Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit // Naomi Shihab Nye

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
It wasn't a bargain or deal or even a real war.
To this day they pretend it was.
But it was something else.
We were sorry what happened to them but
we had nothing to do with it.
You don't think what a little plot of land means
till someone takes it and you can't go back.
Your feet still want to walk there.
Now you are drifting worse
than homeless dust, very lost feeling.
I cried even to think of our hallway,
cool stone passage inside the door.
Nothing would fit for years.
They came with guns, uniforms, declarations.
LIFE magazine said,
"It was surprising to find some Arabs still in their houses."
Surprising? Where else would we be?
Up in the hillsides?
Conversing with mint and sheep, digging in dirt?
Why was someone else's need for a home
greater than our own need for our own homes
we were already living in? No one has ever been able
to explain this sufficiently. But they find
a lot of other things to talk about.

Comments

[pleasekillmel.livejournal.com]

What an amazing poem. Thanks for sharing. I've been thinking about Palestine a lot recently so it was very timely.

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

Are you from there? Or thinking of going there?

I was in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Jericho - for a month, about a year ago. I want to go back SO badly. It was incredible. I'd been reading about the history/culture/politics of Palestine since 2008 and then last year I literally bought a plane ticket and left a few weeks later with a backpack and a map. I met so many amazing people and had so many amazing experiences when I was there.

I did some community work but, having been there personally, I want to do more the next time.

[pleasekillmel.livejournal.com]

I hope to travel to that area. I would really like to travel back in time and visit before the divisions became as formalized as they are now. Friends who spend time in the area in the 90's and then in the 2010s have talked about how different things are now. I'll have to make do with future Palestine, though. I think it will work out just fine :)

I think that the area is so rich and dense with history and imbued meaning that we can't possibly ever untangle it all, and yet, there is a certain degree to which, once you start fucking with something, you really have to see it through.

While I have intellectual and emotional responses, you can't really start learning until you're on the ground.