kissed By God
Kissed by God
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| Handala: a symbol fit for all refugees |
Standing in what was once home, she
wanted to have a last look at the apartment and find something, a souvenir to
take back with her from her childhood home.
Like a clogged artery, the corridor connecting the chambers was long and narrow. Barely two people could walk through it. Her room, at one end of the corridor, was the smallest. The red curtains are still drooping; a handmade mirror is fixed on the door next to a hand-painted hanger. The rest of the room was empty. Small but cozy, small places never bothered her. She stared at herself in the mirror. The smell of mold hitting her nose made her realize for the first time the relative poverty she grew up in.
Now, she understands poverty more because she has a bigger and warmer home, larger rooms, and non-moldy walls. But she understood love, gratitude, and
sacrifice when she felt the bone simmering cold of brick walls and leaky roofs
of a refugee camp when she heard stories of sleepless nights as rain pounded
the zinc roofs, the numb toes.
Only those kissed by God can achieve
what the first and second generations of Palestinian refugees have achieved. Our
parents and grandparents were affluent; they owned land and were connected to
its natural cycle and wisdom. They were educated; they spoke both the language
of the land and the languages of the world and were immersed in the cultural
context of the region, a cultural hub for the Arab world. And in one day, it
was all gone.
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tents, they began to build a reminiscence of what was. UN tents became brick walls, cultural hubs became humble youth centers, education became a dream, culture became inheritance, and wisdom became the sacrifice.
Only because our grandparents and parents
provided the essentials that the third generation could live in relative
poverty, and thus we have time to dream, fight for freedom, and ask for a
future. They were the stepping stone between what was and what could be; an
absolute sacrificial existence.
The material world is rebuilt, and culture is reconstructed. Education, dreams, and wisdom all became different for the third generation. But who said that victory or wealth lies in the material realm?
The original wounding is where the heaviest price of war lies. The
initial wound was never healed. The real loss is the loss of caring and heart.
In times of war, there is little room for attention or feeling. Our ancestors have received non, and thus, non have we received. How can anyone be a supportive
parent in times of war where toughness becomes almost a necessity?
During and after war, arid hearts grow a fence deep as a cactus. Even if there is a flower, it is surrounded by
thorns. Wars are a massive blow to the balance of the human experience; it tilts
the scale towards harshness. Therefore, the third generation of refugees is
blinded by these thorns, lost in space and time.
We are blind because we barely
noticed the miracle that was in the making of our lives. We brushed that
painful history behind us because we didn’t understand their sacrificial
existence. Our parents didn’t want us to see the pain and the misery they grew
up in. Their expression of love was fenced with thorns. We need to heal our
numbness and gain insight.
True transcendence, true victory is
ushered only when the reality is faced, when these fences are softened, these
thorns clipped, and the heart is nourished. Only a good stand in the past could
make us see how it really was. A good
look in the mirror is needed to achieve the dream of a better future.
Braided together are the personal
wounding and the political wounding. Ruthlessly man uses war to acquire wealth
and resources. Affluence and war are the karma between the west and the east;
weapon factories in western towns and stories of misery in eastern towns.
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