Tuesday 6 January 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.













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'

No comments: