Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Our Country is a Graveyard
Welcome to Israel, happy American immigrants. The price Palestinians pay for your smiles is immense. Enjoy your life built upon destroyed villages and Palestinian graves! Hope the spirits don't rise up one day and make life too unpleasant for you.
Our Country is a Graveyard
by Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish
Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks
translated by Asad AbuKhalil
Every day we follow the same routine. We try to sleep from 6pm to 6am because there is no electricity. When we sleep we turn the radio up to cover the noise of the drones flying overhead and the bombs. Every day we go out looking for water, food and bread. I'm always buying batteries for the radio. We haven't had electricity for five days and fuel is low so we turn the generator on for two hours a day to charge up our mobile phones and lights. Hani Abu Komali in Gaza City in the Guardian's 'Everyone is looking for their relatives to kiss them goodbye'
