Mornings in Jenin

by Susan Abulhawa

“Exactly, Ari. What Europe did. Not the Arabs. Jews have always lived here. That’s why so many more are here now, isn’t it? While we believed they were simply seeking refuge, poor souls just wanting to live, they’ve been amassing weapons to drive us from our homes.” Hasan was not as angry as he sounded because he understood Ari’s pain.

HASAN, KAMU DENGER OMONGANMU SENDIRI GAK SIH YA ALLAH Like?? Wallahi Palestinians are just too kind.

He thought the sincere offering of peace with the Jews would ensure the continuity of their lives.

Attachment to God, land, and family was the core of their being and that is what they defended and sought to keep.

Forty generations with their imprinted memories, secrets, and scandals. All carried away by the notion of entitlement of another people, who would settle in the vacancy and proclaim it all—all that was left in the way of architecture, orchards, wells, flowers, and charm—as the heritage of Jewish foreigners arriving from Europe, Russia, the United States, and other corners of the globe.

While Dalia lay heartbroken, delirious with the loss of Ismael, Jolanta rocked David to sleep.

Fuck Israhell.

Gathering for the news became a morning ritual in the refugee camp. Women had their own groups, as did children. But to the men, it was the most important event of the day. It was a time and place where the hope of returning home could be renewed. Even when those hopes were perpetually dashed. Even when the old began to die off. And even when hopes grew fainter, they continued to gather in this routine of the Right of Return.

How was it that a man could not walk onto his own property, visit the grave of his wife, eat the fruits of forty generations of his ancestors’ toil, without mortal consequence? Somehow that raw question had not previously penetrated the consciousness of the refugees who had become confused in the rank eternity of waiting, pining at abstract international resolutions, resistance, and struggle. But that basic axiom of their condition sprang to the surface as they lowered Yehya’s body into the ground,

I never knew a playground nor swam in the ocean, but my childhood was magical, enchanted by poetry and the dawn.

“You’re afraid the world might see what you do to children?”

I had an odd desire to be a fish. I could live inside water’s soothing world, where screams and gunfire were not heard and death was not smelled.

We moved but went nowhere. We looked, but reality blurred our vision. We inhaled and exhaled the dust of carnage, but we were not breathing.

“Jamal and I were separated. That is all I know,” Yousef lied. I learned later that Jamal’s life had ended as an “example.” Soldiers executed him in front of my brother and fifty others. Jamal was blindfolded, hands bound and kneeling, when an Israeli soldier put one bullet into the head of the boy

He had been wounded by friendly fire that had burned his right palm.

Ternyata bodoh sejak dulu (tolong ingetin aku kalo ini fiksi) Konteks: selama taufanul aqsa ada puluhan (bahkan mungkin mencapai angka seratus lebih) diapers force kena friendly fire. Ada yg mati, ada jg yg cidera 💀

converged to make her simply David’s mother.

Now i wonder di luar sana ada berapa banyak David, karena, sekitar 2 hari yg lalu ada berita idf menculik seorang bayi perempuan setelah membantai seluruh keluarganya 🙂 bayi perempuan itu sampe sekarang gak ada yg tahu ada di mana🙂 Idf itu sendiri dan teman²nya menganggap aksi itu heroik. Bukan sok tau, ada rekaman pengakuannya (krn temennya yg nyulik ini dihabisin hamas). Its reminds me of beberapa penulis novel kayak Sarah J. Mass sama Rick Riordan. Pahlawan dari israhell 💀

David slapped the Arab. He struck him next with the butt of his rifle. He knew not why, but now he could not stop.

My God, you really act like those demons

Soldiers ruled their lives arbitrarily. Who could and could not pass was up to them, and not according to any protocol. Who was slapped and who was not was decided on a whim. Who was forced to strip and who was not—the decision was made on the spot.

He had been forced to strip before women and his students, had been made to kiss the feet of a soldier who had threatened to beat a small boy if Yousef did not kneel.

Ini tuh.. that small boy juga tahanan? Kalau iya, berarti (kemungkinan) kayak Ahmad Manasra dan tahanan anak² lain sempat dilindungi sama tahanan orang dewasa sebelum dijadikan sasak tinju sama idf. Ada link artikelnya di bawah. Seorang mantan tahanan anak yang memberikan kesaksiannya pada jurnalis. Mereka kayak didudukkan di kursi dan ditutup matanya, setelah itu ditinju dan ditampar sama setiap idf yg lewat. Dan mereka mengalami pelecehan seksual juga. TAHANAN ANAK. https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_interrogator_sexually_assaults_palestinian_child_detainee?fbclid=PAAaYJr_SJtBjw0ZNqTaVQM-Yl2lSVACNO6APkz0XdTiTIOIQ8HW7BB2vLfrw

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin.

They have scripted lives for us that are but extended death sentences, a living death. I won’t live their script.

If I am martyred, then so be it. Be proud, pray for my soul, and celebrate my passing into Allah’s kingdom, as all martyrs who die fighting for justice, freedom, and the land shall be there to let me in among them.

Aku nangis???

“We’re all born with the greatest treasures we’ll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart. And the indispensable tools of those treasures are time and health. How you use the gifts of Allah to help yourself and humanity is ultimately how you honor him. I have tried to use my mind and my heart to keep our people linked to history, so we do not become amnesiac creatures living arbitrarily at the whim of injustice.”

you have honored the gift of Allah with diligence and hard work, and all of us know that we should help you now to complete your journey, not to stifle Allah’s gift.

I dampened my senses to the world, tucking myself into an American niche with no past. For the first time I lived without threats and the sediments of war. I lived free of soldiers, free of inherited dreams and martyrs tugging at my hands.

Robert Fisk wrote of it in Pity the Nation: They were everywhere, in the road, the laneways, in the back yards and broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of garbage tips. When we had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting. Down every alleyway, there were corpses—women, young men, babies and grandparents—lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death.

there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies—blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition—tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded U.S. Army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment, and empty bottles of whisky.

ANJ

There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot at point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines. The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old.

The girl had short, dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead. Someone had slit open the woman’s stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror.

“How much must we endure and how much must we give?” he wailed like a child. “Fatima! My darling, Fatima! Did you see what they did?” he asked, screamed, and he answered himself, “They ripped her belly, Amal!”

The following week, the cover story was “Israel in Torment.” Israel, a victim.

..... So this is their script..? In every massacre?

Ariel Sharon remained free to pursue the politics of violence, until eventually he rose to the highest office of power in Israel, becoming prime minister of the Jewish state.

more than a year into the second Palestinian uprising, and the American press described him as “a portly old warrior” and a “tough veteran of Israel’s many wars.” The forty-third president of the United States of America, George W. Bush, referred to him as a “man of peace.”

...

Dr. Haim Gordon of the Israeli Association for Human Rights reported the case of an eight-year-old tortured by soldiers after refusing to reveal which of his friends had thrown stones. Stripped naked, hung by his legs and brutally beaten, the boy was then pushed to the edge of a rooftop before being released (cited in the January 1990 bulletin of the Israeli League).

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS REAL? The Rise and Fall of Palestine ini buku btw. Dan tag yg aku cek di Goodreads: history, non-fiction, politic. So.. it is real 🙂

Reporting on the grisly fate of Palestinians as young as fourteen arrested on “suspicion of stone-throwing,” the 24 February 1992 issue of Hadashot quoted an inside source at the Hebron detention center: “What happened there . . . was plain horror: They would break their clubs on the prisoners’ bodies, hit them in the genitals, tie a prisoner up on the cold floor and play soccer with him—literally kick and roll him around. Then they’d give him electric shocks, using the generator of a field telephone, and then push him out to stand for hours in the cold and rain . . . They would crush the prisoners . . . turning them into lumps of meat.”

No one ever knew what exactly happened to little Mansour over the course of that week, but when he was finally returned to his family, he looked no one in the eye. And he had lost the ability to speak.

The Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed them “authentic Jewish cuisine.” They claimed the villas of Qatamon as “old Jewish homes.” They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestine’s earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the Ottomans, then sold them as their own “ancient Jewish artifacts.”

“I look just like him,” he said, shattering the glassy silence.

Palestinians paid the price for the Jewish holocaust. Jews killed my mother’s family because Germans had killed Jolanta’s.

“When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand that she was too tender for the world she’d been born into,”

Love cannot reconcile with deception. And it cannot become inured to an existence paid for with the currency of another’s misery—my mother’s misery.

“When you were talking about Jolanta, her demonstrative adoration, I felt envious of you,” I confessed. “But I think now, contrary to what I believed in the stupidity of youth, no other woman than Dalia could have been a finer mother to me.”

“After having lost his home, his land, his son, his identity to the Jewish state, your father risked his life to save mine and my family’s.” That was it.

Since when does ‘the world’ give a goddamn about us? You have been away too long, Amal.

He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?

The conclusion was echoed in U.S. headlines: “NO MASSACRE IN JENIN.” “ONLY MILITANTS KILLED IN JENIN, SAYS ISRAEL.”

They murdered you and buried you in their headlines, Mother. How do I forgive, Mother? How does Jenin forget? How does one carry this burden? How does one live in a world that turns away from such injustice for so long? Is this what it means to be Palestinian, Mother?

“I know what this is about. You must understand this is our home now.” She emphasized the word our. “Besides, my baby is sleeping.” With that she closed the door and the would-be guests left.

Gejolak ingin menjambak 📈

I plan it. I live it. I see it. I’ll make it happen. I’ll kill. I will. But I can’t. I know I can’t. Love came to me in a dream and placed her lips upon my brow.

I can’t leave Amal alone in the world. I haven’t kept my promises. I tried. To protect my wife and children. To set my sister’s life toward family and love. I tried, Baba. Now I’ve gone so far. Can I turn back? The wheels have been put in motion.

I write so many letters to Amal. Stacks of them line my dirty walls. But what new hell will come to her if we are in contact and I am discovered.

Although the characters in this book are fictitious, Palestine is not, nor are the historical events and figures in this story.