Of Palestine
POETRY FORMAT, 2 Sep 2024
Mazin Qumsiyeh – TRANSCEND Media Service
When I die, bury my ashes in my town
Joining my memory with that of beloved soil
that gave us life, education, and love
In Palestine
Under the uncompromising sun and the sky
that tells no lies
In Palestine
Where we learned to plough rocky soils
and dance the dabka
sway to the magic of nai and oud
Fairuz an Um Kulthum
mothers’ tender words inseparable from a meal
zait and Zaatar
In Palestine
where we we worshipped in mosque, church, and olive groves
where we learned to live together everyday
even when not knowing it would be our last day
In Palestine
where We hated the occupation, the land confiscation, the US funded army
where we mourned friends lost
where we resisted by staying, living, and loving
and when we could not stay, we stayed connected
with all that was good and worthy of our love
Of Palestine
where we got to school dodging
bullets, checkpoints, walls
“Keef al-ma7soom alyoum”
In the refugee camps..the loneliness of the ghorba
we still married, had children, laughed, cried, lived, and loved
we taught our children to kick the ball, to say Ahlan wa Sahlan,
and to believe that
Our ashes join a million million spirits
of ancestors who lived and loved
and children who live and love
we still teach them
“like 20 impossibles”
We shall return
To Palestine
and our children will live in freedom
In Palestine
19 Apr 2006
____________________________________________
Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics and director of cytogenetic services at Yale University School of Medicine, is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation and ex-president of the Middle East Genetics Association. He won the Raymond Jallow Activism Award from the national Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1998. He is co-founder and national treasurer of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and has written extensively about the Middle East. Qumsiyeh is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine, a professor at Bethlehem University and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem. http://palestinenature.org
Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation’s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.
DON’T BUY PRODUCTS WHOSE BARCODE STARTS WITH 729, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!
Tags: Palestine, Poetry
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 2 Sep 2024.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Of Palestine, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.