-
- Some words are hard to pronounce—
- He-li-cop-ter
is most vexing
-
(A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible)
- But how it can stand still in the sky
- I cannot understand—
-
What holds it up
-
What bears its weight
- (Not clouds, I know)
- It sends a flashing light—so
smooth--
-
It makes a deafening sound
-
The house shakes
-
(There are holes in the wall by my bed)
- Flash-boom-light-sound—
- And I have a hard time sleeping
- (I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but
no one scolded me).
-
- Plane—a word much easier to say—
-
It flies, tayyara,
- My mother told me
- A word must have a meaning
- A name must have a meaning
- Like mine,
- (Hadeel,
the cooing of the dove)
- Tanks, though, make a different sound
-
They shudder when they shoot
- Dabbabeh is a heavy word
-
As heavy as its meaning.
-
- Hadeel—the
dove—she coos
-
Tayyara—she flies
-
Dabbabeh—she crawls
- My Mother—she cries
-
And cries and cries
- My Brother—Rami—he lies
-
DEAD
-
And lies and lies, his eyes
-
Closed.
- Hit by a bullet in the head
-
(bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills,
-
my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes)
- What’s the difference between a
shell and a bullet?
- (What’s five-hundred-milli-meter-
- Or
eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?)
- Numbers are more vexing than words—
-
I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two
-
But what happens after ten-and-ten,
- How should I know?
- Rami, my brother, was one
-
Of hundreds killed—
- They say thousands are hurt,
- But which is more
-
A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf)
-
I cannot tell—
-
So big--so large--so huge—
- Too many, too much.
-
- Palestine—Falasteen—I’m
used to,
-
It’s not so hard to say,
- It means we’re here—to stay--
-
Even though the place is hard
-
On kids and mothers too
- For soldiers shoot
-
And airplanes shell
-
And tanks boom
-
And tear gas makes you cry
- (Though I don’t think it’s tear
gas that makes my mother cry)
- I’d better go and hug her
-
Sit in her lap a while
-
Touch her face (my fingers wet)
-
Look in her eyes
- Until I see myself again
-
A girl within her mother’s sight.
-
- If words have meaning, Mama,
-
What is Is-ra-el?
- What does a word mean
- if it is
mixed
-
with another—
- If all soldiers, tanks, planes and
guns are
- Is-ra-el-i
-
What are they doing here
- In a place I know
-
In a word I know—(Palestine)
-
In a life that I no longer know?
-
- by Hanan Ashrawi
- Jerusalem
