Nóra Ugron > Recent Status Updates

Sometimes a dream lands so hard
it flattens you. (p. 12)

In the exile's suitcase, a carpet of dead grass. Seven persimmons. A dandelion stem skinny as a grenade pin.

Define 'in', I say when anyone asks if I've ever been in a war. I smoked pot with a guy I've known for ages. I slept through the airport bombing. When the window facing the road shattered, I kept a piece in my mother's glove compartment.

What do we do with heartache? Tow it.

A Rose Shoulders Up

Don't ever be surprised
to see a rose shoulder up
among the ruins of the house:
This is how we survived.

p. 99

"During the night airstrikes, all of us turned
into stone."

p. 86

"My parents and siblings were walking behind.
We dared not to look back to see them.
I had seven siblings at the time.

We dared not look behind and count them because
what if they became less? "

p. 79

"...my new neighbor was murdered.
Ghassan Abul-Amrin,
barely 20.
(Now I am older than he was then.)
Ghassan went out to buy bread for his mother.
He didn't return home. The fanily got worried,
turned on the radio to check if his name was announced.
This has been how we learn about our dead."

p. 79

The end result of decolonization is not only the creation of new kinds of self-governance but also ‘‘the creation of new men’’ (and women) (Mohanty 2003, p. 8).

Jodi Dean (1996) develops a notion of ‘‘reflective solidarity’’ that I find particularly useful. She argues that reflective solidarity is crafted by an interaction involving three persons: ‘‘I ask you to stand by me over and against a third’’ (3). (Mohanty 2003, p. 7).

I define solidarity in terms of mutuality, accountability, and the recognition of common interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities. Rather than assuming an enforced commonality of oppression, the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities of people who have chosen to work and fight together. (Mohanty 2003, p. 7).

[T]he critique of essentialist identity politics and the hegemony of postmodernist skepticism about identity has led to a narrowing of feminist politics and theory whereby either exclusionary and self-serving understandings of identity rule the day or identity (racial, class, sexual, national, etc.) is seen as unstable and thus merely ‘‘strategic" (Mohanty 2003, p. 6).

The twentieth century was also the century of the decolonization of the Third World/South, the rise and splintering of the communist Second World, the triumphal rise and recolonization of almost the entire globe by capitalism, and of the consolidation of ethnic, nationalist, and religious fundamentalist movements and nation-states (Mohanty 2003, pp. 2-3).

Desert and Exile

Which is waster in the night, the desert or the dark?
Which is heavier on the sand, your feet or your fear?

(...)

Seven Fingers

Whenever she meets new people, she sinks
her small hands into the pockets of her jeans,
moves them
as if she's counting
some coins. (She's just lost seven
fingers in the war.) Then she
moves away,
back hunched,
tiny as a dwarf.

Mid-Term Test

When a drone follows you on your way to school, what is it doing:
a. It's keeping an eyes on you so you won't get hit by a car;
b. It's watching in case you lose your pocket money on the way;
c. It's countjng your steps to make sure you get your daily exercise; or
d. It's covering your head in case an F-16 drops a bomb on you by mistake.

In Gaza some of us cannot completely die.
Evey time a bomb falls every time a shrapnel hits our graves,
every time the rubble piles up on our heads,
we are awakened from our temporary death.

Borders are those invented lines drawn on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets. (p. 1)

They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last? (p. 8)

From Palestine A-Z