Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

“The most tragic of disasters are those that cause laughter.”

Your unkindness rewrote my autobiography into punch lines in guts,

I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba

Birth lasts longer than death. In Palestine death is sudden, instant, constant, happens in between breaths.

every jasmine picked off the backlash, every backlash picked off the tear gas, and tear gas healed with yogurt and onions, with resilience, with women chanting, drumming on pots and pans with goddamns and hasbiyallahs.

They work tanks, we know stones.

If hearing about a world other than yours makes you uncomfortable, drink the sea, cut off your ears, blow another bubble to bubble your bubble and the pretense. Blow up another town of bodies in the name of fear.

My father told me: “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.” Be composed, calm, still—laugh when they ask you, smile when they talk, answer them, educate them.

This is why we dance: We have wounded feet but the rhythm remains,

This is why we dance: Because screaming isn’t free. Please tell me: Why is anger–even anger–a luxury to me?

The hospital bed—a prayer rug; allahu akbar, your family announces your boyhood andyour doom.

made normal: mornings of mourning on a breakfast table, olives za’atar tomatoes and cucumber tragedy tear gas and tea In Jerusalem, every footstep is a grave.

Sing me a song of home break a dish or twothrow a stone or two because the screams make me nostalgic: I almost don’t fear the sirens.

Ramadanvillages retired singing, rifles sang instead, announcingdeclaring an anticipated empire on the ruins of another.

She wentshelter to shelter. I wonder, was it the shelter that ran from her?

Invaderscame back once again, claimed the land withfists and fireexcusesbeliefs of the chosen and the promised as if God is a real-estate agent.

I cried—not for the house but for the memories I could have had inside it.

Let’s say it was devoured by the sea. Don’t worryit will wash ashore. “No matter how deep it drowns, the truth always washes ashore.”

Was it because there were no more graves in Gaza that you brought us to the beach to die?

We were limbs in the wind, our joy breaking against the shore. Soccer ball in between our feet we were soccer in between their feet. No place to run. No Moses in siege.

The boy is eight, which is twenty-two for Americans. The boy knows this. His mother calls him a man in his nightmares. You’re a man now.

My permit: these wrinkles older than your country’s existence. My smile is a sun.

Jerusalem taught me resilience. Atlanta taught me a different kind. I can now bring the funeral to the podium and laugh. My grandmother taught me if we don’t laugh, we cry. Atlanta knew that.

Now that I’ve got a rifle, take me with you to Palestine

My grandmother lived through wars and then some. She was older than Zionist colonization. For this, she was hailed as the “icon of Palestinian resilience” by Jerusalemites.