Is this a historical fiction about a major event? Is this a diary entry? Is this a letter? Is this a stream of consciousness? I am not entirely sure. But sometimes, I have trouble differentiating between the seeds of chamomile and anise. They are both sitting there in a glass jar that was previously used for making pickles. They are clearly different in shape and smell. Maybe it is me being outside my country and away from that corner cabin with glass jars that is making me pause for a second before picking up the right transparent pack of either chamomile or anise that I bought from back home. Organic here gives me the feeling of unnatural products. Isn’t the word product itself an implication of the unnatural. For me, organic is stealing the green almonds from trees along the way while leaving school or picking up wild thyme in the mountains while unconsciously picking some thorns as well. Inorganic but quite interesting here, is how two flashing lights of pink and green shifting upwards and downwards and illuminating a purely dark pitch in my university’s campus, are actually two dogs jumping with lit collars. I would assume here, readers would say how is that inorganic. What is organic for dogs back home is for them to be naturally stray dogs running everywhere, especially around schools for some reason which leads to them being killed. This might bring feelings of catharsis for some, yet when compared to the killing of Palestinians by the IOF (“Israeli” Occupation Forces), the killing of dogs becomes inanimate and even the killing of humans becomes so for a fraction of a second. 

In a chapter of Ian McEwan’s Atonement that I read last week; I was face to face with the word panzer. A normal word isn’t it. Some might have read it in books of historical glories, or some might have used it as a cheat word in the video game Counterstrike, which I actually did. What is different though, is the fact that this word reminds me of the first time I saw a panzer. I did not need to move much to see it. We were all pushing each other towards the window while my mum was pushing us away from the window. It was during the Invasion of Ramallah in 2002. I was six years old. The contrast of the dark olive color of the panzer stood out against the worn-out beige colors of the ancient houses behind it. Is this a fact, or is this my truth? If you try and research, you might see that the “Israeli” tanks have a variety of colors ranging from olive to beige to grey. You will also find out that the Ramallah Invasion did take place. What I saw though was dark olive and what my brother saw was blue. He is younger than me. I proceeded to tell him it was dark olive and I believed he was just looking at the sky. I know he didn’t believe me until he grew up and saw the tanks again and again. It was his truth. If I were the only remaining witness though, he would have believed me right away. If he was the only witness, would have people believed him? It is hard to take someone else’s truth as fact, especially if they are far from the environment of the incident. How can anyone be sure that the Mossad really tried to murder Edward Said in his American University office? It simply makes you on alert. Watching the sky and looking at the best angles of high buildings while promenading in the British cold. You never know when a real-life panopticon is there. 

Well, maybe the fact that I am writing this while sitting next to a graveyard in a city I am not familiar with gazing at a semi-frozen lake says something about self-serving writing. I was taught not to use the word “something” in an academic text, but this is not it. I would rather this graveyard turn into a grape yard where I can naturally steal the grape leaves to make one of my favorite traditional Palestinian dishes and simply think of the wine those grapes will make. Are you wondering whether a Muslim drinks wine. Well, I am a Palestinian Christian whose capital city is Jerusalem, the holiest city in the world which makes me think that the best tracing would be that of capitals. Halbwachs’ ‘The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land’ made me think of tracing my capital city. During easter every year, there is what we call in Arabic, “The trail of the cross”. I have no idea what it is translated to in English. It consists of walking barefoot along the route that Jesus walked through awaiting his crucifixion which leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; one of my favorite churches that has a spot where they say if you stand on it, then you’re in the middle of the entire world. This is already a first step in a real-life tracing. It is rare that I can visit it though, since we are under the rule of the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) and require permits to visit our capital. 

How can I write a voice in the archive? I guess I just did. For a split second, I saw this as a pure fragmentation where it cannot be used as Derrida explains “a power for the future”. Though as Ella describes in Atonement “Listening for the holes”, is what I did. You can listen to the holes of homes caused by the IOF’s rockets to prevent Palestinians from ever returning to their houses. The holes would represent the fragmentation. Try falling from the first hole, which is well-hidden from any marcher over the grounds of those massacred villages, down to the first floor and boom through another hole leading to the middle of the common room of the ground floor. If you are not dead, you can listen to the holes. 

It ought to be the only oxymoron of an outcome

To be obscurely offered under occupation.

February 2021.