Murīd Barghūthī

I Saw Ramallah

Marion

And now I pass from my exile to their ... homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names? Last time I was clear and things were clear. Now I am ambiguous and vague. Everything is ambiguous and vague.

This soldier with the yarmulke is not vague. At least his gun is very shiny. His gun is my personal history. It is the history of my estrangement. His gun took from us the land of the poem and left us with the poem of the land. In his hand he holds earth, and in our hands we hold a mirage.

Since 1967 the last move in the Arab chess game has been a losing move. A move backward, negating everything that came before it, however positive those opening moves were. After the Battle of al-Karama, which the Palestinians and the Jordanians fought together against the enemy, we turned in Black September against ourselves. After the war of 1973 and the crossing of the Suez Canal we went to Camp David. After our opposition to Camp David we Arabised it and generalised it and accepted what was even less useful and more scandalous. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon the PLO turned from heroic resistance to fighting within itself and moderation and adaptability in face of the conditions set by the enemy. After the popular Intifada on the land of Palestine we went to Oslo. We are always adapting to the conditions of the enemy. Since '67 we have been adapting.

And here is Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, calming America's fears for the current agreement by saying that the Arabs will in the end adapt to his harshness because they always adapt to whatever they have to.

Katherine Kenny

I asked myself, what is so special about it except that we have lost it? It is a land, like any land. We sing for it only so that we may remember the humiliation of having had it taken from us. Our song is not for some sacred thing of the past but for our current self-respect that is violated anew every day by the Occupation.

Our dead are still in the cemeteries of others. Our living are clinging to foreign borders. On the bridge, that strange border unmatched on any of the world's five continents, you are overwhelmed by your memories of standing at the borders of others. So what is new? The others are still masters of the place. They give you a permit. They check your papers. They start files on you. They make you wait. Am I hungry for my own borders? I hate borders, boundaries, limits. The boundaries of the body, of writing, of behavior, of states. Do I really want boundaries for Palestine? Will they necessarily be better boundaries?

How did the flower merchants make their millions and build their fine houses from selling the bouquets carried by mothers and sisters to the graveyards that are always damp: raindrops, flowers, and tears. You question why even the silence in the graveyards is wet. Politics is the number of coffee-cups on the table, it is the sudden presence of what you have forgotten, the memories you are afraid to look at too closely, though you look anyway. Staying away from politics is also politics. Politics is nothing and it is everything.

What love is it that does not know the beloved? And why were we not able to hold on to the song? Because the dust of fact is more powerful than the mirage of an anthem? Or because the myth had to descend from its lofty peaks to this real alleyway?

Occupation has created generations of us that have to adore an unknown beloved: distant, difficult, surrounded by guards, by walls, by nuclear missiles, by sheer terror.

I Saw Ramallah quotes

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