Red Lips & Battlefields

Third-Culture

The fireplace flickers with the last oak ember, and all would seem peaceful to the silent onlooker who cannot hear the roar of a wounded Jerusalem in my soul. The light is dim and the only sound is the weak hum of the refrigerator, but the bright skyline of a busy Dubai midnight resolutely conjures itself against my drooping eyelids. I cannot hope for sleep, with so many airplanes zooming through the avenues of my memories of the Arabian Peninsula.

Soft pillows are never soft enough and so softer ones are bought until pillows pile up across the surface of the entire bed. As I sink into them, I cannot help but remember how much softer it was to rest against the dunes of the Sahara in the evening desert breeze.

The Montreal snow plays a rap-tap-tap against the windowpanes and I am suddenly brought back to Abu-Dhabi rains that flooded the city and forced me to swim through a pond to get to my second grade classroom. I giggle; what fun!

There would be greater floods after that, cyclones that sweep through the nation that most vibrantly colored my youth and leave it a skeleton of what it once was: my precious Muscat. She would soon rise again.

And as I rise with the first glimpse of the morning sun and yawn through the frustration of yet another sleepless evening, I take a mental stroll through an autumnal summer snow and smile at passing ducks, squirrels, and camels. I tend to rest under palm trees, but sometimes choose a pine. My favorite is the weeping willow, but I hardly ever find one amongst the miles of olive groves. For every tree uprooted in Ramallah, I have planted one within myself, and so conditioned spring to visit me as often as Doha’s visionaries raise cities from dust.

Scorching desert temperatures are woven into the fabric of my mind alongside freezing North American wonderlands and their sleepy winter suns. I turn the coffee brewer on and patiently wait for my dose of fair trade caffeine. The only sound is the light rapping of the elixir of life against a porcelain cup, and the thundering thoughts of a third culture woman.

MD 6/01/2015

An Indulgence of Thought

Most Christmas Eve soliloquys dance through memories of lost loves along the rhythm of falling snow, likely with the writer cushioned on a comfortable couch beside a roaring fireplace. Mine is hardly that. I am happily enjoying a nice Christmas in a warm country that offers no promises of rain, and spending my day by the poolside is hardly unfortunate. Lost loves definitely still surface here, but the memory is hardly pressing, especially as I am currently very happily in love.

It is an odd phenomenon that holidays are expected to bring back hard feelings. In reality, it is all just a matter of choice. Perhaps we enjoy dwelling on past memories and find the practice more comfortable than enjoying the moment. This holiday season, although I am conditioned to reflect upon my past, I am reluctant to dwell on its misfortunes as I see the people around me struggling so much to make ends meet, to support their families, and to survive. Very few have the privilege of peacefully typing away at a MacBook after spending the evening with a wonderful family. I do recognize, however, with guilt, that I tend to reflect on past memories too often and too much although I am aware of my blessings. I wonder if this warrants an apology.

As I spent the day tanning by the poolside, I noticed how quickly I was flooded by “what ifs,” “buts,” and “maybes”. I now carry the Western tradition of waltzing with Scrooge, even as I take my moment to be grateful; there is incredible joy and debilitating sorrow in Christmas. What for? I’ve tried so hard, for so long, to avoid absorbing the negative culture of complaint, excessive desire and abundant consumerism; but the effort has been to no great avail. I realize now that there is no real way of avoiding the waltz, as I will dig into the past whether I want to or not. Maybe it’s worth the indulgence.

I used to think that I owed my visits to the past to my desire for reminiscence; however, I have come to the realization that, on a slightly significant level, I may enjoy reliving the pain. Perhaps we all do. In our crystallized, politically friendly, organized, sanitized, and neat lives, that may simply be a result of our need to feel something powerful on this day. Perhaps it makes us feel more human.

Achieving that sense of humanity, especially when you are not facing any serious adversities, is often dependent on a self-prescribed bombardment of thought. This is a necessary but dangerous activity. On some level, we all know that, but we indulge in it anyway with the conviction that a lack of deep reflection is even more dangerous. So, instead of spending some time in Christmas present, we call eagerly upon ghosts of Christmases past. It is such an odd, and very human, phenomenon. We search so fervently for all the knots to be neatly tied, so that we can organize our lives into a chain of events in a perfectly seamless choreography.

Letting go of that ideal is probably the most difficult step to take. When we have been taught, since childhood, that every story has a very specific and all-encompassing ending, how are we to accept that our lives cannot suddenly “make sense” one day?

Most of my readers probably can’t even accept that this particular post doesn’t have a specific point. We are obsessed with thesis statements and conclusions.

Today, I don’t have either. All I have is a series of disrupted and unorganized thoughts, and questions with no particular answers. I am happy and fulfilled, and I am also heartbroken. It doesn’t have to make sense.

What a revelation.

MD 25/12/2014

Politically Correct Palestinian

  “But, why don’t you speak Hebrew?”

I smile,
“I don’t know what to tell you.”

   *Confused silence*

I was born under exploding skies
And soil thick with children’s blood,
The sound of bullets lulled me to sleep
As old men sang ice-cream truck tunes
In the streets
To sell their bread
                 “KAEEEEEEEKK Come get some Kaek!” (Sesame buns)

I am from a place where
Students are greeted by snipers
On their way to school
             Where they share bread,
             And express their dreams,
             And make jokes about
             Whose father was abducted last week
             By Israeli soldiers

My people laugh,
With the hope that the sound of laughter
Will surmount their sorrow;

            Misplaced, horrifying laughter.

I am of the land of aching olive trees
Which lean over, exposing their broken flesh
When farmers leave their homes for an hour
            And never return.

Outside, the tourists roam,
Singing hymns and carrying crosses,
Paying cold cash to partake in the “pilgrimage experience”
                                                       Of the “Holy land”

                                                Created by an apartheid state.    

They don’t know what goes on
            Behind closed doors.

 Our houses are made of brick
And streets are lined with cobblestone
That date back to the time Jesus walked
The Via Dolorosa.
               If you are silent enough,
              You can still hear His wail as He falls to the ground
                       Three times, and then again.
                       Still, the street soaks up His blood,
                       The blood of Palestinian children.

What should I tell you?

My ethnic identity is denied
            By the “civilized”

 My history is painted in the light of
            Misinterpretation,
                        Misinformation,
                                    Misunderstanding,
                                                Misrepresentation,

              Miscarriage.

I am of a forgotten people,
Massacred like sheep
           Their stories cremated and sprinkled
            On the outskirts of
            The collective human memory

               Forgotten.        

My friends
Have the audacity to tell me
            That my people
                        Do not exist

I am your imaginary, exotic,
            Dark eyed, long-lashed brunette,
            Past-less, soulless “friend”
            With fictional Bedouin beauty.

               You don’t even know me.

So, what do you want me to tell you?

Should I tell you I am from Jerusalem,
Then sit here and smile at you,
            As you ignorantly tell me a colourful story
            About some fabricated “birthright” experience
            Your friend had last summer?

Should I plaster a crisp, clear, North-American definition
On my forehead
For your convenience?

                        “Refugee”
                        “Immigrant”
                        “ Alien”                       

Should I purse my lips together
            When you tell me that all is fair in love and war
            As long as I support “God’s people”?

            You have seen nothing of love, nor war,
            And certainly nothing of God,
                         If you think it is “fair”
                         For children to be killed
                         Then be deemed “non-existent”. 

I am of Oud music pounding against the human heart
            I am of Argeeleh scent floating up to the heavens
I am of children striving against bat and bullet for their education
            I am of fathers giving blood
                        Mothers giving blood
                        Children giving blood

                        Christ giving blood.

 I am of Palestine

And I speak the language of my ancestors.

Not Hebrew. 

“I guess I just never learned it,” I respond.

“That’s too bad”

“ Right.”

MD 22/07/2014

The Battlefield

An undercurrent of solitude breeds miracles of thought. There is something about quiet, dark rooms that allows me to extend so deeply into myself that I am often afraid to fall off some unknown metaphorical edge of consciousness. Deprived of the hustle-bustle of my often alarmingly loud life, I begin to recognize a bizarre layering in my mind that is often inaccessible to me: sandwiched memories, forgotten havens, pleasures and sorrows. In silence, I am finally able to glimpse the sharp corners, the crossroads, and the invisible road bumps that tend to throw me into cyclones of undecipherable emotion. There is a woman struggling with an identity battle in here. A woman without home or land, searching for a hint of who and what she is. It takes an immense amount of courage not to leap away from her. It would be easier to turn my head and walk away. It would be easier to fill the room with sound and light: distractions at the very least, and at the very most accomplices to my conscious neglect of the storm inside me.

In solitude, I finally allow myself to remember that I am not an ordinary woman. There is no such thing as an ordinary woman, yet the idea of her is always present and so easy to conjure and believe in. A dab of lipstick here, a shade of eyeliner, a wisp of ordinary laughter are all it takes to become this imaginary and incomplete rendition of whoever she is. Who I really am is much more difficult to deal with.

In solitude, I am able to hold my breath and absorb the intricate details of my internal phenomenon. Even in complete silence, it is never quiet in my mind. Even as the city ices over, the fire in my heart spits and rages. It does not rage with anger, but with love. It is a fire that is kindled by memories of Jerusalem, by the smell of fresh kaek bread drifting through my window on warm summer mornings. A wild fire: one that is given new life when the Church bells ring, when fresh olive oil and thyme touch the lips, and when a droplet of Arak intoxicates the senses. It is the kind of fire that is a curse upon those who house it, and a lost miracle for those who lack it. A fire of chocolate eyes, olive skin, and curly hair.

In solitude, the parting of seas and skies is inevitable. There is no capsule, no vacuum  that can suppress the noise that thunders over the silence like the sounds of bullets echoing in the Palestinian night. There is no vehicle, no body that can contain the infinite grains of sand that travel with the wind across the desert and land between the olive trees in my mind. In the darkness: wholeness and emptiness co-exist. There is war here, and promise of peace. There is pain here, as bottomless as the old well that yields fresh water but never quenches the generations of thirst. Yet there is love here: boundless, and searching for home.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; Seek, and you will find; Knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). So I will ask until my breath runs out; I will seek until I am sitting at the very edge of the earth; and I will knock. I will knock until my hands bleed. And I will find myself.

MD 10/02/2014