Tuesday, May 7
WHEN THE WAR PARTS I won’t be the same might become a closet or a bed a gas canister, a rug a library a giant lap, one long embrace. When the war parts I won’t find a grave to visit for the road itself will be the graveyard There will be no flowers to lay as they too will have died. No palms on graves, and no graves either. I will stumble on a head here, a foot there, a friend’s face on the ground, his bag carrying crumbs for the little ones. Scattered eyes, I’ll see them everywhere and a heart that has gotten lost, panting will settle on my shoulder and I´ll walk it through the rubble this broken stone with which we were killed. No history book said how to prepare for the long war no class taught to pitch a tent on the side of the road no math teacher said that the corner fits ten people no religion class revealed: children also die also rise as a butterfly, a bird, a star. I hated chalk once and the morning lineup too but loved to pause in an opening line stroll through the Eastern line lose myself in the city perched on twin trees But I am outside any city I know outside all place and ejected from time to the dimension of Gaza, to ask what has happened what is happening What is the name of our street? Have any of you seen our street, our house? Do the neighborhoods still know each other? Can the city recognize us? Can my mother? Is the sea counting the victims? Does the sun rise to shield the bodies in the streets? Can the merchants afford heaven? Will these bodies sprout tall buildings that bear their names? Their names, will we know them all? My aunts, will they fathom the catastrophe? The house, was it really our house? Does the soldier sleep a night? My throat is swollen from words without remedy but bayt: this line, home. (Heba Al-Agha, translated from Arabic by Julia Choucair Vizoso)