Nakba is 75 years of what is happening to us, not what happened. Nothing remains. But in the traces– Everything remains.
There was no desert to bloom,
Not an empty land,
to be conquered and exploited,
in the name of God, 3,000 years ago.
Nakba
A cataclysm.
Upheaval. Grab your belongings–
What little you can carry
Take it and go. Run.
Nakba,
Translation: catastrophe, past tense.
but what about catastrophe
that still wounds
not a commemoration, a suffering endured.
Nakba,
The relentless marathon–
a constant Palestinian condition
Of upheaval.
Youth flung to uncharted waters
& the ghosts of our past never really gone–
haunt us.
Ritual recycled.
Every decade. Every day.
The Palestinians that survived,
still survive the insistence
the ones that were once here, remain there, past tense.
‘Once here.’
Nakba is 75 years of
what is happening to us
not what happened.
Nothing remains.
But in the traces–
Everything remains.
Of what was lost,
what we still hold on to.
