Archive for August 11th, 2020
Why Not DATE An “ARAB GIRL”? Again who is the “Arab” in your biased culture?
Posted on: August 11, 2020
Why Not DATE An “ARAB GIRL”?
Again who is the “Arab” in your biased culture?
From where is this girl? Has she any other identity?
DON’T DATE AN ARAB GIRL
She is not oppressed, like those caricatures on the news
Her long, flowing hair has not grown dark and strong to guide your eyes
To her curvy figure, which exists not to twirl into shapes
That she many enchant you to the beat of the group vigorous Dabke dance.
The “Arab” girl is born
With a fire in her belly and
Has inherited the strength of her fore-mothers.
Don’t date an Arab girl for she carries the Middle East on her shoulders
Every war and every invasion pushes her to tears
And she fights those tears back
To be replaced with a brave face for her brothers and sisters;
Starving, homeless and grieving.
Don’t date an Arab girl, she inspires revolutions with her passions and her protest
She will come home late: she stays amongst the dissenters
Until she can feel the winds of change.
Don’t fret, the Arab girl is protected from the cold
By the Keffiyeh (scarf) around her neck; she is the one sharing her last droplets of water
To quench the parched mouths, dried shouting for freedom in the midday sun.
Don’t date an Arab girl, she will fill your shelves and your mind with poets
Qabbani, Said and Mahfouz.
(And songs of Fairouz and the Ra7bani brothers)
The rivers Euphrates, the Jordan and the Nile run through her veins.
The spirit of Cairo, Algiers and the West Bank satiate her heart.
Don’t date an Arab girl, you will too often hear her sigh in longing
for the sound of the Muezzin in the morning, the taste of ‘real’ olives,
the smell of freshly baked bread and for the feel of the sun’s rays
Biting the nape of her neck in the late afternoon.
Do date her because you believe in her struggle, when you can match her passion
and feel her pain.
Date her because you can hold her as she wavers
under the load she carries
As the strength of her mother fails
For a short moment.
This poem was inspired by the Arab women I know and the Arab women I don’t know but still look up to.
Cover art is by Lalla Essaydi and the poem’s form was inspired by Charles Warnke and Adi Zarsadias
Final, Absolute, Real: Death in Gaza
Sherif Mktbi shared #FreePalestine
Nothing can moves you?
There is nothing more real than death.
Nothing more, true, than death.
It’s absolute. It’s final.
When death erases hundreds of lives.
Thousands.
Or even just 4 children.
The action that created death
Is as real, true and absolute
As death itself.
Yet even with this concrete truth.
This overwhelming evidence of atrocity.
It does not move you.
It does not fuel you with fire.
It does not fuel you, to act, with conviction.
This is not a “conflict”.
There is an oppressor.
There is an oppressed people.
The only conflict for you is this.
Will you be honest with yourself?
Will you be honest with others?
Will you share this truth, without fear?
Are you willing to take a side?
Whether it’s with the oppressor or the oppressed.
Let the world know.
I know, that my freedom as an individual,
Will not be complete, without the freedom,
Of the Palestinians.
Adonis Diaries 