Dispatch #2
From Akka to Haifa to Nazareth
It has been a week since my last dispatch, and it feels like worlds separate those selves in terms of time, place, location, selfhood, and all the rest. Al-NaSra (Nazareth) almost seems like an oasis compared to the other places we’ve seen and been in. It is here, I think, that Andrew, Yasir, and I have come to feel ourselves relaxing into rhythms of being, rhythms of breath. There is a certain slowness to the days here in this quiet city. We take our time waking up. We take our time getting ready. We go out for breakfast and take our time. We are listening more, speaking more, perhaps even opening more. Last time I wrote, I spoke of al-ghareeb, or, the stranger. This word has slowly begun to disappear from my consciousness and perhaps another one is taking shape inside me: ma3rouf, the known one. I know the azzan here and I am beginning, here, to finally be known—by my friends, by the birds, by this land.
In Akka, there was a melancholy weariness. The old city, where much of the Palestinians reside, is being encroached upon by Israeli real estate developers. It feels like it is quite literally being asphyxiated, for as one walks outside the old city’s gates, a foreign, transplanted architecture awaits your vision, and the Arab is disappeared.
Haifa was a different type of psychopathology and urban nightmare. There was no separation between the old and the new, the colonized and the colonizer, the native and the settler. The old stone houses, replete with distant memories of the dead and still living, coexist alongside newer settler constructions that foreclose the possibility of remembrance. Haifa is the model city for “integration and coexistence” in the lexicon of the Israeli state. To be honest, it is an extremely difficult experience to write about. It demands a reckoning of me coming to terms with what settler-colonialism and imperialism has done to this land and its peoples. In Haifa, I felt ghosts crawling up my neck, entering my spine. Around me, the settlers laughed, drank arak, guzzled down fattoush. In me, the collective dislocation and displacement of a people settled and made themselves known. In a conversation over dinner, Andrew, Yasir, and I settled on schizophrenia as the psychopathology of this particular city.
And then an exhalation, space to breathe, living room: Al-NaSra. For the first time in Palestine, I saw a Palestinian flag.
Here are some notes from the journey:
Akka : 07/02/24
What is the shore of Akka, of Haifa, of Yaffa, of Gaza, to the Arab? What does it mean to be on this coast as an American, as a Palestinian? What does it mean to be here with Yasir and Andrew? Two months ago I envisioned a summer on the shores of Lake Superior and now I am here in a land that because it was colonized, I exist. I don’t know how to reckon with that because this is my land too, was the land of my grandfather and grandmother who were never allowed to return, who might never have seen the ports of this land that I have seen, and if they did, how different would it have looked, would anything be familiar?
Yasir says return might be about pulling back the veil, seeing the land for what it was and still is, underneath the colonizers’ bastardizations of it. This has been a helpful exercise for me, perhaps a gesture towards some type of decolonizing methodology.
Heat on the skin, forehead, scalp, everything glistens with slick sweat. We walk outside and no longer are we unaware of our bodies.
Andrew went to the Church of St. George. The people of Akka rallied around him. Perhaps they recognized his exiled eyes and had once dreamed of welcoming him home.
Haifa : 07/04/2024
“Never forget Palestine.”
An old woman sits on her alcove staring at the city. She is our host’s mother. His name is Sami and he has framed pictures of Palestine and Palestinian leaders adorning the walls of his notary. Andrew offers the woman dates and at first she refuses. A man, then, comes out of the notary and Andrew explains to him who we are: Palestinians from the West. He is from Akka, I am from Lifta. The man’s eyes light up and he explains to her who we are. She then says the sentence above: Never forget Palestine.
Indeed, perhaps that is why we are here: To prove that we have not forgotten, that we will not forget. N7noo min Falasteen (We are from Palestine). The old will die, yes, but the young will not forget.
How long has she lived in this house? What is her story? What has she seen? What shouldn’t we forget? What is Palestine? What should we remember? What should we carry? What does it mean to return? What should it mean?
Always always more questions than answers. Yet Rilke: “Learn to love the questions themselves.”
We sit at Rai. Yasir works on his Arabic: an assignment describing a friend. Andrew texts his sister back in America, not here with him (a violence). I sit with these scribbles. This, a moment in time? A moment in returning? Yes, and yes.
I read these words to them. Andrew reminds me of her true words: “One thing: Always remember Palestine.”
—
What world do I share with my students after this? Do I tell them of the ending of the world and what it makes possible? Do I tell them to welcome this apocalypse, so that we may go beyond it? What remains of the future is inconceivable, and perchance, indeed, impossible.
Al-NaSra : 07/05/2024
It is a deep exhalation to be here, in NaSra. It feels like the rest of the days thus far have been spent in some type of dreamscape, of ghosts and those who survived them and did what they could.
—
The muezzin and Fairuz both call out their prayers over Palestine over Nazareth
And I sit outside gazing at the Church of St. Joseph
Somehow there is some sort of harmony emerging here
An old man in a dusky rose thobe walks by and the young from their cars call out assalamu alaiykum to him and he shouts walaikum assalaam to them back
This is our first night in NaSra and it was also the first day/place we saw the Palestinian flag
All over the city there are stencils of a man with his name next to him: Walid Daqqa, a martyr of our people who named his daughter Milad (birth (birth birth birth in the land of Mary[am])
NaSra is ours and so is Beit Lahm and so is Al-Quds
But as I sit here a whole crowd of settlers pass me by and I remember my orientation.
Al-NaSra : 07/06/2024
In Al-NaSra and perhaps it finally feels like a homecoming.
When I came to NaSra I exhaled and started coughing. Andrew and Yasir covered the bookshelves for me, so that I may more easily breathe.
This is perhaps why I came here
To understand precisely this
The settler wants us to disappear
And so they make it so hard to breathe
But there is some type of life here, waiting for us
Andrew goes looking for water and a man asks him if he will stay here. Andrew says: They (the settlers) make it very hard, impossible I think he said. The man tells him: khalas this will all be done soon, we are taking care of it. This, the first affirmation of resistance we hear in Palestine, and the first promises of return.
Yasir is writing about time, about speed, about glitches that are stitched over, rewired in the brain so that we no longer remember some distinct part in the narrative.
What have I forgotten since I’ve been here? What moments have been rewritten, cast aside, deemed irrelevant or beyond computation within the narrative that I have built?
Al-NaSra : 07/07/2024
There is no trash collection here.
Al-NaSra : 07/08/2024
And this is for the leaves that tremble in the wind’s embrace in the garden of our Nazareth home. May we remember them forever.
—
Today is the 52nd of the martyrdom of Ghassan Kanafani and his niece, Lamees. He was that indomitable comrade of the sword and the pen; the man who wrote with his flesh and his blood: “You might have heard the news through the imperialist propaganda system that the Palestinian people are currently exhausted, that they have given up the struggle, and that they are defeated by the reactionary Israel. Comrades, do not believe them. There is no end to our struggle.”
Being in ‘48 Palestine, reading these words in Al-NaSra, Andrew’s experience looking for water, meeting Hadeel who wears a Che Guevara pin on her apron and reads Lenin in between waiting tables, Sami of Liwan Cafe and his love for Les Miserables (so like my own father), the words of Kanafani ring true and fierce. In the south, those brave youth of Gaza are focused on their singular goal of liberating Palestine, returning to their villages, farming and harvesting from their own land, breathing easier. There is no end to our struggle. If anyone says otherwise, do not believe them. Hope might not always be possible, nor even desirable, but the struggle and my place within it, my own actions and love for this land will always continue as long as I have breath left to give. Always remember Palestine. Always remember Ghassan in his living, in his breathing, in his writing. Honor the martyrs. Ghassan and the nameless, or the made nameless in Gaza. Remember Sami and his mother, remember Hadeel, remember Liwan Cafe.
Remember Sido who was never allowed to return, was one day never allowed to see his parents again. They grew old without him. They and he grew old without return and in five days I will carry or do my best to carry all of them with me to our little village in the hills to the west of Jerusalem, the holy city, the city of prayer, al-Quds, Zehraat al-Medaen, the flower of all cities, o ground, o birth, o land, o dirt, o flesh of my ancestors.
—
And he didn’t deserve the life he was given. He should’ve been given so much more. And yet he still fed the cats and laughed hard and with all of himself. He still lived with such grace. It is 1973, Baba told me, Sido thinks this is the moment of return. It wasn’t.
And I don’t deserve the life I’ve been given. Perhaps none of us do, us children of the west. And so what shall we do(?)
I must give everything to and for this place, this land. I must give everything to and for him and them, the children of the long-awaited returning.
Sing sing sing of past of future of the now time of the possible.
Palestine gives me everything I hold dear, it is that horizon of eye-deology, that pulled pulls is pulling me out of inferno (id-eology). I owe it everything.
As Yasir continued continues continually reminds me: This is a cause a place a people a land to dedication one's life to, that we must all dedicate our lives to.
Al-NaSra : 07/09/2024
On the tomb of my grandfather I wrote a song for the living. I tied it to my wrist in an attempt to remember it, so that I might sing it to the world.
—
The martyr sacrifices
The prophet weeps
Lenin witnessed his brother die and pledged to him: “Brother, we’ll take up the battle for truth and win, but by other means.” (Mayakovsky)
—
I pay my time in the monasteries of this world
But here I will knock at the tavern’s door and beg the saki for the grace of his hand that pours the wine into the cup and returns me to the night and to love
—
Only the night will return Layla and Lazarus and the living into the dead.
—
We write a poem under the gaze of green minarets. Their impossible dreaming compels us into poetry.
Al-NaSra : 07/10/2024
A man tells us, almost weeping:
We are not stones
We are so much lonely so much lonely
We are alone on this world
What other nation?
We are only our IDs
NaSra : Today 07/11/2024
The day after tomorrow, we go to Jerusalem. I hope I may share with you something from that sparkling city that I am building today and tomorrow for.
Kul hubbi,
Maia Salameh