory of our land? Can the land forget its people? Can Jaffa, Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem not remember us? What convinced me that the world is I, is you, is my house, the falafel shop at the end of our street. How could I have dived with you into the darkness of yourself when I learned, forcibly, that earth starts and ends at the doorstep of the green gate, in front of it the school, the church, the small shop, and the big garbage container? I carry within me an overwhelming sense of defeat no longer able to tell whether its personal, Palestinian, Arabic, or simply human in nature. A defeat without any lineaments lives within me as I live within it carries me as it wishes and drops me at its will. Millions of people share with me this sense of overwhelming defeat, like me they too are surrounded, slaughtered, broken, voiceless, motionless, stacked one on top of the other at the side of the street. * * * I never before questioned the absurdity of buying a date book every year that I never use. …

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