Arabic Mantra
When you feel like you’re far from home and you are When you choose to breathe in and breathe out When you approach a preoccupied stranger in the sooq When you see a five-year-old boy…
Category: Palestine
This Palestinian Life
Mounif is calling me In America From Qatar About Fahim’s martyrdom In Beirut And burial In Kuwait And about the necessity Of informing Sitti Umm ‘Ata In Deir Ghassanah And his maternal grandmother In Nablus…
On Seeing and Solidarity: Jimmy Carter, Palestine, Vietnam
1. In his 2007 book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had this to say: “When we arrived there in January 1996, it was obvious that the Israelis had almost complete control…
It’s About
As I offer to share a 250-page novel/collage (Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine) With a friend here and there A typical question is– “What’s it about?” OK It’s about good mimesis It’s about memory, resistance and…
On “Happiness” by Thích Nhất Hạnh
In her 1938 essay, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf cautioned women to think critically about joining the professions men have created. She writes, “Those opinions cause us to doubt and criticize and question the value of…
Rachel
Over the years I’ve bought a few copies of Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie But before I got to cracking it open for myself I would think of a young person…
I Remember by Nima
Nima, one of my former students, took a “Writing as a Spiritual Practice” class with me and one evening we explored the theme of memory. Now a fourth-year medical student, Nima wrote this recollection of…
For Amal and Amal
The enemy is all about erasure Tactics: derision and denial Insults and salt in the wounds When you’re a student of history It’s no surprise— That’s what the powerful do So tell them over and…
Sealing the Deal
Long ago, I did a reading and signing of The Book of Mev at Left Bank Books in the Central West End. I asked one of my former students, Magan Wiles, to read the very…
The Politics of Dispossession
for Sharifa Barakat “The climax to this campaign occurred when, in West Beirut, Israeli soldiers carted off Palestinian archives, destroyed the private libraries and homes of prominent Lebanese nationalists and Palestinian personalities, and literally heaped…