Yellow Medicine Review
Posted on 6 February 2012 | No responses
I just published three poems in the Fall 2011 edition of the Yellow Medicine Review
1. Palestinian Man in his Season of Migration to the North,
2. Free Flight: an emulation of June Jordan’s poem Free flight and
3. The Taste of Salt in the Eyes
if you are interested in this amazing publication see: http://www.yellowmedicinereview.com/id13.html
Burning Sage
Posted on 6 February 2012 | No responses
A poem I wrote about my grandparents in blues form was published in the March/April 2011 edition of Believer Magazine. If your interested:
To read an excerpt or buy the magazine see: http://believermag.com/issues/201103/?read=poem_omar
Whitey on the Moon
Posted on 6 February 2012 | No responses
24 August 2011
my article on the social justice protests in Tel Aviv
One can replace Scott-Heron’s moon with any other idiom that suggests that those with privilege are not down to earth or are completely detached from reality — detached from the reality of Palestinian suffering. The examples in his poem can reflect a myriad of different circumstances where the people in power disregard and take advantage of those without it. Last September, Time Magazine ran a cover story titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” Ha’aretz Journalist, Ari Shavit is quoted saying, “There was a time when people felt guilty about the Tel Aviv bubble. Then it turned out the bubble was pretty strong. The bubble was resilient.”
To read the full article see: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2469/whitey-on-the-moon-
ode to babooj
Posted on 7 January 2011 | No responses
Left sitting outside bathrooms 
Garage doors
Mosques
Slip our feet inside
We walk across streets
Loose gravel
Dirt
Voyage
To aunties houses
For marr’ameia and
Sugar
To graveyards and prisons
Amble we
Journey long paths to school
Babooj built to survive miles
And military occupations
Oh hide that breaks in
Like love is earned
Pelt always starts stiff
Coarse straps rubs against ankles
Burns red divots between toes
Scorches the back of one’s heel
Over time
Babooj molds to fit the crevices in
The foot
Seems stretch
Stiff cloth bends
Into the shape of round toes
Hugs the skeletal bones
Babooj mauls against skin kneads
Twigs into yarn
This is tough love earned
Shoe Makers in Al Khalil and
Fez have learned the
Craft for 100 years
Shrapnel in the streets
Is not a problem
They have perfected their
Sandal making skills
For young women like Amal
Walks to school where only
Soldiers and skeletons roam
What was the boulevards
of Basra
Shattered glass sticks to her heel
A raw piece of hot metal
Jams into her sole
Neatly
Blood runs
Like a Euphrates
Into the sewer
Soaks
Snaps
The dwindling
Strip
of
Branded
Leather
off
That straddles her big toe
She swipes the soaked pelt
With a damp cloth
Stitches the strap together
And keeps walking to class in
Her loyal
Babooj
Exhausted
One foot in front of the other
Grinding against
Soil.
Stomping
One foot in front of the other
One pair
Lasts me the whole stretch of
Palestine
A hole now remains
Where the sole of my big toe found home
Traveling through God’s land
Over hot earth
What Moses
Wore walking cross the Sahara
And Mohammad wore
On Hijra to Medina
What Jesus
Wore up the via de la Rosa
Screws in palms
We often forget
Where our feet take us
Bring us
With every step
We are all walking toward
Someone
Running away from
Something
In babooj
Leaving marks
Upon the earth
——————
babooj: sandal made typically of leather
marr’ameia: dried sage used to flavor tee
hijra: withdrawal or migration of Muhammad (pbuh) and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE
Explore what’s yours or exploit what’s Palestinian?
Posted on 5 January 2011 | No responses
Article in the Columbia Daily Spectator about a study abroad program in Israel and a partnership between Columbia University and MASA Israel Journey…
“Explore What’s Yours”: This is the slogan of MASA Israel Journey, Barnard and Columbia’s new partner in a study abroad program. A close reading of the three-word phrase suggests a multitude of problematic ideas because it seems like a harmless catch phrase. However, after discerning the meaning of the phrase and placing it in context against the backdrop of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the message is quite insidious, to say the least.
Read more: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/10/12/explore-what-s-yours-or-exploit-what-s-palestinian
Actions speak louder than words
Posted on 5 January 2011 | No responses
Response from some Palestinian women in Columbia SJP about why we are against “dialogue”
“Inevitably, a Palestinian student at a checkpoint and those in solidarity with him would view Zionism and the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state differently than an Israeli solider or someone who supports Israel as a Jewish state would. This discrepancy is not because there is a lack of discussion between the two parties, nor is it because there is no codified definition of Zionism or apartheid. It is because at a checkpoint, someone is holding the gun and someone is at the end of the barrel.”
Read more:
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/12/07/actions-speak-louder-words
Response to the opinion that it is not important for Palestinians to be in SJP:
Posted on 24 September 2010 | 1 response
I personally cannot disagree more with this bigoted opinion for many reasons. For starters, I recommend the books/essays listed below because if I were given a 100 pages and 100 hours to speak on this subject I would still not be able to articulate how important it is for Palestinian voices and bodies to be front and center of the movement to achieve Justice for the Palestinians. Furthermore it is difficult to articulate the depth of the pain, emasculation, humiliation and infantilization Palestinians feel on a regular basis and how omitting or silencing Palestinian voices, symbols, and narratives from their liberation only contributes to that oppression. The opinion may seem like a nonchalant opinion or a way to help move along logistics but in practice it is extremely problematic, to say the least.
Let me be blunt for a second, if Palestinians were not occupied, if for example, if Husam’s cousin were not in jail, if my cousins were not in jail, if Dalia were not living under occupation as we are organizing in the U.S. hoping to gain citizenship one day in her own country, if Ibrahim and Rula did not endure the everyday violence they did under occupation, if Majdi’s family were not in Al-Khalil getting trash thrown on them in the old city by settelers, if Ziad Abbas were not tortured for 10 years in prison, if the land were not disappearing from beneath our feet, if Gaza were not the largest open air prison in the world, people who are not Palestinian will be out of recreational activities. You all would not have a cause to make yourselves important or to give you purpose, you will not have a means to make history. Check your self—like suhair hammad said, “I will not lend my name,” to people who’s beat I am not feeling. Please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFbE8RBhSDw
It is imperative for Palestinians to craft their own drum, to craft their own beat, to have authority over their own fate and stories and lives. Either be the beloved community that Palestinians need to reclaim their dignity as an ally that empowers and loves the Palestinians working with them because you believe that their liberty is wrapped up with your own or do your own thing, start a non-profit organization and get paid to appropriate other people’s stories.
It is not like SJP has been that beloved community where everyone agrees on the same principles. However, there are people in SJP that strive to be that community of allies that seeks to recognize their privilege in order to unearth the voices of people who’s voices are trampled on not only by Zionists but by people who seek to be the “voice for the voiceless” (this concept transcends all racial categories). Let me be clear, I do not think that only Palestinians should be making decisions and running SJP but I do think that the group and individuals in it should be self reflective and aware of tokenizing Palestinians or silencing Palestinian voices.
Please don’t be that kind of activist, don’t be the kind of person who “helps” under privileged people “over there.” Don’t be the kind of person who wants to end Apartheid in Palestine while being racist or sexist at UC Berkeley. Don’t be the kind of person who wants to “help” Palestinians in Palestine while at the same time forgetting that there are Palestinians that need support and care in your classrooms or need you to speak to them like they are human beings rather then like idiots—or like people who are bothering you with their “drama”. Be the kind of people who use your privilege and access to promote transformation and the actualization of real world-shattering ideas that changes the power landscape in the world and in your community. Don’t use people’s oppression and not think it necessary to consult them in how you are utilizing it. It is wrong. It is just wrong.
The occupation of Palestine is the occupation of a People who exist, who have voices, who have a history, confronting invaders who robbed them of it, do not participate in this robbery. There is a saying that goes “write of be written.” If you really want to help the Palestinians in their struggle for justice give them the tools and space to write rather than write for them or tell them what to write.
Here are some books I recommend to folks who are starting their career as “activist” and I encourage people to not only try and transform the world they live in but to always be looking within and trying to transform and better yourselves as an ally and person in solidarity with the Palestinians:
Orientalism by Edward Said
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Not Vanishing by Chrystos
The Memory for Forgetfulness by Mahmod Darwish
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill
Beyond Rights Talk and Culture Talk: Comparative essays on Rights and Culture & Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror by Mahmood Mamdani
The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House essay by Audre Lorde
Poem about Police Violence
Posted on 8 July 2010 | No responses
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun
sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING
I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don’t you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a “justifiable accident” again
(Again)
People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I’m saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently
-june jordan
the taste of salt in the eyes
Posted on 16 May 2010 | No responses
Poems mean different things at different times. the taste of salt in the eyes is a poem about exile and displacement, it is about generational trauma and about how law is used to tare families apart. I wrote it two years ago.
Today I revisit this poem about my father because for the past few weeks I have been inspired by the energy and sacrifice of my brother and sister hunger strikers. The Palestinian narrative and Indigenous Native American narrative are eerily similar. I remain optimistic and steadfast in solidarity with the Raza and Indigenous students in their fight against the Arizona law sb 1070. The students starved themselves for a week to bring light to their humanity and ask that migrants to the US be treated with justice. They have acted with great courage to change and challenge power with what little they have, their bodies, the truth and the righteousness of their cause. During our campaign urging the university to divest our efforts were actualized at the expense of what little we had, like the hunger strikers, we understand that confronting power requires sacrifice.
The poem is about my father but at its core it is a story about a man trying to navigate a path in this strange north america…
the taste of salt in the eyes
this memory tosses and tangles
sticks inside my gut
among stories of the Navajo’s
thick black hair sawed off Their
scalps dipped in sheep dung
this is the story of baba asking for a cup of water
i fill it up to the rim with no ice angry
baba throws wet in my face
his misplaced anger takes a decade to understand
ten years to rub clear the images staring back at me
INS handcuff steel
grinding slow against the California heat
the long walk in an orange jumpsuit in front of his 4 children
the swelling in baba’s throat after watching
Oslo talks on a 12 inch black and white TV
while selling a 12 pack of bud light
tackling his son’s body to the pavement
for being too Americanized
in the liquor store parking lot
shaming and smashing him into becoming a man
hurtleing the food off the table
when stephanie forgets her manners and mamma
always lets her get away with nagging
and i can’t remember but it had something to do with
if we where in Palestine she would never talk like that
dazed i stand stiffened into silence
this cup of water now sliding down my cheeks
is baba trudging through
the wreckage of his body the erasure of his place on earth
this cup of water dripping droplets off my
lashes
his austere anxiety—his aching insides smothered
over his youngest face
my father is hair severed from its roots
it stings
like the taste of salt in the eyes
Book Review of I’jaam and Interview with the Author Sinan Antoon
Posted on 17 February 2010 | 1 response
Alcohol and cigarettes have stifled many riots and uprisings in the world, said Sinan Antoon as we were wrapping up our conversation. He went on,
one of the most memorable sights to me was during the 1991 war and bombing in Baghdad everything stopped, but there were still people selling and buying cigarettes and booze. [At the] Al Sadoun Street bars, after one of the raids this guy was cleaning the broken glass outside the bar and getting ready for customers. Vendors on the sidewalk we were drinking, people in the shelter as well. I thought I’d rather die with a buzz…
After our exchange I sat back for a moment and thought—all the footage on the second U.S. invasion of Iraq, the hollowed out homes and corpses on Al Jazeera—Saddam Hussein’s statue hauled down by mobs of people. The images are half-truths. We never hear about the vendors or the cigarettes, the names of people smoking them. Today, as I shuffle through the daily news on Palestine, the piles upon piles of footage from Haiti also half-truths, fragments of a story someone is trying to tell me—Iraq is on my mind. The images of Antoon’s novel I’jaam are difficult to forget.
I’jaam begins a year after the Iran-Iraq war, in 1989, when a government official uncovers a collection of un-dotted writings. The first page is a memo authorizing someone to decode or dot the unintelligible collection of un-dotted words. The writer, Furat, is revealed as a young strong willed student, annoyed with the Saddam regime. The sheets of paper and pen used to write the manuscript were given to Furat as an act of charity by one of the prison guards. Furat delves into writing about lust, politics, the woman he loves, and delicate conversations with his grandmother. These scraps of story and memory wrap around his accounts of the bloody and humiliating torture he experienced in prison. Throughout his writings the reader is constantly reminded of how Furat’s life and the lives of all Iraqis at the time were consistently monitored by the Saddam regime. Furat’s descriptions are much like an optical illusion, one is not sure where one segment starts and another begins. The scenes change constantly from “wires that cut” into his skin (p.21) to “a white shirt light enough to reveal the pear like breasts imprisoned in her black bra” (p.25). Shifts happen fluidly in I’jaam so the reader is often taken aback at the ease by which they find themselves in a damp cell listening to the sound of palm trees weep.
I’jaam translated roughly means the “dots and/ dashes on Arabic letters.” For example, if on the same letter frame there is a dot below the letter, it is a ba. Where as if there were two dots above a letter it would be a ta. Antoon conjures up a prisoner who wrote his own vignette-like recollections and experiences, then he adds another layer of interpretation through the government official who also takes part in writing the collection by dotting the letters. Structurally fascinating, the book, at its heart, tackles deconstructionism.
After reading the memo on the first page I felt like I was walking the surface of my brain trying to grab onto the origins of the words. I caught myself thinking wait, is this what Furat wants me to read or is the interpreter just making him out to be an arrogant man? The premise avers that language is only an approximation of what really happens. I’jaam is crafted in a way that challenges our notions about history and language. On top of writing history by documenting what happened, the text challenges the idea that people can even understand ‘history,’ since what we read in the end has been filtered through so many layers of interpretation. Dots were placed at the discretion of the government official, and those familiar with the Arabic language know there is a large space open to play with interpretation. This is how the book’s craft and premise informs the content, by complicating who wrote the words and under what circumstances?
Language builds and describes the composition of our lives and is the tool by which we question their meaning. This story is just as much a projection of the transcriber’s reality, his political loyalties, and his subconscious as it was Furat’s random ideas, hallucinations, and memories. The English translation of I’jaam that I read addresses this projection even further because the original intent is manipulated even more in order to be understood in a different language.
There is always a dilemma in translating. Its universalizing process is good in some regards, it helps us understand one another making the world a smaller place. Translation is an attempt to transform “other” words, ideas, people, cultures, etc. into the same, the decipherable, the recognizable, and the familiar. However, translation is extremely messy and often times violent. The process of translating is like knifing off the hair of an Indigenous Native American, making him/her wear the same clothing as their colonizer, learn the colonizer’s language, and enroll in the colonizer’s school. This procedure is endured by the Indigenous Native American in order to convey a simple message to the colonizer—I do not appreciate you cutting off my hair, taking away my clothing, tongue, and structures of learning—it is violent and I cannot love you. Translation serves therefore, as an imperialist appropriation of foreign cultures for the benefit of the place where the translated language is spoken, for such ends as personal enrichment, domestic agendas, cultural fortification, entertainment, economic stimulation, or political gains. Americans should consider the weight of reading and interpreting an Iraqi story.
Antoon and his co-translator Rebecca C. Johnson approach translation with great humility and dexterity. I wonder if this is so because Antoon thought about the implications of translating the book into English. What work does his writing do in the world? This thought compelled me to contact him for an interview, because as a Palestinian-American woman living in the United States I am hyper aware of the Azar Nafisi Complex. I always find myself wondering: oh my god am I being the token oppressed Arab harem girl? I always tackle the issues of chauvinism and sexuality in my writing because it is a reflection of my own reality. However, I would never want Bernard Lewis, for example, to endorse my book, to essentialize my writing, to justify the political agenda he espouses. Perhaps that is why Antoon’s writing is so haunting and sad; maybe he is plagued by the idea that he is translating words into the language spoken by the people who trampled on Iraq’s soil, pissed on the ruins, and burned the books in Baghdad. Translating the horrific practices of the Saddam Regime into English to be distributed to American audiences can and often is used to justify US and UN policy in the Middle East. For example, in Ann Marlowe’s review of I’jaam, she says:
“I’jaam” is a novel, and should stand on its own not-very-sturdy feet, but it’s difficult to square the dedication, and the implication that Antoon’s narrator is a stand-in for Antoon himself, with Antoon’s politics. In April 2003, Antoon condemned the American invasion, writing, “For me, it is mourning time, and Baghdad is now enveloped in a long, cruel and starless night.” If night began with the invasion, what would Antoon call the Saddam years his narrator endured?
The logical extension of Marlowe’s analysis suggests that Arabs like Antoon cannot be more than either one-dimensional tools for US policies or supporters of fascist dictatorships like Saddam. Truly a “starless night” is a poetically gentle response compared to the well over 655,000 dead Iraqis due to the U.S. invasion. Furthermore, the main thrust of I’jaam is Furat’s insistence to think and live outside and against, everyone and everything that limits his freedom—he refuses to think in binaries. This is the paradox, the work this text does in this North American wilderness may be antithetical to Antoon’s intent, because he asserts, that the words are un-dotted, they are not his own. His words are up for grabs.
My proposition is to grab Antoon’s words and handle them with care. Essentially, I think I’jaam and The Baghdad Blues should be read to get us closer to telling a more truthful history of the modern Arab world. For example, General David Petraeus’ update to the world affairs council or Norman Scharzkopf’s comments on the First Gulf War are ripped to shreds by Antoon’s account of burning nipples and smoldering palm trees singing with great sorrow. Antoon is not sentimental or melodramatic in his pleading to be free from oppression and indignity. Antoon modestly illustrates that he has been wronged by making you see, taste, smell the stench, and feel viscerally the never-ending rape of what is now considered Iraq. He writes against those who violently threaten his body, and mind—saying I cannot love you nor tell you how to think. The writers and historians that interpret this literature will hopefully shift gears away from the dichotomous assertions proposed by people such as Bernard Lewis and even Ann Marlowe—because literacy is not a means to prepare us for the world of political allegiances, to insert us into polarizing political theories or to encourage blind duty to a governing apparatus. Antoon’s work and the literature surrounding these texts should not be used to build allegiances but rather to escape “this galaxy of barbed wires” and tear it down.
Interview with Sinan Antoon on Electronic Intifada: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11177.shtml