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After October 7, 2023

 

“How are you?”

I feel so stupid asking this every day

so I change the wording, the tone,

smile while I ask

(even though my face barely moves)

as if I try to convey some sort of positivity. 

What a farce!

 

I’m speechless

and the few words that I say besides the anemic

“How are you?”

are all the same:

Tragedy. 

Appalling.

Shocking.

Horrible.

Terrible.

Dire.

 

I’ve become a prostitute of language.

 

Shut up!

 

We should all bend our hearts more

cover our words with silence

and listen.

Listen

to the deep

broken breaths.

 

I try to escape,

go for a walk, run.

 

I’m one piece.

 

There are no parts,

no extremities, 

 

just

 

one

 

bulk

 

of concrete wall

that moves with others’ dreams.  

 

Don’t dare to ask

“What dreams?”

 

Ask:

 

“How to dream if you

    don’t know if

    you’re dead or alive?”

 

At some point, rockets make no sound.

 

It’s the buzzing of wasps inside your brain

that kills you. 

 

It’s the scream you can’t make,

the most painful and loudest.

 

It’s by fiercely moving your toes,

grinding your teeth,

clasping your fists,

biting your tongue

that you feel alive

just to fall into a state of numbness:

   a faceless mannequin staring at a wall.

 

And you do it again

and again

and again

 

and

 

again. 

 

Because falling into a state of numbness,

being a faceless mannequin staring at a wall

is the only thing you’re good at right now. 

 

“I just want the world to see this from a human eye,”

my friend pleaded over the phone. 

 

His last words sucked all the air left in the room

while a darnel crept up my neck.

 

What have we become?

 

I dwell in ungrateful tears.

My bitter wrath hardly lights a match. 

Hopelessness wears a plastic crown

and sits by my side. 

 

What have we become?

 

Humanity hurts me. Deeply

hurts

like hugging my loved one

wrapped in barbed wire.

 

Every pore bleeds

and I have no skin.

 

What have we become?

 

I need to feel everything.

I can’t feel anything.

 

     Period. 

offering

This poem was written in December 2023 in Amman, during my evacuation period after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. It started as an attempt to fight my self-judgment, and the sense of powerlessness, pain, and frustration I felt during those months. I felt so empty and alienated from humanity. Shaken by the heinous situation, I saw myself as an answering machine, repeating the same thing over and over again when talking to friends and colleagues in Israel and Palestine: “How are you?”; such a mundane greeting seemed completely absurd in those circumstances. Here I grief, I mourn, I condemn, I pray, and especially, I hold close to my heart and honor special people who, with their relentless courage and sumud, showed me the value of caring and loving each other amid the war, including by graciously asking “how are you?”