Artwork: Zakiya R
You are far from me. Around three thousand five hundred and ninety-seven kilometres away.
You are teeming with life. With heart. With love.
So much love.
But. You are bleeding. Heavily.
You’re drowning in rivers of red.
Thick. Oozing. Metallic. Cold.
I can see it. So clearly. So painfully.
I see it every day.
You don’t want to bleed. To shed blood. Mountains of it.
You don’t want to hear the screams of grief
fill the lungs of the people you so cherish.
You don’t want to watch your green grounds
burn to ash grey.
Your buildings oliterated to mere piles of
debris and rubble.
You don’t…you really don’t
want to see
a hand
an arm
a limb
peek through
these perilous layers
of gray.
I know it pains you. To see the piles of the
freshly wrapped corpses
pile atop
another freshly wrapped
pile
of corpses,
concealing empty faces
of people you knew
to live
to laugh
to dance
to sing
to joke
to smile
to take their first steps atop the grainy soil
of your land…
of their home.
But you know. So fiercely. So ardently.
That the love of your people for you
will never die.
No matter how many you lose. No matter how many you bury. No matter how many homes schools churches mosques universities hospitals flatten and dissolve within you.
They will remain with you.
I know this.
As I sit
around three thousand five hundred and ninety-seven kilometres away from you
watching through the screen of my phone
a son
fiercely declare his buried mother
a “martyr”
while in the same breath say he is fine and there is nothing wrong with him
having no time to grieve.
As I sit, listening
To a grandfather
gently, softly,
without a single tear travelling down his face
say his granddaughter
“is the soul of my soul”
His granddaughter
who he cradles in his arms
her hair in two ponies
her body eerily still.
As I sit, crying
with a girl no more than ten
sobbing for her father
who no longer remains by her side
as she covers her grief
with her small palm
her face wearied and drained
the blue necklace around her neck
dainty and delicate
just like her.
You are strong. You are courageous. You are beautiful. You are full.
You are bleeding. You are burying. You are grieving. You are screaming.
But you are not dying.
SubhanAllah.
I know this. The entire Ummah knows this.
We feel this within us so deeply.
Because while one grieves,
while one lets go
while one buries
their mother
father
son
daughter
grandfather
grandmother
grandson
granddaughter
friend
husband
wife
baby
baby
baby
another says ‘Alhamdulilah’.
Another cries “they’re martyrs!”
Another screams “we are Gaza!”
Another. Smiles.
They know
and you know
and I know
that another home awaits for them.
Spilling with life. With heart. With love.
So much incredible gorgeous peaceful love.
And that those who they have lost. Are watching over us.
Listening to us. Smiling at us.
From above.
But they return to that home
having fought for you
having cried for you
having died
for you.
They love you. So much.
I love you. So much.
And we will never
let you die.
“I will remain steadfast on my land until the last drop of my soul, until my last breath…then I will be buried in my land, buried under the house plants…Palestinian children don’t abandon her. As the song says: my blood is Palestinian blood. And me, my blood is Palestinian blood.’
a little girl, no more than ten, from Gaza (source: @eye.on.palestine)
Assalamu Alaikum,
I’m Fatimah, a 22 year old living in East London. Just like you, I have been deeply affected by what we see every day in Palestine, but I’ve managed to find some small form of sanctuary in writing.
I wrote this poem during a poetry workshop I attended recently. The theme chosen for the workshop was ‘love’, and all I could think about was the love of the Palestinians for their land and their people, and how despite the endless grief they endure, they still choose to remain in their homeland. SubhanAllah. The title of this poem, ‘The Soul of My Soul’, is quoted directly from the purest love that shattered us all: the love of the gentle, kind-hearted grandfather, Khaled, for his beautiful granddaughter, Reem. We have lost courageous, talented, kind people to an oppressive, brutal state. Yet the Palestinians consistently stand tall in their faith in Allah, just as we see with Khaled, teaching us resilience, affection and strength in the most awful environments.
The background of my phone is Refaat Alareer’s final poem before he was targeted and killed by an Israeli airstrike. The poem begins with three lines which motivates me to use my pen as a voice for the Palestinians: If I must die/you must live/to tell my story.
May we live to share the stories of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, their stories of grief, their stories of love, their stories of courage, and their stories of Iman (Faith).