Journal for Pedagogy, Pluralism & Practice Home | Contact Us | Back Issues

1.
Fifty years on 
I am trying to tell the story 
of what was lost
before my birth

the story of what was there

before the stone house fell
            mortar blasted loose
            rocks carted away for new purposes, or smashed
            the land declared clean, empty

before the oranges bowed in grief
blossoms sifting to the ground like snow
quickly melting

before my father clamped his teeth 	
     hard 	
             on the pit of exile
slammed shut the door to his eyes 

before tears turned to disbelief
disbelief to anguish
anguish to helplessness
helplessness to rage
rage to despair

before the cup was filled  
raised forcibly to our lips

fifty years on
       I am trying to tell the story 
       of what we are still losing


2.
I am trying to find a home in history
but there is no more space in the books 
for exiles	

the arbiters of justice 
have no time
for the dispossessed 	
without credentials

and what good are words
when there is no page 
for the story?


3.
 the aftersong filters down 
 like memory
            echo of ash

history erased the names
of four hundred eighteen villages
emptied, razed	
	
but cactus still rims the perimeters
emblem of what will not stay hidden

In the Jaffa district alone:

    Al-'Abbasiyya 		
Abu Kishk
 Bayt Dajan 
    Biyar 'Adas	 	
Fajja	 
   Al-Haram
      Ijlil al-Qibliyya	
 Ijlil al-Shamaliyya		
     al-Jammasin al-Gharbi	
 al-Jammasin al-Sharqi 	
      Jarisha 	
   Kafr 'Ana	
         al-Khayriyya
    al-Mas'udiyya	
               al-Mirr                     
          al-Muwaylih		
  Ranitya        
    al-Safiriyya
 Salama      
       Saqiya 		
   al-Sawalima	      
     al-Shaykh Muwannis		
        Yazur

all that remains
             a scattering of stones and rubble
             across a forgotten landscape

fifty years on
the words push through		

              a splintered song	
             forced out one note 
                        at a time

4.
The immensity of loss
shrouds everything

 in despair 
 we seek the particular

 light angling gently 
 in single rays 

             the houses of Dayr Yasin
             were built of stone, strongly built
             with thick walls	

             a girls' school    a boys' school    a bakery
            two guest-houses     a social club     a thrift fund	
            three shops     four wells     two mosques

a village of stone cutters 
a village of teachers and shopkeepers	

an ordinary village
with a peaceful reputation

until the massacre

             carried out without discriminating 
             among men and women
             children and old people

in the aftermath
light remembers

light searches out the hidden places
fills every crevice

light peers through windows
slides across neatly swept doorsteps
finds the hiding places of the children

light slips into every place
where the villagers were killed
             the houses, the streets, the doorways
 light traces the bloodstains

light glints off the trucks 
that carried the men through the streets
like sheep before butchering

light pours into the wells
where they threw the bodies
 
light seeks out the places where sound 
was silenced	

light streams across stone 
light stops at the quarry


5.	
near Qisraya, circa 1938
a fisherman leans forward, 
flings his net 
across a sea slightly stirred 
by wind
 
to his left      
land tumbles	 
rocky     blurred 	
to his right 
sky is hemmed 
by an unclear 
horizon

(ten years 
before the Nakbeh --

the future 	
already closing 
down)


6.
fifty years later
shock still hollows the throats 
of those driven out


                        without water, we stumbled into the hills

                        a small child lay beside the road
                        sucking the breast of its dead mother

                        outside Lydda
                        soldiers ordered everyone 
                        to throw all valuables onto a blanket 

                        one young man refused	

                        almost casually, 
                        the soldier pulled up his rifle 		
                        shot the man

                        he fell, bleeding and dying
                        his bride screamed and cried

he fell to the earth
they fell in despair to the earth

the earth held them
the earth soaked up their cries

their cries sank into the soil 
filtered into underground streams	

fifty springs on
their voices still rise from the earth

fierce as the poppies
that cry from the hills each spring

in remembrance 


7.
some stories are told in passing
barely heard in the larger anguish

among those forced out
was a mother with two babies	

one named Yasmine	     
and another 	
whose name no one remembers	
her life so short 
even its echo 		
is forgotten 

the nameless child died on the march

it was a time of panic 	
no one could save a small girl

and so her face crumpled 
lost beneath the weight of earth

I know only that she loved the moon
that lying ill on her mother's lap
she cried inconsolably 
wanted to hold it in her hands

a child 
she didn't know Palestine 
would soon shine 
             unreachable 
       as the moon


8.
the river floods its banks
littering the troubled landscape

we pick our way amid shards
heir to a generation 
             that broke their teeth on the bread of exile
             that cracked their hearts on the stone of exile 
             necks bent beneath iron keys to absent doors

their lamentations
an unhealed wound

                         I was forced to leave my village
                        but the village refused to abandon me
                        my blood is there
                        my soul is flying in the sky over the old streets

fifty years on

            soul still seeks a sky


9.
the walls were torn down long ago
homes demolished
rebuilding forbidden

but the stones remain

someone dug them from the soil
with bare hands
carried them across the fields

someone set the stones 
in place on the terraced slope

someone planted trees,
dug wells 

someone still waits in the fields all night
humming the old songs quietly

someone watches stars chip darkness
into dawn 

someone remembers 
how stone holds dew through the summer night 

how stone 
waits for the thirsty birds



The italicized sections of this poem are taken, 
in most cases verbatim, from historical and journalistic sources. 
The listing of destroyed villages and the passage beginning 
"All that remains" in section 3 is taken from Walid Khalidi's 
All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 
(Washington D.C: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992).  
The description of Deir Yassin in section 4 is taken from 
the Deir Yassin OnLine Information Center http://www.deiryassin.org/).   
Section 5 refers to a photo in All That Remains.  
The description of refugees leaving Lydda in section 6 
is taken from Father Audeh Rantisi's Blessed are the Peacemakers: 
The History of a Palestinian Christian 
(cited on http://www.alnakba.org/testimony/audeh.htm).  
The passage beginning "I was forced to leave my village" 
in section 8 is taken from a Reuters report by Nidal al-Mughrabi, April 14, 1998.