Pandora's Box: My baby shot me down

We could have met. I lived around the corner. I used to go and buy bagels and milk in the square every morning. My place was a step from the square before I decided to move to another country. At night the square would always very lively and loud. Luckily I was on the top floor. I wouldn’t care about noise. My brain wouldn’t be sensitive about sound and light still.  In that city people learned to ignore the noise. In fact we used it to differentiate necessary and unnecessary ones.  The front windows faced the street while the back ones and the terrace looked at the Bosphorus. 

I never thought I’d stare for months at my windows from the other side; from a single room at the hospital. I knew there are, or now were as they don’t exist anymore, two hospitals at my street; a German and a public one just next to my building.  Both were always busy and the Emergency was just under my terrace. I would hear the noise of it now and then and rarely the crying of people after losing a relative. 

I never knew there was a police station next to the square behind the church. Never needed a police and screening my mind into these happy days I rarely saw any around. There were a few late restaurants and off-liners always open late at the square. I remember I went with friends after a long going out night to eat almost early morning. There would be lots of drunken people so perhaps police were around so safety I thought. 

The police never bothered me.  Instead I felt safer than seeing a regular drunk man at a dark street at night.  You could have been there at one of these nights having a Kebab. Who knows? But even if you haven’t saw me on a Kebab house on the square now you sure remember me. Are you an amateur or did you meant to? Did you aim at me or on the crowd? If so explain the drive to do it. Have you carried me to the ambulance? Do you follow me on my media? Are you a Facebook friend on my list? Do you feel guilty? Do you have pain? Do you still do the same job?   

I think of you a lot. With each hit of headache I have. I want to forgive you if you can forgive yourself. I cannot forgive a generation of ignorance ruling the entire world and me being lost inside it. But you must know that is it only love that can heal our scars. 

Pandora's Box: Teenage

Don't ask me how teenage is like... all I had is news of Palestine being bombed everyday and another city lost then Gulf War 1&2 and people escaping to no land... this is my childhood..

I would get back from elementary school everyday back home with my sister to found about my mother watching the television and crying. I was too young to understand why. She would shut down the television to make sure my sister and me wouldn’t see the news. In Jordan the TV controlled by the government for people to watch to see and what to not to see but still they would announce all the news about Gulf War. My mother had Iraqi friends and others living and working in Iraq. It was a very rich and successful country that all Arabs would go to work and send money to their family. An Egyptian friend of my mother would visit us going back for his vacation from Baghdad to Cairo and bring us lots of presents. The taste of dates from Iraq is still above my tongue whenever I think about those days. 

Iraq was not only full of ancient history, water and food not also oil. It would provide free oil to Jordan too. Oil was the main reason why the entire history and its people were destroyed forever. One day my mother Egyptian friend visits us in Jordan for the last time. He has no presents for us this time. He was escaping. It was the 1^st Gulf War. 

I was 13 years old. One day around midnight I heard the ululation around coming from the neighbours. We went out to check what was happening. It wasn’t a wedding. All women were on the roof of their houses celebrating. It was the first time ever Israeli was under attack since it was establishing a country to steel the land of Palestinian for 42 years. Iraq sent 1 or 2 rockets to Israel and probably wounded no one. Next day Iraq was occupied by America and lost more than 2.4 million civilians in the streets. The first thing they did was to bomb their communication nets even the phones so the country wasn’t able to communicate with the rest of the world. 

As a child I remember in Jordan I saw beggar Iraqi’s in city centre. Jordan was the poorest country in the Middle East supported by Iraq with free oil once upon a time. 

 

Don't ask me about future..

Pandora's Box: Dessert

Time, place, reason, where, why, when… water!

A few days passed, I guess, or maybe I just slept?! For a few minutes, hours or days.

I do not want to stay at the intensive room. Why I'm here?! Was I in a coma? How long? Some people are up actually. Making noises or coughing some is shouting. Some people are entering and exiting the room.

Hold on!

That women sitting next to my bed all day! I looked again! That is my mother!

My mouth is as dry like the dessert!

I looked inside her eyes. I didn’t look into anyone’s eyes until then it seems. I smiled with tears flowing down my chin.

She stood up from a plastic chair two steps away from my bed, walked to me and cried. ‘Mama’ she said.

Everything is green. I’m wearing a green cloth. Mom is wearing greens on her cloth. White cloves. Everyone coming inside the room is wearing greens and white gloves. The bins, the bed covers, the water bottles are green. ‘Mama! Water!’ Did I say that? Now since I’m writing these lines I know I did not. I looked at the green bottles and showed my lips. How? I have no memory of a word I said then. My right arm couldn't move but I wouldn't know then. My left arm was connected to serums to the bed. Perhaps I tried to lick my lips. She knew. I didn't have to tell much. She put a piece of cotton inside the water. Squeezed it then started to drop of water around my lips. It was such a relief! I was singing in my head.  (Arabic) ‘See how much the sea is big… I love you more than that…’ I love you mother.  (Arabic)

Nakba 71

My mother is 74 years old born at Lydda, Palestine in 1945. She became a refugee at 3 years old. Her father, my grandfather was a Palestine Traffic Police Officer under the English mandate of Palestine. One day he, Nabeel Abu Ghosh, came home early from work; the family had to leave. 'By evening, approximately 35,000 Palestinian Arabs had left Lydda in a long column, marching past the Ben Shemen youth village and disappearing into the east. Zionism had obliterated the city of Lydda. Lydda is the black box of Zionism.' The last apostrophe line is also within the text of 'Lydda, 1948' written by Ari Shavit. My mother is older than this made-up country and this fake humanity! My grandfather, may he rest in peace, never left the refugee camp in Jordan and kept the keys to our house. My mother went to visit and to get her birth certificate before Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967 and wanted to visit the home where she was born at but the settlers didn't let her enter to have a quick look. The English Police Officers under the English Mandate in 1948 were flown back to England while the Arab Police Officers were left to walk, and they eventually ended up in refugee camps in Jordan

80s

she is driving a blue car
she is wearing skinny blue jeans
short blond hair she got
she crossed the borders and the seas
a gang of 3 chicks
she got a freezer full of peaches on the back
she got a plan for the unknown
she lost the way of the desert road
she parked the car at a gas station
the chicks slept for the unknown
rat-tat-tat at the window as the sun rises
a foreigner with a tray
tea, cups and a smile
it's 80s...

Pandora's Box Poetry - Backgammon & Dice

The sunflowers were longer than I. She climbed a few steps. I heard a broken mirror. Men. He was gone. A breath. But we left again. A highway. A military field I could see from the window with no army.  The rails with no trains. The train stations were backgammon and coffee with cardamom inside on small tables and men Hubble-bubbling. The railroad covered with second hand stuff. Once upon a time, the train went back home.  

Pandora's Box Poetry - The King & The Oak

I woke up. I’m not a fan of waking up. I like dreams better even if bitter. It was a sunny day. Not summer yet, neither cold nor hot. Perfect -as it could be- that even weather wouldn’t be a subject. I can see the sun between the branches lying on a tree swinging. My grandfather with his huge belly is sitting on the grass across my mother. She is not thin but not fat, chubby, perhaps, blond with short hair.  Both are trying to agree on what to cook first on the barbeque. Mom is a pro she knows how to put the fire on in a few minutes. It is an Oak. One can park a few cars under it. It is an ancient tree. It should have been there for thousands of years. Swinging around I had a lucid dream of a king sleeping under the Oak before crossing the canal to Cordoba. Next day the Parrots woke me up shouting and swearing. The King is coming. The King is coming. I ran to the door. The Parrots were swearing in Turkish. 'Siktir git! Siktir git!' I went outside. My mom was talking. A car had parked under the house with two young men and a soldier. Mom was laughing. ‘Go get some old newspapers from the library’ she said to me and I will get some water in a bottle! I looked for a few seconds to who was there; a young blond boy with another one I don’t remember and a soldier with a funny hat. We got them what they needed then they left. Mom said he is a prince and they are playing a joke with the neighbors. The castle was on the top of the hill above the Oak. Who would know he would be the king.

Pandora's Box Poetry - Home

‘Where do I come from?’ or ‘Which country do I feel like I belong to?!’ or more weird, ‘Where do I feel at home?’ I want to grumpily reply,  ‘In some planet where you do not exist now’ with a humble smile to whomever is asking. But usually I have to shut up during these questions if they are bureaucrats. It depends. A question that still faces me during my entire life born as one of the exiled. To be honest I really don’t remember the multi-billion little stories that I make up on the spot to answer according to the different situations. Stories depend on the general atmosphere, the time, the weather; whether it is a sunny day or not, if I’m having a good day or not, or if I might get in trouble because of my humor, anger or if I had offended anyone around me. Answers usually range between nice, intelligent and wise to stupid, offensive and even rude. Not that I aim for any of that. I just happen. Some simple answers are ‘I am a mix-identity of Levant’, of ‘Palestinian & Iraqi descent, born in Jordan’, a ‘made up English term called Middle Eastern’, an ‘Arab with a taste of Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian and Turk’. To go historically deeper; ‘a citizen of mixture, of Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian’. If religion is on the table, mostly I will mock all politely, ‘a Palestinian from Jerusalem born on Christmas day, declared a Muslim yet the Gods and I haven’t agreed of their existence, neither did my city agree to settle in peace.’

It seems to me that our existence is a coincidence and so will be our absence. It just seems like humans are accelerating the process to damage the planet before we leave. It feels like as if I was invited by force to a sold-out show of a black-comedy theatre for ‘Homo-sapiens versus the Rat Race’ hammering on in a round planet circling to an unknown end.