Close your eyes, think of the things you love the most. What do you see?
Close your eyes again, imagine you are in a foreign land, away from your culture and society. In a land where you are welcomed with confetti and warm towels.
And do it again, this time imagine you are born in that foreign land. You see yourself waking up every morning, making food, going to work and then returning home after a long tiring day.
One day. Two days. Three days. Four days.
And the days keep passing, and all of a sudden you start hearing whispers as you walk down the road.
As you get on the bus,
As you go on a restaurant for a date,
As you walk in the crosswalk.
Without realising when and how,
You are gagged, with a 1000 dollar price in your head,
And thrown into a cellar that nobody cares enough to pass by.
You ask yourself why,
You go to court,
You get declined for any kind of justice.
You go back to your friendly, alone, cellar.
And you wonder why.
Months and seasons,
Winter and summer passes,
Yet no words from the outside world,
Nobody coming forward to rescue you,
You see more people entering the cell units, they call it open-air prison.
They have this unwavering eerie similarity too. Afterall, you’re brothers of the same land.
Same things happen with them, some die out of despair and loneliness, some sit in their spot for the rest of their lives, and you still wonder,
and wonder, and wonder.
Until one of you is dead and still nobody comes forward.
The dead body is carried right past you, while you feel like an outcast from the world you helped to build.
You feel helpless and you also reside in quiet evenings and tearless nights. You become quiet.
There's no words or any kind of indiscreet reply to the guards, they stop giving you food, you accept.
They take you to court, you go to the court.
You do whatever they ask you to do, still without realising what you have done to be treated this way.
Quite suddenly, one day, someone comes in, not the guards but one outsider.
She looks at everyone, with eyes full of pity and as she opens her mouth, kindness flows through it. She takes turns talking with everybody. She is not a doctor, you are perfectly sure. She comes near you, as most of them have already stopped talking and responding.
She introduces herself as hope. She asks you if you have eaten, she barely hears you whisper, but she does. She sits on the floor, with her hand in her lap. She looks at you intently, as you break the silence and ask her, 'why?'. She looks at you with the same pity, you think she didn't understand you, but she did. She nodded to make sure she did.
She looked at you intently for a while. In her eyes, there was the same pity, concern, grief and you are mistaken for sure, but admiration.
She snaps out as she rummages through her bag and Brings out a small mirror. She holds it in front of you and asks you to look.
You look the same, except there are dark marks under your eyes, your hair has lost its volume; your skin has sunken and your eyes; They have lost their colour. Well how will they burn bright when for the last 75 years all you have done is ask for basic human rights and you've been declined.
Not once. Not twice. But 75 times.
Writing this a year back seemed like a fruitless rant in my notes app about all the things wrong about the world, about all the injustice to people just because of their colour, race and religion. Their oppression and their helplessness against people with more power seemed like a dehumanising terror in my 17 year old mind until today we see history repeat for reasons that are nothing but excuses for genocide and ethic cleansing, for lives taken apart by mere greed and injustice.
Palestine will not go unheard of. People of Palestine will not die without us raising our voices for them. From River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.
My heart goes to the people of palestines and all other war and conflict zones.we want to make it a better place for our children And our children's children so that they know it's a better world for them and think if they can make it a better place. May Allah bless us all.