Get on Their Level
An Examination of Liberation Stagnation
Translation: the martyrs of Nahariya passed through here
(comic by martyred Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali).
There are days when I sit instead of standing, like I’m waiting for the world to liberate itself.
I read your news like that’s enough.
The war crimes repeat themselves. So do my words. They start to fade out like your lives. Sometimes I save them up and squirrel them away for fear I won’t have them when I need them, should someone happen to be listening, but I don’t know who. Most days it’s God alone.
I pray for you like that’s enough.
I feel like I’ve done it all, tried everything, yet when I weigh my efforts, it’s almost like they don’t even register on the scale. But I don’t know how to measure these things. I feel like I’ve done little more than bear witness. You’ve changed my life, but I haven’t changed yours.
I learn from you like that’s enough.
It was too cold to protest again this week. I got to warm myself while your children froze to death. I think of new ideas for signs. I forget them before I find the paint.
I speak out for you like that’s enough.
It’s our words versus their lies, our words versus their money, our words versus their drones. Our most righteous words feel obscene. Will words feed you or free you or reclaim your stolen land? Do our strongly worded letters to war criminals feel like an insult to you at this point? The international community turned out to be a euphemism for the colonizer, and they have words too, they offer a thousand words to reframe the ugliest picture. Self-defense is called terrorism, and terrorism is called self-defense. All the soldiers of all the lands turned out to be decoration, flexing their muscles for the performance and only getting to use their strength when the state needs protection from the wrath of its own people.
I cry for you like that’s enough.
My rage doesn’t settle. If it does, it turns to sorrow. I’ll carry it with me like a burden in my heart all the way to Judgment Day, because God alone can settle a score this vast. I shudder to think of how the world could ever clear the debt we owe to Palestine. My bed is so soft. I think of your flooded tents. I think of the dogs they train to rape you.
That’s enough.
It feels wrong to keep reading about the ways Israelis torture you, and it feels wrong to stop reading. I think of Al Fashir and Kordofan and I can’t breathe. My mind can’t believe the numbers, each one a soul, cherished and haunting to its beloved ones. Sudan, how could we ever meet your eyes? I’ve had an eye on Venezuela too, because lately it looks like Iraq if you squint, and their boats “carry fentanyl” in the same way my homeland “harbored weapons of mass destruction.” Perpetrators convict their victims in the ultimate double-tap strike. A man in Kashmir burned himself alive the other day when the occupiers took his family away, and we’ve got ICE in our backyards leaving the same trail of misery. It’s tough to reconcile the chess game of global power struggles with their human impact. I read and write about the world, but I’m no political analyst. I just care about people.
What if that’s not enough?
Then again, who are we to despair when you do not despair, to the grave and far beyond? You don’t fight to taste freedom yourself, but to give your children a chance to taste it, and they’ll fight for the same reason if they have to. And when we fight for you from far away with our meager words, some will say we’re not doing anything, and others will say it’s about the ripple effect. But if I do affect someone, and the ripple of my impact doesn’t go beyond that one person, was that individual soul not valuable in its own right? What if our efforts are flawed yet continual, what if a tree didn’t grow yet, but we keep planting seeds instead of sitting on our hands?
What if trying is enough?
Not because we might make a difference given enough people buying into our mission. Not because we might make a difference given enough time. We could keep seeing zero “results” till the day we return to our Lord. Maybe us standing out in the streets or on the screens for the cause is the result. Maybe trying is the point. How could our efforts be fruitless if the efforts are the fruits, the willingness to leave our homes and shatter our silence and attempt to reform something profoundly broken? Isn’t that a difference? Our souls are just as needy as those in Palestine, and just as capable of glorious resistance. Maybe we were never standing out there to save Palestine. We’re just trying to get on their level.
And maybe that’s enough.
Further Reading
Yassoora, this is so absolutely lovely... On so many levels!
We'll continue to be on the streets protesting for justice insha'Allah.