I\u00a0began writing this poem on my way to Palestine on December 25th, 2023. I sent early sections to Huda as I was writing and her comments started taking the form of stanzas, so I invited her to write more. We were writing to each other, back and forth; I, in Bethlehem, and she, in Philadelphia, with nothing on our minds but Gaza.<\/p>\n
We each have a relationship with T.S. Eliot’s poem and found writing against it, and through it, a way of centering the horrors of this unprecedented moment. The idea was to displace “The Waste Land,” to challenge its Eurocentric currents and place it in Gaza now<\/em>, and in Palestine in general. A \u201cwasteland” is being created in “the holy land,” and has been for the past 75 years. As always, the American-European war machine is mobilized to wreak terror in the lands of “others.”<\/p>\n The world is complicit in the horrors we are witnessing in Gaza and in Palestine today.\u00a0Time from now on will be marked by Gaza, and its movement only toward a free Palestine.<\/p>\n \u2013Ahmad Almallah<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Holy Land, Wasted<\/strong><\/p>\n 1 2 Table meets chair: the game of chess Table meets chair: In an age of boredom, they map 3 4 5 6 ————-<\/span>Phlebas was really the Palestinian. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0He counted his bones every night, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0He passed the stages of his age and youth, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Gentile or Jew, O you \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0He didn\u2019t drown. Thirsty, his body overflowed I\u00a0began writing this poem on my way to Palestine on December 25th, 2023. I sent early sections to Huda as I was writing and her comments started taking the form of stanzas, so I invited her to write more. We were writing to each other, back and forth; I, in Bethlehem, and she, in Philadelphia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15920,"featured_media":232333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43074,11,43077],"tags":[91597,8632,93139,1210,212,16109],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Gaza.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-YnK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>April is not that bad actually:
\nAugust is the cruelest month!
\nSay what you may of memory and desire,
\nthe faint smell of semen
\ntrees the Americans brought
\nto the \u201cMiddle East\u201d\u2014those
\nstrange words we inhaled in
\nthe garden of Bethlehem Uni,
\nthe same smell at AUB, another
\nAmerican campus on native lands.
\nWe looked at one another,
\nand we couldn\u2019t put words
\nto work, we thought of the naked
\nfigures we wound our bodies into\u2014
\nall for what?!
\n—————–<\/span>Marie Marie
\nis my Deutsch instructor, the one
\nwho wiped chalk on her butt cheeks,
\nonly to add insult to injury. Of course
\nwe were horny teenagers waiting
\nfor a sign of the flesh to make
\nitself visible. Did you know,
\ndear reader, that we learned German
\nin Palestine? What a strange
\ndestiny it was to be sent to the
\nthe German Head Master\u2019s office
\nwhen I dealt my English teacher
\na verbal blow. He asked me
\n\u201cupon mischief\u201d: would you
\ndrop yourself in a well if some
\none told you to. I said: it really depends,
\ndear master,
\n———<\/span>on the depth of the well,
\n———<\/span>of course!<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Table meets chair: I tell you, there is no need
\nto make grand statements
\nthat have been all made
\nin the past, anyway there are chairs, and
\ntables\u2014everywhere:
\nsome of them squeak when dragged, some
\ndoze off all day, not knowing what has been
\nsitting on them\u2014but the tables don\u2019t care
\nmuch for anything, they see what the
\nchairs go through, they see in the Hofgarten –
\nhow they are left feet up all night:
\nit\u2019s a disaster recurring with some regularity now:
\nsince the creation of tables and chairs,
\nand although the two have lived together
\nfor some time, both maintain they have
\nnothing to do with one another\u2014too complete,
\ndifferent species? things? sharing some
\nphysical ground, but lacking chemistry.<\/p>\n
\nremains the most played board
\ngame in the world. How could
\nthis be in the age of jolts and flashes?
\nWhere do they find the time
\nto arrange tragedy on the board,
\nplot and strategy?
\nWhere do they find pawns
\nto sacrifice themselves, one square
\nat a time, to accept the smaller fates,
\nwhile kings and queens huddle
\nbackstage, twirling their fingers,
\nexpecting glory to meet them halfway?<\/p>\n
\ntheir courses to glory from a distance.
\nThey scheme, from a distance,
\nwhen there is only one recourse:
\nTouch, skin on skin, more or less,
\n——-_<\/span>a body to offer:
\n——-_<\/span>one\u2019s own as proof
\n——-_<\/span>or someone else\u2019s as loot.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>The river has its tents. Apparently.
\nAnd because we are, dear Pal, the people
\nof the tents\u2014not because
\nof our Bedouin pasts, and all that
\npoetry, just because we at every bend
\nare killed, our blood
\nspilled.
\nAgainst the rivers
\nand their beds, East
\nand West banks, we mine
\nthe land with nothing
\nbut our feet.
\nLet\u2019s stop there. No need to repeat
\nthe old record broken.
\nPlease turn the volume up.
\nHear the screams:
\nIt\u2019s scratching again.
\nSafiyya, could you please bring
\nthe volume down. Hand me
\nmy down pills or will you
\nhang me instead?
\nI can\u2019t face the world.
\nLet\u2019s stay in, and drink
\nour blood soup! Oh but the hours
\nare coming into play: kill kill
\nkill the hours. It\u2019s not good
\nfor your nerves to watch
\nall that news, the sights
\nof dead children not good
\nfor your sleep. Please, Safiyya. Shut
\ndown your screens. But beware
\nand listen carefully. Do nothing.
\nDo not shoot yourself
\nin the foot. And those shadows we
\nsee on screen: how could
\nthey go up against the tanks with
\nno shoes? Barbaric! Their
\nkillings are not timed
\nwell, not timely.
\nIt\u2019s impossible to watch it
\nall.
\nSafiyya, Safiyya, I\u2019m going
\nto sleep. I\u2019ll take you with me
\none day, and you\u2019ll see. For now
\nI want you to focus on your
\nteeth. Look at yourself in the
\nmirror. Hold on tight.
\nDo you see a face beside
\nyours? Look no more if you
\ndo! Yes. Good night, Safiyya,
\ngood night, dear shadows in the
\nbackground. Good night, dear
\ndead babies. Now you\u2019ll finally
\nbe able to sleep, and give
\nus all a moment\u2019s peace.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Son of man, a heap of broken
\nimages, you say, and I say, then
\nshe says and he says. What do
\nwe know of the big heap. STDs
\nsound awfully abbreviated, and
\nthe kids do get their feed every
\ndark day. Clickety clack, clickety
\nclack: no one knows root or
\n————————_<\/span>branch:
\n————————_<\/span>Yes the
\n————————_<\/span>sun is
\n———-<\/span>warming over our heads, or
\nis it the earth getting unbearably
\nhot. The moats boil beyond our siege;
\nto motes the world crumbles, shattered
\nlike these useless mots<\/em>. What\u2019s this
\ntalk of French stuff, and warm
\nkisses that are two centuries old?
\nWell, cool it down, Bro.
\nBuy yourself another century or
\ntwo. Be done with it you dusty fool!
\nThis is the apocalypse in you talking.
\nThis is the time of beginnings,
\nof ends. Who really cares? Well,
\nI do. I really do, and I promise
\nyou, whoever you are, another
\nwasted land in another promised
\nland, another time and another
\ndimension, where the same folk
\nwill rule again, and bury us all
\nin their gardens, over and over, in
\nthis, the first life
\nand the other.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Tomorrow or the day after, I\u2019ll
\npack my things and off to hell.
\nAnother visit to Palestine.
\nI tell you,
\nI have a fucked-up land, and
\na fucked-up family in that neck
\nof the woods, as the Americans
\nwould have it: all in ashes, all
\nin ashes. I tell you, my tongue
\nis tied up today, and maybe will
\nforever be after this and that
\ngenocide. I tell you straight out, but you
\nyou want me to suffer my pronouncements
\nand syllables.
\nThe best way to solve
\nyour problem is to save time,
\n—————-_<\/span>eradicate me.
\nI just don\u2019t seem to add up
\nto more than a zero on the side
\nof numerical figures that only
\nappear to you when your work is done.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nPhoenician was just the story he told
\nto pass under the wire,
\nslip through the edges of cities,
\n————<\/span>unreal.<\/p>\n
\nhis teeth too, thinking of rubble. He dreamed of the cry of gulls,
\nand the deep sea swell and wished for death by water,
\na rendezvous with the sea, at least,
\nan escape from the siege
\nof burning sands, at last.<\/p>\n
\nwaiting for the rocket to fall. No death,
\nthe sound of death only.<\/p>\n
\nwho click and swipe, turn and fold
\nthe blood drenched screens into your eyes,
\nconsider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.<\/p>\n
\nwith unlived days. They spilled out,
\n—–<\/span>and a flood of blood,
\n———————<\/span>trickled in the sand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"