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Israel and Palestine in Context

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Columns

Obeidah the Cow
August 31, 2021
We had a cow, Obeidah the cow. She had big wide eyesbut the whole herd had big wide eyes. She was dappledbut the rest of them were dappled. She had two large uddersthat daily gave two or three buckets of milkbut every other cow in the herd had full uddersmy mom milked ...

A Small Eternity
August 17, 2021
Alone, soaring, my balcony a cloud in the sky’s gentle hold, I look out on a beach, a paradise where the green (whispering, roaring) has said all it has to say. A green that almost glows with pistachio-colored edges. A green that suckles, crawls, grows into bright apricot and ...

Innocent Despair
August 10, 2021
When separate from you my blood will ache.An unknown part of me will acheand I’ll try to kill it. Or grab it.The cell that misses you will throb in me,and I won’t be able to spot it,it changes position often,drags out the game,hurts my senses.My eyesight will worsen,my ...

Nakba
July 13, 2021
My mother is three years younger than Nakba.But she doesn’t believe in great powers.Twice a day she brings God down from his thronethen reconciles with himthrough the mediation of the bestrecorded Quranic recitations.And she can’t bear meek women.She never once mentioned ...

Carob Tree
June 29, 2021
I want to talk with you. It’s been a whilesince anyone’s talked with me, no one aroundsays to me the things I say to youwhen I’m sleepwalking.For example, yesterday at 3AM the soldiers rainedtear gas bombs on us, ten workerswho crammed in a walk-in refrigerator for ...

Belief
June 24, 2021
Not a main one,but each time I erase itI forget my hands over the objectswhose faithcompels their reappearanceon my knuckles. You are another kind of belief.It may dominate in the presence of the victim before meor reach out to the executioner in my heart.Each case the ...

Not Blind
June 22, 2021
No it isn’t. But lovetook one of my eyes for itself, lovehad vision before birth, diddiscuss with me the accuracyof what transpires in lenses. And then it went blind—slowlysoaked us up from behind a veil,and we couldn’t see it. A deaf air said to methat borders ...

Hand of War
June 17, 2021
We hold war’s hand,not so that it walks among us,but it is death,a bit tardy, we cajole it. We hold war’s hand,convinced that this is the last timeit waves catastrophe to us,since the road is a futile wall, and the country is searchingfor a photographof collective ...

Specific Details
June 15, 2021
Drowning in the time allotted for truce,we manufacture spare heartsin case we lose the hearts each of us has.We’re uncertain of life’s worthon the slipping edge,yet it seems hope can’t be shelled all at once.The minute details of war,poison gas we can’t thwartfrom ...

How I Kill Soldiers
June 08, 2021
Fady Joudah, the translator of the following poem, discusses it in an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read it here. Colonial soldiers,what have they been doingto my poetry all these yearswhen I could have easily killed themin my poemsas they’ve killed my ...

Dawn
June 01, 2021
Dawn broke on our heads.Endings were cut down to size.Our little ones’ feetrapidly turnedtoward the sky.Time set itself asideand places shut their eyes,like a child with wordsthat gray behind her lids.Ceilings tumbledwaterfalls of stone,and under the rubblethe last perceived ...