This post is in solidarity with Read Palestine Week.
The other day B was out of town and I found myself taking long, winding walks with Tito, trying to pull my brain out of the endless carnage cycling across my timeline for a moment or two. These New Orleans autumn afternoons are something special and I wanted to exist in them as fully as possible. There’s nothing like hanging out with a toddler to keep you in the present tense. He urgently alerts me whenever he catches sight of the moon rising in the early evening sky. It’s the most important thing; he must let me know. It yanks me out of my inner reveries — the moon — a tiny, gigantic blessing, a demand to stay present, a reminder of how tiny we are, a constant presence as we move through the streets, our lives, and the moon keeps peeking out at us from behind buildings, clouds, then vanishing again as it cycles back to darkness.
This time, taking in the moon reminded me of a poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish that I first read twenty years ago, in my little study nook in the library at my college. It was one of those poetry experiences that hit me so hard, I remember the physical feeling of the molecules that made me dispersing some into the atmosphere and then returning into place changed somehow. That’s the only way I can explain it. The world after I read it was a different place from the one I’d been in before. Here it is, translated by Ben Bennani.
‘The Prison Cell’
by Mahmoud Darwish
It is possible . . .
It is possible at least sometimes . . .
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away . . .
It is possible for prison walls
To disappear,
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers:
What did you do with the walls?
I gave them back to the rocks.
And what did you do with the ceiling?
I turned it into a saddle.
And your chain?
I turned it into a pencil.
The prison guard got angry.
He put an end to the dialogue.
He said he didn’t care for poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.
He came back to see me
In the morning.
He shouted at me:
Where did all this water come from?
I brought it from the Nile.
And the trees?
From the orchards of Damascus.
And the music?
From my heartbeat.
The prison guard got mad.
He put an end to my dialogue.
He said he didn’t like my poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.
But he returned in the evening:
Where did this moon come from?
From the nights of Baghdad.
And the wine?
From the vineyards of Algiers.
And this freedom?
From the chain you tied me with last night.
The prison guard grew so sad . . .
He begged me to give him back
His freedom.
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Ever since I read it, this poem would peek back in on me from time to time, every couple years, a tiny gigantic blessing, a reminder to stay present. A reminder of how ugly and beautiful the world is, all at once, often in overlapping ways.
Mostly what I want to tell you is: I am not okay.
That’s not a cry for help. I have help. It’s the opposite, really. It’s to say: perhaps you’re not okay either, and you’re not alone in that. Or maybe you have been pretending you are, and this is a sign to let you know that you don’t have to pretend anymore. Not being okay is normal and natural when there’s a genocide being livestreamed into your phone 24 hours a day.
Most nights, I dream of children digging each other out of rubble, then awake to news of more children digging themselves out of rubble. And adults, and elders.
I see my son’s face in those kids. I see my family in all of them.
I’m not here to set out a coherent political analysis of what’s happening other than we must do everything we can to stop it. And I truly believe, deep down, through my bones and blood, that the world has called on us to bear witness to these horrific times, to not look away, and that includes (but cannot be limited to) bearing witness to our own souls, our own processes, struggles, journeys, rises and falls and fuckups and revelations in the midst of this.
There is always a danger of making someone else’s tragedy about us; there is also a faulty overreaction to that where we try to eliminate ourselves entirely from the story, including our own complicity. The truth lies, as always, in balance. Balance doesn’t mean the middle of the road or some other milquetoast dodge. I’m not talking about the fake balance of those news programs that take a sprinkle from a centrist capitalist pundit bro and mush it together with a splash from a fascist capitalist pundit bro to make *jazz hand* “balance!”
No, I’m talking about actual balance, the kind you can only get through trial and error, that comes from walking through the fire of getting it wrong and keeping going till you find what’s right, and then losing that again and having to start from scratch. The real shit. The hazy interzone of personal and political, aka the real world, where they are one.
Sometimes, in dark times, we think that we have to keep moving to stay alive, like sharks. That will only break us. Sometimes, even the slightest movement feels impossible. Inertia can be just as dangerous as constant motion. We have to find balance, even when the world is falling apart. It is not easy; it’s not fun.
We have to allow the colossal realignment of this moment to move through us. Often that means the careers we once sought seem hollow; the mentors and peers we so deeply respected no longer matter; the goals we angled our lives towards have shifted. This can feel like an emptiness, sudden or gradual. It can feel like a storm. It’s not something you can fight — it’s part of being alive right now, of growing to meet this moment, being present and listening. It’s happening all around us.
The US sanctioned and funded bombing has begun again after a too brief ceasefire. Israel has already murdered thousands more Palestinians. We’re nearly two months into this very accelerated genocide and seventy-four years into a much more gradual one. People on the ground are begging for help, an end to this murder, anything. They’re posting final messages, saying goodbye to a world that refused to save them. I can’t seem to find room in my body to place all this grief and anger, it keeps pouring out of me at random moments, in the middle of a conversation, trying to answer an email. I keep running out of words and then suddenly having too many. I keep starting essays like this one and then finding myself too heartbroken to know what do with them, then feeling the sudden urgent imperative to find a way to finish them.
I’m not okay, and I won’t be okay — this moment in history will leave its mark on me for the rest of my life. And as my life reorients itself into whatever world is being created, I will redefine being okay and figure out how to find that, in part from the experience of being alive in this time.
There’s a line I keep coming back to. In the essay “Gaza Asks: When Shall This Pass?” from the phenomenal collection Light In Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, Refaat Alareer writes:
“The wounds Israel inflicted in the hearts of Palestinians are not irreparable. We have no choice but to recover, stand up again, and continue the struggle. Submitting to occupation is a betrayal of humanity and to all struggles around the world.”
This is a mandate, direct from the heart of destruction and survival, that we not give in to despair. It’s not asking for fake smiles or pretending everything is going to be fine. It’s a call to action, a demand that we stand up again and continue the struggle, and that whatever prison cell we inhabit, be it made of metal or our own minds, we find within it
rivers,
orchards,
music,
the moon —
and get free.
Thank you for your truth, so beautifully expressed. I don’t think anyone is, or can be, all right in these times, especially not those who support this genocide. I feel so helpless! My voice is so small. But I’ll try to keep speaking.
The Darwish poem is beautiful.
Thank you so much for this. It is nice to know that there are other people who have not been able to pick up the pieces and carryon cheerfully through the holiday season, that there are others who continue to bear witness and continue the fight. I feel much less alone now.