Two Poems of Palestine by Rafeef Ziadeh

Her poem ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ – an impassioned attack on media misrepresentation of the Palestinian cause – went viral within days of its release.

We teach life, sir

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.

And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.

But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?

Pause.

I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.

Patience has just escaped me.

Pause. Smile.

We teach life, sir.

Rafeef, remember to smile.

Pause.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.

We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.

We teach life, sir.

But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.

And just give us a story, a human story. about:blank Report this adPrivacy Settings

You see, this is not political.

We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story.

Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and “occupation”.

This is not political.

You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.

How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?

How about you?

Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?

Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.

But they felt sorry.

They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.

So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.

And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.

And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead.

And between that, war crime and massacre, I vent out words and smile “not exotic”, “not terrorist”.

And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, a thousand dead.

Is anyone out there?

Will anyone listen?

I wish I could wail over their bodies.

I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre

And let me just tell you, there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.

And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.

No sound-bite will fix this.

We teach life, sir.

We teach life, sir.

We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir.

Shades of action

I wrote this poem when we where doing a direct action at my university.
There where palestinian citizens and israeli soldiers.
I’m Very petty about these things so i said: – ‘I will only be a palestinian. I refuse to be a settler or a soldier!’
So I was lying on the ground and this guy came and kicked me in the guts and said: – ‘You desirve to be raped before you have your terrorist children!’
At the time I said nothing, but then I wrote this poem for this young gentleman.

Allow me to speak my arab tongue before they occupy my language as well
Allow me to speak my mother tongue before they colonize her memory as well

I am an arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

All my grandfather ever wanted to do was wake up at dawn and watch my grandmother kneel and pray in a village hidden between Yaffah and Haiffa
My mother was born under an olive tree on a soil they say is no longer mine
But I will cross their barriers, their checkpoints, their damn apartheid walls and return to my home land

I am an arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

And did you hear my sister screaming yesterday, as she gave birth at a checkpoint with israeli soldiers looking between her legs for their next demographic threat? Called her baby girl Janeen
And did you her Amna Muna screaming behind her prison bars as they tear-gassed her cell?
We are returning to Falasteen

I am an arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

But you tell me this womb inside of me will only bring you your next terrorist
Beard wearing, gun waving, towel head, sand niger
You tell me I send my children out to die
But those are your ‘copters, your F16s in our skys
And lets talk about this terrorism business, for a second
Wasn’t it the CIA that killed
And who trained Osama in the first place?
My grandparents didn’t run around like clowns with white capes and white hoods on their heads lynching black people

I am an arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

So who’s that brown woman screaming in a demonstration?
Sorry. Should I not scream?
I forgot to be your every orientalist dream, genie in a bottle, belly dancer, harem girl, soft spoken arab woman

• ‘Yes master. No master. Thank you for the peanut butter sandwiches raining down on us from your F16s master.’
  Yes my liberators are here to kill my children and call them collateral damage

I am an arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

So let me just tell you, this womb inside of me will only bring you your next rebel
She’ll have a rock in one hand and a palestinian flag in the other

I am an arab woman of color
Beware, beware, my anger

Posted May 17 2021