PHALASTEN

i am standing in my underwear where everyone around me is staring
i am walking up the staircase to my house and going in though one of the windows
i am told that a christian who enters the 3rd most holy site to Islam through a special door is making sure to wear a cross or carry a bible with him to war off negative Muslim presence
i am walking in West Jerusalem worried that i might be discovered
i am angry that next to the entrance and by the whaling wall there is a 'third temple' and that THIS is why people still hate each other in my part of the world...it's religion and a fight over land that has all been imposed by a brutal occupation
i am wondering what it is that consists of the world tears when it comes to hizn ala phalastene
i am afraid for my child who suffers often from symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome but doesn't actually have PTSS
i am SO SICK of hearing the lies, half truths and untruths disseminated by the world's media


i am really just tired now
i am really just frustrated
i am really just so sick of having to constantly justify my existence through a piece of paper at checkpoints
i am really just unhappy about the world's relentless negative attitude towards the Palestinian struggle
i am really just disgusted
i am really just TFEH!
i am really just willing to throw myself in the sea
i am really just ready to give up a fight BUT how could i when we 'exist to resist'



i am shocked that a wall much larger than the one in Berlin is built and not a soul was able to intervene
i am finished with the idea that my door has to remain open at all times so that a 17 year old soldier can come in just to fulfill his IDF requirements
i am paralyzed by qualindia checkpoint
i am still in disbelief about the extreme imprisonment of Qualquilia
i am feeling that time has been wasted in crossings between Palestine and Egypt
i am grossed out at the idea that there is an israeli cultural center 'in um el douniah.' oxymoronic
i am going ONLY to return to my homeland as a Palestinian going back to my home...viva al-awda
i am fakhera bi watani yalee ba3ne MA shifto wala mara
i am happy to know that the nakba was finaly recognized but sad to know it took 60 years for it
i am BLaH!
i am about to loose it

i am khallas i am done

I AM PALESTINIAN

THIS IS PALESTINE

today

these are the kind of days that life is worth living for

a dream

have you ever been inspired by a dream before?

i mean an actual dream that you woke up so happily to... not an amazing goal or aspiration you've had for your life.
this morning i woke up feeling like there was a better place than the Lebanon we are now living in...i remembered the rest of the world and it's beauty. it's diversity and joy. the colors it finds to fill us up with love, peace and tranquility. i felt hope in a time of drakness
i had forgotten to remember how there is beauty to the fullness of life everywhere, and how now we are being deprived of that as a hijacked peoples currently basically being taken hostage by whatever hating forces be present (because they are many and don't let the media fool you into believing that it's 'this devil that starts with the letter H').

in my dream i arrived to a house...and upon my setting foot within, felt that there was something different and special about it. immediately i was greeted by my friends who lived there. it was my first time visiting them and i had never seen these people before in my (real, non-dream) life who were particularly colorful and vivacious people surrounded also by a unique, funky and colorful setting. we sat down in the living room where there were cages in many places often and usually void of animals. I LOVE ANIMALS, btw! with time slowly these animals they had in their home began to appear one by one.
there were giraffes (without their spot shapes), donkeys, dogs, felines (also without their spots so i couldn't tell what they were), seals, and other animals. the thing is, that they were tiny...each was about the size of a tall mug maybe. they never seemed to overcrowd one place of the house but, they were so sweet and all over the place, always together in their families or groups as they may be in the wild. segregated actually, which i guess speaks parallels to this wold we all live in...being also animals ourselves. it was a little wonder where they actually co-existed in this place all together with maybe 3 humans living there with them. it didn't even smell in the house at all! i don't remember recognizing a scent of any kind.

it's funny, now awake it makes me think of Lebanon. i feel often like (no offense to the Lebanese that are reading this PLEASE!) we are a bunch of savage and wild animals living here, but in this case without care for one another just each individual to themselves. now, i know that often times this is NOT the case but it usually feel like it, honestly (see blog entry rude). in this dream the animals of various species and families were all living together with the humans but in their own little sub-communities. couldn't the Lebanese and the people of this world do the same? how hard would it be? coexistence and the acknowledgment of other species (in our case races') presence. but is it that hard to live side by side in peace and stop with a continuous repetition of cycles of fighting, violence and war? if genocides and atrocities have occurred between Turks towards Armenians, and white South Africans towards black South Africans, Israelis towards Palestinians, and Americans towards Vietnamese, Japanese, Iraqis, Afghans, and whomever else received their deadly weapons in aid to use them in force towards those they oppressed and many others then also do the Lebanese impose war and violence over and over on one another and each other...what do we call this? like when a mother eats her young or a sacrifice takes place over and over but this time not for the gods that were once believed in but for what the aggressor's party feels maybe the betterment of the place where they live, maybe even for the betterment of this world. you can watch this. how naive and how ignorant...we must cease this hate. may we learn from our fellow mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish. such a disgusting place we've come to live in it sometimes feels.

i must have been affected a lot by a nice artist named Gregory Colbert that i read an article about the day before the dream and who's website George and i really enjoyed afterwards-BEAUTIFUL!
http://www.ashesandsnow.org/

rude

they stare and they laugh...they jeer and they frown...they push through as they desperately make their way to the front of the line, traffic, bar or whatever it may be. their loud, neon lit large boat-cars and fake noses protrude into the setting of an otherwise formerly familiar place...the elders wonder and they talk of this sin unfolding before their eyes. what happened? they ask in disbelief of the vulgar and obtrusive lifestyle their younger and sometimes fellow Lebanese display as they pass by...as though an 18 year long civil war did NOT take place in the country they call home. It was never like this before they say. what happened to the civil code, civics we used to learn at school and now....?
they cut in front of you without a word of regard and they squeeze between you as though you had not been there for 30 minutes already waiting...because after all is life not a long wait to the end...to see how, why, where, and when...we wait often and always. life waits 9 months in justation, we wait for time to heal, experience to teach, and for age to explain...min shouf as they say in a place that has endured time in a most unique fashion. places demolished and rebuilt like history was rewriting itself over and over time and time again.
the service guy has the nerve to charge you a second service ride for the block and a half that he knew he would have to drive you before you accepted to rest on his plastic covered seats underneath a sheath of white leather...IN A TAXI? be ashamed of you own blood you bala zok, we'ih, jahsh, wahsh, and every other negative word connoting an immoral human being. hehe and who am i to judge? yes in Lebanon everything is possible. take Zoo York and add a few loose monkeys and donkeys around here an there and you've got Beirut...our streets are also numbered but nobody pays attention.

i thank...

God for the suffering brought to life with its beams of joy

HIStory

what is the story, where did it come from, and why is the word derived from his story? he told stories of the past and the anecdotes that the elders would recount over generations were and still are valued. they were often repeated and shared through a man. he was the vehicle ... the form of these stories' disemination. then it became his journal and his letters to loved ones and corespondenses. but how about the rest. the children the women, the poor and those who weren't writing the books and recounting the stories...they were there too and they had a part to play.

it was said while i was at school that 75% of what we read was false. maybe that's because the man who was toiling the land and the millions of those who built the cities that we revel about daily and praise the architect for, never get asked a thing about anything. the guy who put together the house be it made of mud, tin, wood, brick, concrete, wood, or steel...do you know his name? the men who are to thank for the fruits in your basket, the veggies digesting as you read this and the butcher who cut the meat this morning. does anyone ever take them into consideration and ask them how things are going in their lives? what did their ancestors live? if the masses of such people were heard our stories would be very different.

how about the second half of the world's population? where were the woman... in Troy they played a part. isn't it only fair that since the world is made up of 51% females and 49% males the story would be ourstory?

morning cries

I could hear a baby crying early this morning. It wasn’t near but a distant sound. I could sense when it stopped or shrieked or even continued to annoy it’s neighbors with something we once all knew best. The Buddhists believe that there are significant reasons to why we are born crying. Suffering at its onset and the life comes out with tears into a world of service towards gratitude.
It has been scientifically said that women have a tuned ear to hear a baby crying in the middle of the night and the ability to be woken up by it. Otherwise, would so many of us have been feed at instinct’s need or changed once nature called.

It cried and cried and cried and cried at 8 am. Perhaps a biological clock as we now may know on days when our alarm was not set to 7:15 am because it was a labor day but still we rise.

I felt him move and listened to him breath. I though of the possibility of the baby being ours and the idea of me getting up at night, not a budge by the man. The man. What could I say that has not been said and repeated time and time again?

I thought of the possibility of his hard thing entering my wet and dark hole and conceiving yet another life into this overpopulated, underfeed, and uneducated place. I thought of the possibility of being called Mama or Mom, perhaps even maman… HA!

I couldn’t help but think of the disservice I would be doing to the world by bringing yet another life into it. Remembering the countless times I heard the phrase good seed or pure breed. Because your enemy may think himself a better breed my friend. I could only feel a praise for China and it’s strict and regimented ways for this once in my life. One child, and one child ONLY!

success

in Paris today a demonstration of great success took place. these are the FEW times when a leftist progressive celebrates. a massive protest of 'free tibet' supporters blocked the road that the olympic torch bearers were supposed to be running on. good work! keep it up...i'd be there if i could...but always in spirit. may they'll see an even more intense response (though PEACEFUL!!!) in San Fransisco.

another Monot

This past Sunday i went to Monot, a district in Beirut well known for the nightlife that sprung up there in the mid-nineties. I was surprised and happy to find something that put a smile on my husband and my face. In a large parking lot we found a group of men playing cricket. As this is not a common recreational activity in our country, i was for the first time experiencing what baseball must have been born from, being played right there in front of my eyes. Their shirts said Sri Lanka Criquet, and it was such a pleasure to see this spot transformed, even if so temporarily, into a place of leisure activity rather than the ordinary exhaust filled standing lot that it normally is.