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If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

T.S. Eliot

"immature poets imitate, mature poets steal"

Priest

trying to figure out what this means

the soldier appears charming, like american diplomacy, proposing something she doesn't want, as the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unwanted. the stated objective is to win over "hearts and minds" as he is declaring his intentions to her. the woman in the niqab has become a symbol for the middle east and the muslim world despite how few women there wear it.

conundrum.

"What if we have never known freedom and have been taught to embrace our bondage, to fight for it, even to worship it?

What if our minds have been soaked in the brine of television, the voice of the corporate state that speaks to us for an average of more than four hours every day from cradle to grave and converts us into the great amorphous glob called the American consumer?

What if we are taught in school the state religion called capitalism, a religion that condemns as heresy all that interferes with the monied class extracting yet more money from those least able to protect themselves? What if the state's religion is the religion of the dollar, a faith based on a sort of economic Darwinism?

What if a form of subtle slavery has been taught to us, made acceptable to us, made to appear even as freedom itself? What if we are not free, but instead are taught the faith of freedom?"

Gerry Spence
Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century

newsflash

less than one month till RAMADAN.

Exiled within Skin

The hanging wired lights quivered in the summer breeze which carried with it peanut shells, the scent of cotton candy, and the shout of men stomping and dancing in century old tradition. The festivities lit the old buildings every summer, on the very street my great grandfather, grandfather, father, and brother had all walked during nights like these.

I could not help but imagine these young men becoming those images in an old photo, one you hold up and wonder at, put down, and see the same street deserted. If I left, that is what this place would become, a ghost.

The pregnant woman chomped on her peach in the dusty, unkempt office. "I said 'wait.'" She did not look at me but continued to speak Hebrew behind her desk, glaring at the screen before her, and grumbling the universal sound for anger. I went back and sat down watching all of her kind getting serviced before me, and finally she called my name in her disgustingly colonial accent. I laid out each paper that gave a reason why I deserved to be here, documents signed off by white men to justify why I should be allowed in my homeland.

The bass of the speakers pounded against my thoughts. The women chattered around me. They smiled at me, kissed me when they greeted me, and said it was nice that I had given up my American life to be here. They laughed, they chased their children. The men stomped even louder with every chanted verse of our existence. Everyone seemed happy.

I drank up tonight like a wine, and became drunk with worry and delight all at once. I felt pride in the men dancing in the middle of the circle, clapping and leading their brothers in dance and song. But would I see this again, would I one day be a bride sitting amidst the walls of my tribe and finally making that commitment to reside here with the love of my life, Palestine. I thought of exile, that horrid thing that death brings upon us all when we leave life, the reason why my father is not in the crowd standing next to his brother, dancing, crouching and jumping back up to clap.

I am facing death.

The pregnant woman in the office told me to get a renewal form. I told her I did not know where to get one, and she yelled again at me. When I  returned after looking around, I told her no one was around to help me, and she reached behind her desk and gave me one.

"Wow, it was just right there. You must have forgotten where you placed them, but then again, all you had to do was reach back."

No response. Life here is talking to the wall, the famed "security fence."

I sat down. I saw as she examined the documents and what her computer told her.

All I remember in the midst of dancing, of old women screeching like roosters in praises of the bride's beauty and her new husband's happiness; all I remember tonight is that the Dome I saw this morning could merely become a memory. All I remember tonight is the manager of the pregnant woman telling me to leave, that I should not be here. 

"What is there not to get? Leave now. Go back to wherever you came from. To Los Angeles. Go, leave. Now. Get out of my office. We are done."

"Why? Please just give me a reason why this is happening to me?"

"Because you are Arab, you have family in Ramallah. And your grandmother is Palestinian. We cannot do anything for your kind. Go back to where you came from. America."

In their large revolving circle of generational life, the men chanted songs that had tears of absolute desperation running down my cheek. They sang of living in strange lands, and what it does to the soul when you know exile has been stamped into every record book except the one angels keep of you. Tonight they sang of how no one can find peace until they return to that place where no one can say, "Go back."

Al ghurba. I am living it now, here, in my skin of olive trees, dirt roads, and echoing calls to prayers, that flesh stretching over so many shattered hopes.

I am searching for myself in the shadows of thought.The only places the soul has to go are heaven or hell.

Today, I am praying to God for forgiveness.

to put world spending into perspective

Gibran Khalil Gibran

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

A clip from 'Virtually Islamic' blog

Now that the football has finished ...

Digital Spy, UAE 'issues fatwa on vuvuzelas', 12 Jul 2010 "The United Arab Emirates has reportedly issued a fatwa (non-binding Islamic opinion) on vuvuzelas."

Learn Korean

from Dina

Granada Doaba

Everybody's free. So is this music. All the tracks on this website were produced collaboratively by artists from around the world, each living in Granada (Spain) at the time. The project came out of research for a Fulbright scholarship and was inspired by the the multicultural influences that converge in Flamenco music. Flamenco originated in Andalusia, Spain, a city fortunate enough to have been blessed with the wealth of Arab, Jewish, Indian and Afro-Latin cultures. You can download all the tracks for free, and the producers encourage people to remix the songs. It's a celebration of collaboration, each cultural influence a movement by itself, but a force when they come together :)

remix: ABC's (Gnawledge Remix)

hope.

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame.

This is the tragedy of our world.

For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile.

Sometimes our stones are, to us, misshapen, odd. Their color seems off. Presenting them, we perceive our own imperfect nakedness. But also, paradoxically, the wholeness, the rightness, of it. In the collective vulnerability of presence, we learn not to be afraid.

Even the smallest stone glistens with tears, yes, but also from the light of being seen, and loved for simply being there.

ALICE WALKER
ANYTHING WE LOVE CAN BE SAVED

Work Summary and Assessment, Jalazone Refugee Camp

My Name
July 01 2010
Addressed to the School Principal
Sponsored by UNRWA, USAID, and my employer.

English Lesson 6E
8:00-9:30am

I received my lesson books, workbooks, and audio cassettes a day before the summer camp began. This left me with limited time to plan for our lessons on this first day at Jalazon Refugee Camp. But I have come to realize that there was no planning that could predict the climate of this school.

The absolute enthusiasm of my students was outstanding at 8:00am, so much so my sleep deprived soul was awakened. I found the students approachable and enthusiastic. There was not a single student during our introduction that refused to speak. Rather I had more of an issue of giving each student enough time to speak. They had so much to say about themselves, when I was merely a stranger to them.

We talked about the World Cup and our predictions. Got to know one another and moved into the first lesson in the book, "Famous People." We began at a local level and they listed only political figures. Some particular students listed only figures from a particular political party, and the students told me it was pretty obvious where that student was from. I was pleased that they were able to speak about such things in peace and comfort with one another. When we moved to talking about famous people in the Arab world, most of those they listed were singers or presidents/kings of various nations. I then asked them about famous Europeans, and they listed more political figures or soccer players. We then moved to America, and the first names they listed were Bush, Rice, Obama, Mitchell: people they were exposed to. I expected them to talk about singers or actors, but no one listed any. All famous figures were political, if not soccer players. One student suggested our next lesson be strictly about political figures and what they have done to their homeland.

The lesson went smoothly. I appreciated my volunteer's enthusiasm and her ability to jump into an exercise when I invited her to participate and lead. For the most part the student's have a very strong command of vocabulary but do not respond in English as much as they could. I say "could" because they openly stated they feared to slur or mispronounce words while saying incoherent sentences. I found it interesting the text's passages referred to the Muppets and Sesame Street, things that are culturally irrelevant to the students, making the passages harder to understand. But they enjoyed learning about Kermit and what American kids are exposed to, I suppose.

I mean, this program is in part a way to expose them to American way of life, teach them English, and encourage them to attend American institutions of learning.



---------All the while a settlement is literally in their backyard.

Overall I have a better idea of where to head with our English lessons. I need to focus on more grammar, but I must say their skills surpass most of my adult students.


Art Lesson 6E
9:30-11:30am

I sat in Ms. Censored and Mr. Censored art class. The first project involved geometric designs and pattern making. The youth enjoyed this because they were free to create their own stencils from which their pattern would be derived.  The second project involved them tracing their hands. On their left hand they had to write things they disliked while their right hand had written on it things they enjoyed.

Many students enjoy, sports, food, and music.

"I hate Isriael."
"I hate occuppattion."
"I do not like soldiers."

Left hand.

Lunch
11:30-12:00pm

A student and I played basketball together. Before I knew it the entire class was on the court and I had students from other classrooms wanting to play. It got somewhat crowded since other boys were using the same space for a soccer game. But it was nice, especially when other teachers joined in. We decided to make it a part of camp to play a sport together during the lunch period. We will play soccer Sunday.

Drama Lesson 6E
12:00-1:30pm

We began by defining drama. The students themselves articulated that drama was not always something serious, but just entailed acting and presentation through various means. They specified that entertainment could be of various genres. After this discussion we did a bit of charades. I gave them abstract terms to present, and after much effort most of them were able to present the word to their classmates. However,their classmates mostly guessed in Arabic rather than English. After this I gave three groups of students each a scenario to expand into a story and act out.

The first group was told to be a family at the dinner table.

The second group was told to be guests at a restaurant that overcharged them.

The third group was looking for a friend's lost wallet.


The third group went first. They created guns from folded paper. Bandannas to cover their faces. One person got shot, two arrested, and two acted as cops doing the arresting. The acting was very physical and violent, and completely lost the direction of the scenario.

The second group then went up. It began rather calm, with the waiter bringing in the orders to the guests at the table. The waiter charged them four hundred dollars, and one of the guests got up from the table. He yelled at the waiter then began to beat him. The skit ended.

The first group sat at a table eating dinner. The father figure asked each of his kids questions. The father was upset with the religious performance of his son, and began to curse him. He cursed his wife and daughter. Then he beat the son. The son ran to the corner of the room crying to his mom. The dad smacked him one more time, and then skit ended.

The focus was not what I instructed. All of the skits focused on violence. That was their medium of exchange, their means of presenting: to shoot at one another, die on the classroom floor, pretend to smack each other, and curse. The first group insisted they were the best because at least they focused on religion.

Then you and my boss came into the room, handed out those colorful shirts and caps refugee children often wear for US funded corruption schemes, and that was that.

I'm a Grandma..

In Jerusalem (Mahmoud Darwish)

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.