umkahlil

Comment left on Soumaya Ghannoushi's "Chasing A Ghost"

It is certainly the inalienable and non-negotiable individual right of our mothers and fathers and their descendents to return to the villages and towns in which many of their families have lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta has written about the feasibility of the Palestinians' return.

The desire to return home is not limited to Muslim Palestinians. Beloved poet and Palestinian patriot, Kamal Nasir, a Christian, assasinated by Ehud Barak in 1973, addresses exile and return in this excerpt from "Kamal Nasir's Last Poem,"

Tell my only one, for I love him,
That I have tasted the joy of giving
And my heart relishes the wounds of sacrifice.
There is nothing left for him
Save the sighs from my song...
Save the remnants of my lute
Lying piled and scattered in our house.
Tell my only one if he ever visits my grave
And yearns for my memory,
Tell him one day that I shall return
--to pick the fruits.



Do your worst.

Here we shall stay.

We guard the shade

of Olive and fig.

Tawfiq Zayyad