Mornings In Jenin Quotes

أيا كان شعورك , اكبتيه في داخلك

We come from the land, give our love and labor to her, and she nurtures us in return. When we die, we return to the land. In a way, she owns us. Palestine owns us and we belong to her

لقد وُلدتِ لاجئة، ولكن أعدكِ بأني سوف أموت إذا كان لابُد لي من ذلك حتى لا تموتي وأنتِ لاجئة.

أنتِ, يا عزيزتي .. لستِ زهرة;فالزهرة شيء يزهر يوماُ ويذبل في اليوم التالي.أنتِ النبض في قلبي

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.

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.

ما أعجب الأشياء التي نفكر فيها في تلك المساحة بين الحياة و الموت ..

The land and everything on it can be taken away, but no one can take away your knowledge or the degrees you earn

لا تسمح لهم أبدًا بأن يعلموا أنهم قادرون على إيذائك !

I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.

كيف يمكن ألا يستطيع الإنسان أن يسير إلى ملكه الخاص؟ أن يزور قبر زوجته؟ أن يأكل ثمار أربعين جيلاً من كدح أسلافه من دون أن يعاقب بالموت رمياً بالرصاص؟ على نحو ما، لم يكن هذا السؤال الفجّ القاسي قد نفذ سابقاً إلي وعي اللاجئين الذين شوشتهم أبدية الانتظار، معلقين آمالهم على قرارات دولية نظرية

Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.

في يوم ما، سوف أفقد كل شيء وكل أحد

the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.

في محنة تاريخ دُفن حيّاً، سقط العام 1948 في فلسطين من الرُزنامة إلى المنفى، متوقفّاً عن حساب العدّ السائر للأيام والشهور والسنوات، ليصبح بدلاً من ذلك ضباباً لا نهاية له!

لا أحد يتكلم، وكأن الكلام مجرَّد الكلام سيؤكَّد الحقيقة المُرَّة، وكأن الصمت يحمل احتمال أن يكون كل ذلك مجرَّد كابوس.

Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell.

Love cannot reconcile with deception

Always" is a good word to believe in.

For I'll keep my humanity, though I did not keep my promises. ... and Love shall not be wrested from my veins.

جاء الموت ليشابه الحياة والحياة لتشبه الموت

I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.

إن لحظة واحدة لَيُمكنُها أن تسحق دماغاً وتُغير مجرى الحياة، مسار التاريخ.

قال لي والدي ذات مرة: " لقد سمّيناك آمال بالألف الممدودة؛ لأن الاسم بالهمزة يعني أملا واحدا فقط،أمنية واحدة،أنتِ أكثر من ذلك بكثير! وضعنا كل آمالنا فيكِ! آمال،بالألف الممدودة،تعني:الآمال، الأحلام،كثيرا منها ".

An instant can crush a brain and change the course of life, the course of history.

We were existing somewhere between life and death, with neither accepting us fully.

They had bombed and burned,killed and maimed,plundered and looted.Now they had come to claim the land.

The roots of our grief coil so deeply into loss that death has come to live with us like a family member who makes you happy by avoiding you, but who is still one of the family. Our anger is a rage that Westerners cannot understand. Our sadness can make the stones weep. And the way we love is no exception

استغرب كيف تتحول الأشياء الضعيفة، حتى الكلمات إلى أشياء شريرة، من دون رحمة، من أجل بلوغ السلطة على الرغم من المنطق والتاريخ.

And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. "Never let them know they hurt you" was their creed

يمكنني العيش في عالم الماء الهادئ، حيث لاتُسمع صرخات ولا أصوات إطلاق نار، وحيث لاتشتم رائحة الموت

Under the broken promises of superpowers and under the worlds indifference to spilled Arab blood.

How can one find the first moment of love? When,in what instant, does the night’s dark sky become blue?

A persistent breeze lifted the thin curtains, fluttering a few moments of tranquility into the turbulent day.

الأنغام الموسيقية الناعمة للغة العربية رقصت في داخلي حالما سمعت أصوات لغة أمي.

You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.

هل للكلمات أن تُلغي ضخامة الحياة والموت لتُقرَّبهما، الواحد من نقيضِه إلى هذه الدرجة؟

Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. 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?

It is the kind of love you can know only if you have felt the intense hunger that makes your body eat itself at night. The kind you know only after life shields you from falling bombs or bullets passing through your body. It is the love that dives naked toward infinity’s reach. I think it is where God lives.

ما أسرع مرور الوقت عندما يكونان معاً ! ما أبطأه عندما يفترقان!.

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.

Thank you,’ I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in the eyes that find me pretty”; “May Allah never deny your prayer”; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere “thank you” an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful.” (169).

love is what we are about, my darling," she says. "Not even in death has our love faded, for I live in your veins.

لا أحد يمكنه إستملاك شجرة. يمكنها أن تنتمي إليك، كما يمكنك أن تنتمي إليها. نحن نأتي من أمنا الأرض، نمنحها حبّنا وجهدنا،وهي في المقابل تُغذِّينا، وعندما نموت نعود إلى الأرض. بطريقة ما، الأرض تمتلكنا.. فلسطين تمتلكنا،نحن ننتمي إليها!

I watch life trickle from the bullet wound of a sixteen-year-old "example" and marvel how things weak, even words, will turn vicious and merciless to gain power,despite reason or history

وجدت الصلابة تربة خصبة في قلوب الفلسطينيين, وبذرت بذور المقاومة ونَمَتْ تحت جلودهم.أصبحت القدرة على الاحتمال السمةَ المميزة لمجتمع اللاجئين,لكنهم دفعوا الثمن غالياً ... لقد ضحُّوا برقَّة الإحساس. تعلَّموا أن يحتفلوا بالاستشهاد, فالاستشهاد وحده هو الذي يقدَّم الحرية.

The soldiers in my life had raised the bar for bad guys.

I loved her in spite of myself. I loved her immeasurably. Infinitely. And I feared that love as much as I feared my own fury at the world.

في محنة تاريخ دُفن حياً, سقط العام 1948 في فلسطين من الرزنامة إلى المنفى متوقفاً عن حساب العد السائر للأيام والشهور والسنوات, ليصبح بدلا من ذلك ضبابياً لا نهاية له! الشهور الاثنا عشر لتلك السنة أعادت ترتيب نفسها، والتفَّت كالدوامة بلا هدف في قلب فلسطين!

رابطتُنا كانت فلسطين، وكانت لغة قمنا بتفكيكها لنشيَّد وطناً.

I love you as big as the ocean and all its fishes. As big as the sky and all its birds. As big as the earth and all her trees.

لقد صدم من افتقار الموت إلى الدراما. من كونه أمرا واقعيا. من سلطته الهادئة

He feared love more than he feared death. Because, for the hated and pursued, the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.

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?

كنت امرأة قليلة الكلام و بلا أصدقاء. كنت ((إيمي)). اسم بلا معنى. آمال مفرَغة من الأمل. اللغة العملية فقط كان بإمكانها اجتيازُ الغصَّة التي صنعها الحب الذي يتلوى في رماد القصة التي كادت أت تكون. و على كل حال، هل ثمة أي كلمات يمكنها استعادة مستقبَل حُرم زمنَه؟

سرعان ما ظهر من الرسم وجه لا ينطفئ, عيناه الواسعتان اللتان تبدوان أكبر من الحياة , تحدقان من تحت كوفية ملفوفة بإحكام حول العام 1948 الذي توقف عنده المستقبل , نحو حرية الموت المتحدي الذي ينفجر في كومة قذرة من المجد.

The bond we forged was molded from an unspoken commitment to our collective survival. It reached through history, straddled continents, spanned wars, and held our collective and individual tragedies and triumphs. It was girlhood letters or a pot of stuffed grape leaves. Our bond was Palestine. It was a language we dismantled to construct a home.

نحن نأتي من أمّنا الأرض، نمنحها حبّنا وجهدنا، وهي، في المقابل، تُغذّينا. وعندما نموت نعود إلى الأرض؛ بطريقة ما، الأرض تمتلكنا.

كنت أبدأ حياة جديدة. و لكن, مثل الندبة التي أتحسسها بيَدي, لا يزال الماضي يلازمني.

Our wants were simple, but they could not have been more complicated.

I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity...On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person who tried to jump and every body they pulled from the rubble. And I saw myself as I was never allowed to be, consoled, understood, and loved.

فى اثناء محاولتى الاحتفاظ بتوازن مشيتى فى حياة اهتزت بعدم اليقين تعلمت المسالمة مع الحاضر من طريق قطع خيوط حب الماضى من دون دراية منى حيث كبرت فى اجواء من الأحلام المرتجلة و اشواق وطنية مجردة كل شئ بدا مؤقتْا بالنسبة إلى , لا يمكن النظر إلى اى شئ على انه باقِِ

She loved beyond measure, 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,” I said. Sorrow gave Dalia an iron gift. Behind that hard shelter, she loved boundlessly in the distance and privacy of her solitude, safe from the tragic rains of her fate.

لو لم أكن أعرف الشهامة الدائمة لدى الناس في المخيم، لخَشيتُ أن أكون هناك وحدي بعد حلول الظلام.

Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?

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

When I was a child, Haj Salem told me that answers can be found in the sky if you look long and hard enough.

How fate is stubborn and holds to habit.

Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.

وضعت ابنة أخي على صدر أُمها النائمة و راقبت أخي؛ نظراته المشحونة بالعاطفة تترجَّح بين الزوجة و الابنة. في مخيم اللاجئين الذي ستسمِّيه إسرائيل ((أرض خصبة للإرهابيين)) و ((وكر فاسِد للإرهاب)), كنتُ شاهدة على حبٍّ يتضاءل أمامه الوجود.

عزيزتي آمال ،بالألف الممدودة الحاملة للأمل. في بعض الأحيان يعبق الهواء بتنهدات الذاكرة، بنسيم من ريح الزيتون من شعر المحبوبة،في بعض الأحيان يحمل صمت الأحلام الميتة،في بعض الأحيان يكون الزمنجامدا مثل جثة تستلقي معي في سريري. و هناك أنام ، في انتظار الشيء المشرف،كي ياتي من تلقاء ذاته.سأبقي على إنسانيتي، على الرغم من أني لم أفِ بوعودي. و لن يُنتزع الحب من عروقي.

But in our camp, his story was everyone’s story, a single tale of dispossession, of being stripped to the bones of one’s humanity, of being dumped like rubbish into refugee camps unfit for rats. Of being left without rights, home, or nation while the world turned its back to watch or cheer the jubilation of the usurpers proclaiming a new state they called Israel.

لقد أرسخت تلك الأيام نفسَها في ذاكرتي كذرّات غبار دموي،مع رائحة كريهة لكائنات متعفنة وتربة محروقة.لقد انتقلنا،ولكن إلى لا مكان. نظرنا،ولكنّ الواقع أغشى على أبصارنا.لقد شهقنا وزفرنا غبار الأشلاء فلم نتنفّس.وبينما أصبح الحشد أكبر، كنت أنا أراقب من فوق السطح في ارتباكي الشخصي.كنا لاجئين، جميعنا.

Still, the refugee camp of Jenin remained as it had been, a one-square-mile patch of earth, excised from time and imprisoned in that endless year of 1948

Praise be to Him who brings our loved ones home from el ghurba (exile)

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?

تميل السماء علي أضلاعي المكسورة و أنا أتصور ما لا يمكن تصوره: ذلك الأب, الرجل الذي ظننت أنه لا يموت, مات

Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.

My body is stunned by the dialects of torture.

We stood crying, Huda with tears, I with my mother's silence and taut jaw. We were enfolded in each other like the last word of an epic poem we had never imagined would end. A childhood story we had lived together line by line, hand in hand, was ending and we knew it would close the moment we unraveled our arms.

In the sorrow of a history buried alive, the year 1948 in Palestine fell from the calendar into exile, ceasing to reckon the marching count of days, months, and years, instead becoming an infinite mist of one moment in history.

I placed my niece at her sleeping mother's breast and watched my brother, turgid with affection, look back and forth from his wife and to his newborn daughter. In that refugee camp, which Israel would label a "breeding ground of terrorists" and "a festering den of terror," I bore witness to a love that dwarfed immensity itself.

Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem

It has been conquered, razed, and rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood.

He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. 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 Palestines earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the ottomans, then sold them as their own "ancient Jewish artifacts." They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of watermelons and said, "Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges." But those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers perfecting the art of citrus growing.

He took in a premeditated breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled into the nye at his lips, playing a new tune. It was not the sad music of waiting. Nor was it a melody of his heritage. It was a call to the earth. To Allah. To the country within him.

No one spoke much, as if to speak was to affirm reality. To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was merely a nightmare. The silence reached up to the cathedral ceiling and cluttered there, echoing sadness an unseen mayhem, as if too many souls were rising at once. We were existing somewhere between life and death, with neither accepting us fully.

For us, fear comes where terror comes to others because we are anesthetized to the guns constantly pointed at us. And the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme. [...] Our sadness can make the stones weep. And the way we love is no exception.

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.

Dr. Shammaa’s story was a dreadful one and her voice broke as she told it. “I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames,” she said. “When I took them out half an hour later, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smouldered for hours.” Next morning, Amal Shammaa took the tiny corpses out of the mortuary for burial. To her horror, they again burst into flames.

Amal, I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell. I see your confusion. Consider fear. For us, fear comes where terror comes to others because we are anesthetized to the guns constantly pointed at us. And the terror we have known is something few Westerners ever will. Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our own emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.

كنا، في مكتب ((آري)) ، ثلاثةَ أجيال تجاذبت معاً بفعل شبكة متصلة لقصة محبوسة أربَكها القدَر، و لكنها تجمعَّت في تلك اللحظة لتُطالب بأن تُحكى. قصة عائلة في قرية مغمورة، زارها ذات يوم تاريخٌ لم يكن تاريخها، و علِقت إلى الأبد في ذلك الشوق الرابط بين الجذور و التربة. كانت حكايةَ حرب، و نارَها المثيرة للقُشَعريرة، و الحارقة، و المثيرة للقشعريرة مجدَّداً. حكاية حبٍّ صاخب، و انتحاريٍّ يفجِّر نفسَه. حكاية فتاة فرَّت من مصيرها لتصبح كلمة، اسماً تلاشى معناه. حكاية أطفال كبروا يغربلون الجنون ليعثروا على مغزاهم. حكاية حقيقةٍ شقَّت طريقها عبر الأكاذيب لكي تبرز من شقٍّ، من ندبةٍ في وجه رجل ما.

How does a part of the world leave the world? How can wetness leave water? … What hurts you, blesses you … Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest. I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover on your heart, and there’s no fixing that. Are these enough words, or shall I squeeze more juice from this?

Though they lived with the indignities of dispossession and military occupation, Huda sang with an unassailable freedom that comes only to those with unwavering faith.

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.

On September 16, in defiance of the cease-fire, Ariel Sharon’s army circled the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where Fatima and Falasteen slept defenselessly without Yousef. Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints, barring the exit of refugees, and allowed their Lebanese Phalange allies into the camp. Israeli soldiers, perched on rooftops, watched through their binoculars during the day and at night lit the sky with flares to guide the path of the Phalange, who went from shelter to shelter in the refugee camps. Two days later, the first western journalists entered the camp and bore witness. 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. Each corridor through the rubble produced more bodies. The patients at the Palestinian hospital had disappeared after gunmen ordered the doctors to leave. Everywhere, we found signs of hastily dug mass graves. Even while we were there, amid the evidence of such savagery, we could see the Israelis watching us. From the top of the tower block to the west, we could see them staring at us through field-glasses, scanning back and forth across the streets of corpses, the lenses of the binoculars sometimes flashing in the sun as their gaze ranged through the camp. Loren Jenkins [of the Washington Post] cursed a lot. Jenkins immediately realized that the Israeli defense minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. “Sharon!” he shouted. “That fucker [Ariel] Sharon! This is Deir Yassin all over again.

Thank you,” I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in your eyes that find me pretty”; “May God extend your life”; “May Allah never deny your prayer”; “May the next meal you cook for us be in celebration of your son’s wedding . . . of your daughter’s graduation . . . your mother’s recovery”; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere “thank you” an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful. I gazed at the cityscape. Ribbons of concrete and asphalt stretched and looped under more cars than I had ever seen.

I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conqured, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiary in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.