A Pile of Emotions: A personal Note

 

Day 32: November 7

Pile of Emotions: A Personal Note

In the living room, I flip between channels, searching for something I'm not sure what. There's no hope of hearing any good news today. I mute the TV sound and turn my eyes toward the blue sky. I hear that sound again: a congested explosion. Once, twice, and three times. One of these sounds I heard was peculiar, loud, and not so congested. “That can’t be good.” I thought. A few minutes later, I read the breaking news: “Rockets have been launched into the Tel Aviv area.” I know. I just heard those explosions firsthand.

Human existence is so cynical, conflicting, and non-black or white. It is more complex. My heart aches for Gaza, yet the sound in the air communicates a different reality. I knew that rarely anyone dies from the rockets flying from Gaza.  My heart is in a place, and my ears force me to listen and remember the other side. Should I feel guilty for feeling or for lack thereof?

My son interrupts my thoughts of how, what, or for whom I should feel. He had a few minutes before his next online class. Schools, like everything else, have been heavily disrupted since the beginning of the war. Yesterday was a strike. Everything was closed. Life became a series of unexpected events and anticipated pessimism. Luckily, growing up in this place, this kind of existence is like second nature.   

I contemplate my feelings. They pile up on each other, and it's sometimes hard to distinguish which emotion surges within me. Sometimes, it hides behind the chaos of unpredictability. At other times, one emotion arises in response to the immediate image or news.

When I hear a child blackened by the rubble speaking of how a bomb hit their home, they describe what they saw: blown up limbs, burned body parts, and name the family members who just died in front of their eyes, their gazes sunk inward. I feel unbearable pain and deflect my fear and sadness with questions: Do they realize they should not be seeing these things? Will they ever learn about the immensity of this trauma?  Was their mental health a target, just like any other so-called ‘legitimate target’? What will become of these children when most people around the world are diagnosed with short memory, deliberate disassociation, or desensitized skin? The world will not remember nor understand these children in the future when they express – God forbid- their hatred of Israel. They were dehumanized, and then one day in the future, they will be condemned for lack of their humanity.

Yet I feel a tremendous sense of bliss because my sons are safe, and we get to see each other, embrace each other, and eat together. I open the tap of my sink. The water is running. I switch on the light, and there is electricity. I am grateful I still have my kitchen. Even if it is not clean, it is still intact. I am no longer at war with cleaning my kitchen. I am thinking of each element of life as bliss that can be taken away in one second as the war overturned everything for the people of Gaza, for me, and all Palestinians. I have feelings of gratitude mixed with sadness and guilt.

I am also worried, fearful, and concerned about our future as Palestinians. We are at a crossroads for our existence on this land. I worry about my sons. Will our turn come next? Every night, there are arrests across the West Bank. Every morning, there is news of young fighters killed in the West Bank. Will Israel annex the West Bank? There are news and images of distributing guns to settlers. Will the Palestinian Authority stay intact after this ‘second Nakba’? Such detrimental wars or events profoundly shift the grounds for everyone; it is only a matter of time before political earthquakes will follow, not just in the West Bank but also in Israel. What if the war slides into a regional one? As emotions rise, I slip into a trance of self-centered questions and political entertainment. I deflect my feelings under my own pile of rubble.

I receive a text message or a feed on social media. Grief sneaks out of the rubble. Tears escape my eyes.   Sahar AL-Masri, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, stands on a stage, her voice shaking with repressed tears. She describes life in Gaza. Her friend told her before he died, “In the war two years ago, a friend of mine died. Yesterday, another friend died. His death broke my back and devastated my spirit as if the sky was calling for friends to gather. As if the heavens are nothing without friends.” She reads a post from her other friend, Hiba, who also survived past wars.   Hiba wrote one day before her death: “Up there, we are building another city, where doctors have no patients and no spilled blood; teachers have no crowded classes; new families with no pain and sadness; reporters and journalists film the heaven and write about eternal love, and they are all from Gaza. In heaven, a new Gaza is forming, free from siege. In Gaza, I love drinking coffee, so I make my own there. I will continue to drink coffee because it is the warrior’s rest. I would love to invite you to have coffee with me, as I may not be able to stay with you."    

The people in Gaza keep saying they are exhausted from the siege and war, yet they wish for one of two things: a dignified life or death. In the ether, there is a sensation of an epic ending not so far in the distant future. Yet, my pile of emotions reminds me that life is not black and white; it is grey, with many colors in between, a combination of conflicting emotions. Somehow, there needs to be an understanding of and a reconciliation between them.