Read Online Letters from Palestine by Pamela Olson - Free Book Online
Authors: Pamela Olson
Tags: Palestine
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admitted I was wrong by not saying anything.
So wrong in fact that the next day my social studies teacher
brought me a set of Bible verses that showed why those of Jewish
descent were a chosen people and the land belonged to them. The
“God as a real estate agent” argument. How original.
I just shook my head and left, because, of
course, my people are racist and hateful.
A Palestinian Poet
_PHOTO
Hind Shoufani is a Palestinian writer and
filmmaker currently hopping around Beirut, Amman, Dubai, Abu Dhabi,
Damascus, and New York City. She is a Fulbright Scholar, with a BA
in communication arts from the Lebanese American University and an
MFA in film directing/writing from the Tisch School of the Arts,
New York University. She has worked as a writer, journalist,
presenter, director, and a film production team member for various
TV shows, newspapers, magazines, and production houses and has also
taught at universities in Beirut, where she started a poetry
collective called the “Poeticians.”
What Hind really likes to do, though, is
write poems, sleep in late in the mornings, and have uninterrupted
music sessions. She’s also addicted to glittery clothing, yogurt,
and a persistent need to defend Palestine. In her closet, you can
find her first thesis feature film, Carencia , and her first
poetry book More Light than Death Could Bear published by
Xanadu. She is now finishing up the first draft of her new film and
looking for someone brave enough to publish her second book.
Pick me up
(For Palestine, who defies geography)
Dubai, November 2008
Smiles, freeze, drop off the faces of
strangers who
try their pick-up lines on trains through
France, who see a redhead
made up in tight clothes that show off the
curves
international, woman, all throughout, and
they inevitably ask, where
are you from, and watching the eyes
widen,
in dismay sometimes, sometimes in
respect,
often in pity, always a controversy,
always an opinion, I’m with you, I’m with
them, you don’t exist,
they should never have existed, but you’re
so pretty, said with surprise, like
I am supposed to be ugly,
how strange, your accent is all perfect
and
you don’t look funny, and by funny,
they mean swathed in black mourning and
veils,
wailing murder and disease and misery,
and if I smile in secret knowledge of the
beauty of my
ancestry, do not hold it against me, for
there
is little left of that today,
this day of tragedy and humiliation,
this black morning that won’t cease, those
clouds of doom
that won’t blow,
and when someone asks where your aunt
is,
and who’s this uncle, and how come you live
alone,
aren’t you an Arab young woman, why are you
traveling so far from home, and where were you born, and what
passport
do you hold, and how come your accent
is all fucked up, different words
in different situations to the rescue, you
play the card at every given chance to
make sure you get by, you get the best, in
this racist
test of endurance, you say,
you’re from here, but born there, and you
don’t know
where your uncle is, and you haven’t met
all your thirty-three cousins,
and there is a grandparent who never saw
you,
and you speak not the same language as your
sister-in-law,
nor do you run into the same family name,
and when the villages
of your friends are their retreat for this
Christmas
or Eid, or this or that festivity,
you keep your head down, you look up plans
on Expedia
for an itinerary as random as
you wish it to be, for your village might
have been
bulldozed flat by those powers that be,
that you know inside out,
cannot be, should not be,
and yet they are, here, and were, and will
stay,
they think,
eternally.
And you grieve,
daily,
and you did not hold your father’s hand when
your mother
died, and you did not go to the funeral of
the only
grandmother you ever knew or loved
and you may not make it to the wedding of
your
favorite cousin, and
So wrong in fact that the next day my social studies teacher
brought me a set of Bible verses that showed why those of Jewish
descent were a chosen people and the land belonged to them. The
“God as a real estate agent” argument. How original.
I just shook my head and left, because, of
course, my people are racist and hateful.
A Palestinian Poet
_PHOTO
Hind Shoufani is a Palestinian writer and
filmmaker currently hopping around Beirut, Amman, Dubai, Abu Dhabi,
Damascus, and New York City. She is a Fulbright Scholar, with a BA
in communication arts from the Lebanese American University and an
MFA in film directing/writing from the Tisch School of the Arts,
New York University. She has worked as a writer, journalist,
presenter, director, and a film production team member for various
TV shows, newspapers, magazines, and production houses and has also
taught at universities in Beirut, where she started a poetry
collective called the “Poeticians.”
What Hind really likes to do, though, is
write poems, sleep in late in the mornings, and have uninterrupted
music sessions. She’s also addicted to glittery clothing, yogurt,
and a persistent need to defend Palestine. In her closet, you can
find her first thesis feature film, Carencia , and her first
poetry book More Light than Death Could Bear published by
Xanadu. She is now finishing up the first draft of her new film and
looking for someone brave enough to publish her second book.
Pick me up
(For Palestine, who defies geography)
Dubai, November 2008
Smiles, freeze, drop off the faces of
strangers who
try their pick-up lines on trains through
France, who see a redhead
made up in tight clothes that show off the
curves
international, woman, all throughout, and
they inevitably ask, where
are you from, and watching the eyes
widen,
in dismay sometimes, sometimes in
respect,
often in pity, always a controversy,
always an opinion, I’m with you, I’m with
them, you don’t exist,
they should never have existed, but you’re
so pretty, said with surprise, like
I am supposed to be ugly,
how strange, your accent is all perfect
and
you don’t look funny, and by funny,
they mean swathed in black mourning and
veils,
wailing murder and disease and misery,
and if I smile in secret knowledge of the
beauty of my
ancestry, do not hold it against me, for
there
is little left of that today,
this day of tragedy and humiliation,
this black morning that won’t cease, those
clouds of doom
that won’t blow,
and when someone asks where your aunt
is,
and who’s this uncle, and how come you live
alone,
aren’t you an Arab young woman, why are you
traveling so far from home, and where were you born, and what
passport
do you hold, and how come your accent
is all fucked up, different words
in different situations to the rescue, you
play the card at every given chance to
make sure you get by, you get the best, in
this racist
test of endurance, you say,
you’re from here, but born there, and you
don’t know
where your uncle is, and you haven’t met
all your thirty-three cousins,
and there is a grandparent who never saw
you,
and you speak not the same language as your
sister-in-law,
nor do you run into the same family name,
and when the villages
of your friends are their retreat for this
Christmas
or Eid, or this or that festivity,
you keep your head down, you look up plans
on Expedia
for an itinerary as random as
you wish it to be, for your village might
have been
bulldozed flat by those powers that be,
that you know inside out,
cannot be, should not be,
and yet they are, here, and were, and will
stay,
they think,
eternally.
And you grieve,
daily,
and you did not hold your father’s hand when
your mother
died, and you did not go to the funeral of
the only
grandmother you ever knew or loved
and you may not make it to the wedding of
your
favorite cousin, and
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