I have officially started the long journey back to the West Bank. Currently I am sitting in a coffee shop in the Istanbul airport. It is night here and my flight to Amman leaves tomorrow morning. It is the deepest honor to do this work, but like so many people I am tired, so very tired. However, I trust that showing up imperfectly is better than not at all.
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Yesterday night I spoke in a chaotic, messy way about hope at a Poetry for Palestine event in Downtown Corvallis. However, I am not a good public speaker (yet) and I blacked out the entire time I stood on the stage. To anyone who witnessed, thank you for your graciousness. To anyone who was not in attendance, you did not miss much! I will try to summarize here what I intended to say.
The word “hope” in English has been watered down. People often talk about hope as if it is a thing that is bestowed upon a lucky person from the ether. Hope is not in fact a passive thing, but rather a practice, a verb, and rooted in place and spirit.
The Arabic word sumud encompasses what the English word hope falls short of. It translates to steadfastness, resilience, and fortitude. The English concept of hope is not necessary to do good work, but having sumud is essential.
Being part of this community re-contextualized what I thought I knew hope to be. It seems absurd to be hopeless, when Palestinian farmers are harvesting their olive trees every day — if only for five minutes before settlers descend and push them away — or when children are playing soccer while their homes are raided, or while families are rebuilding their destroyed houses little by little in the middle of the night.
I am beyond fortunate to learn hope — sumud — from those who know it best, to be able to go to epicenter of crisis to learn joy. Whenever I’m hopeless it means I just have more to learn. How dare I succumb to despair when those who are most oppressed on this planet have not? As long as people — who know this reality more deeply than I do — have resilience, I trust that they know something I do not.
There are times, interacting with settler militia and the IOF, when bitterness rises up. When they taunt us with insulting songs, threaten rape, or point guns in our faces, it is hard not to hate. But I follow the example of the children playing with the stray puppies and the women who smile when they serve sweet maramiyya tea and the men who continue to graze goats on their ancestral land and am filled with strength and remember that if I operate from hatred more than love my enemies have won.
When I was last in the West Bank I prayed:
Please God do not let my rage turn into bitterness
let my sorrow connect instead of turning me inward
let me not rely on hope to continue resisting
(as hope is a flighty thing and comes and goes)
grant me patience and a long view
lead me not into despair and remind me often
of the joy that grows from working
in community for a better world
Please God show me how to make revolution irresistible
and guide others to join in
Let me bring justice to those who have stolen it
My prayer becomes my breath
I inhale: free Palestine
I exhale: free Palestine
I did not know what life was, for a long time. Before I became immersed in the Palestine liberation movement I was living life casually, easily, with abandon. Often I wanted to die or at least did not care especially to be living. But it was through this work that I learned what it is to truly value life. Now I am in love with the richness of it all and terrified to die. But I think this is a marker of health, for fear of death often indicates a deep attachment to being alive. It seems a bit ironic, though, that this love of life has required me to put myself in increasingly dangerous situations.
That said, I realize that when I am most grounded in myself and acting in a way aligned with my ethics, I fear death the least. I know that if I die in Palestine I will not have died for nothing. My soul will be smiling eternally. That is more than many people can say.
Inshallah I will have a long life, but if I do die in this work it will be the greatest honor. What better way to die than working towards justice? It has been a blessing to participate in a cause worthy of putting my life on the line for. I wish I didn’t have to, of course, but I know that giving up safety and comfort has been a necessary part of all liberation movements. It is a privilege to have safety and comfort in the first place; Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza certainly don’t have that option.
Resistance is not just an option, but a duty. To effectively fight against fascism and genocide some people must put their lives on the line. Never in history have the oppressed been able to beg their oppressor enough to tap into their empathy; oppressors do not have empathy for those they have dehumanized. The cost of complicity is much greater than whatever I might risk going to the West Bank.
Before she was murdered by the IOF, my comrade Aysenur Eygi read a poem by Amir Sulaiman called “Act Accordingly” at a pro-Palestine demonstration at the University of Washington. Her husband read an excerpt of that same poem at her funeral. This is it in full:
You will be someone′s ancestor
Act accordingly
We are counting our blessings counting our losses
Lost in memories of lost kin
We all want a long life
But the cost is the longer our life the more often
We will have to see our loved ones lay in their coffins
This is not to darken our spirits
Rather to harken to a life worth living
For our children
For our children’s children
So when those weapons are inevitably formed against them
Your granddaughter can whisper through gritted teeth
I am the granddaughter of so and so
And I shall not fail
You will be someone′s ancestor
Act accordingly
When your grandson is surrounded by the enemy
On the battlefield of life
With his weapon raised over his raised head
He will exclaim
I am the grandson of so and so
And that will be an inspiration for those with him
And a warning for those who stand against him
You will be someone’s ancestor
Act accordingly
Give fear no breath
Give it no quarter
Fear is not fitting for a woman of God
It is not fitting for a man of God
Regardless why be afraid?
Death has already mounted his swift steed
And is traveling at speed for your throat
There is no turning him back
You will be someone’s ancestor
So act accordingly
By God there are women in their graves more alive than many of the living
By God there are men lying still beneath the earth still more active than the activist
Would you dare let the dead outlive you?
What a shame to let the dead outlive you
You will be someone′s ancestor
Act accordingly
For God said did you think that we had created you in play with no purpose
And that you would not be brought back to us
Don′t return to the most high
Unrealized unactualized
Don’t let delay decay your vision
Don′t let decay devour your dreams
You will be someone’s ancestor
Act accordingly
God put that unsung song in your spirit for our hearts
He put that unspoken word on your tongue for our ears
He put that undone deed in your body for our world
Your unsung song is our anthem
Your untold story is our history our prophecy
We need it
We need you
You will be someone′s ancestor
Act accordingly