Suheir Hammad Quotes

I've read too many books to believe what I am told.

Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.

War and tooth enameled salted lemon childhoods All colors run, none of us solid Don't look for shadow behind me I carry it within I live cycles of light and darkness

a woman will tell you every home she has ever inhabited has been broken into starting with her body

... in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.

i cried when i saw those buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart.

Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician. Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there. Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16. A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death. A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you. Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water. And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.

The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.

I understand now my father really thought he was doing me good. Education means a lot to Palestinians. We’ve become some of the most educated people in the world through our diaspora. We’ve had to be. When you ain’t got land, your degree may be your only solid ground. May father felt (feels) that being a doctor would give me security. How can I explain that I’m not safe from anything if I don’t write?

What I Will by Suheir Hammad I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched. I will not dance to your drummed up war. I will not pop spin break for you. I will not hate for you or even hate you. I will not kill for you. Especially I will not die for you. I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you nor dance to bombs because everyone else is dancing. Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right not collateral or casual. I will not forget where I come from. I will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved near and our chanting will be dancing. Our humming will be drumming. I will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath.

There is life here. Anyone hearing this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure. And if there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice. After the rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen, affirm life. affirm life. We got to carry each other now. You are either with life, or against it. Affirm life.

cause after politics economics war & illness, we still break each other’s hearts - search mercy, aim compassion.

one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers. one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in. one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed. one more person assume they know me, or that i represent a people. or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as a flag and words on a page.

There is life here. Anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure. And if there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and justice after the rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has risen. Affirm life. Affirm life. We got to carry each other now. You’re either with life or against it. Affirm life.

darkest before the dawn. it will get darker. be light.