Memory

Detail from a 1980 cover of Palestinian Affairs magazine | Palestine Poster Project Archives

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All is disordered in my usurped Bedouin memory.
The young man who was electrocuted as he watered his field
was a potential groom for several little girls.
His pores were potential lanterns in the dark after that charge of light.
In all possibilities, memory betrays me.
Was he a groom or a deferred lantern or a green field?
My mother has a habit of squaring every detail in my memories.
The young man became a field, the green a lantern,
and electricity never once reached my village.

—Haifa

Read more from our series by Palestinian poets.

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Palestinian writer Sheikha Hlewa was born in Dhayl ’Araj, an unrecognized Bedouin village near Haifa. She is the author of three collections of short stories and one collection of poems, which have been translated into many languages. She is a lecturer in Arab feminism at Ben-Gurion University.