Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

Unsettling the colonial project of lies, Mohammed is a truth teller. He wields his arsenal: a living room of poems seats us in the home of what remains, what cannot be photographed or tweeted but is in the spirit of enduring strength, the will to fight, to create, and, most importantly, to love.

Solidarity is a feeling and a doing. It is a series of choices we make with one another. It can only be felt. It cannot be contrived or manipulated. Solidarity is not just about our shared pain or struggle but also, most importantly, about our shared joy, visions, and dreams. It is an energetic force and a resounding love.

We are more than what was done to us; we are who we’ve become in spite of it all.

My mother has always said: “The most tragic of disasters are those that cause laughter.”

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

I was born among poetry on the fiftieth anniversary. The liberation chants outside the hospital room told my mother to push.

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

A soldier as old as a leaf born yesterday pulls a trigger on a woman older than his heritage.

I talked to God but God never wore my shoes.

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.

The colonizersyouthfuldifferently clothed rifles smacking against their hipsterrorist nation celebrated stolen propertycallous. I cried—not for the house but for the memories I could have had inside it.

Here, we know two suns: earth’s friend and white phosphorus. Here, we know two things: death and the few breaths before it. What do you say to children for whom the Red Sea doesn’t part?