We’re continuing our special Palestine series with two poems by Palestinian poet Maisaloon Al-Ashkar. Below, she shares the inspiration for the poems.
Each time an onslaught of Zionist violence reaches Western media, our Palestinian men are utterly demonized and erased in such a vile way that disturbs me to my core. I refuse to adopt colonizer talking points. I refuse to focus on “women and children” in an attempt to appeal to the selective humanity of those who clearly have none towards my beloveds. I wrote these poems to remind myself, and others, of what I know is right and true; to choose to remain grounded in the fitra with which Allah created me/us in the face of the sinister machinery of genocide trying to sever it.
My Love Letter to Palestinian Men
To be honest, I was tempted to pen this with outside gazes in mind
but my fingers quickly halted themselves
because doing so would mean I’d have to adorn
your existence with perfect victimhood.
You and I both deserve better than that.
In a world that vetoes your personhood and denies you complexity,
I refuse to add to the damage. You have taught me better.
My love for you runs deep through my veins
and there are moments when I want to rip out those veins
because sometimes you piss me off,
as men tend to do in this patriarchal world.
You’re in the lineage of the name I carry that rolls effortlessly off my tongue
seven generations back,
thanks to sessions of memorization and recitation with my grandfather.
Much of what I know about my roots comes from him,
a farmer boy from the Yazour village of Yaffa.
I’m the only granddaughter carrying his name.
“The children and women”.
That’s all my diasporic ears hear on the news reporting on the bloodshed of our people.
Crocodile tears won’t even pretend to run for you.
The erosion of your life
hardens my bones and boils my blood and shortens my breath.
This is the state in which I rushed to my pen and paper
to spell out this letter and scream:
YOU ARE OURS TO FIGHT WITH AND FOR!
When you walk towards the enemy’s gunpoint aimed at your head without hesitation,
ready to defend what’s rightfully yours.
When you kneel with reverence at the feet of women whose wombs carried you,
seeking blessings as the colonizers detain you for only God knows how long or what for.
When you carry our elders in marches to ensure their right to defiance, too,
their past your nerve centre to relentlessness.
When you seat our babies on your shoulders as they wave our flag to the sky,
their futures your compass to victory.
When you dig for your beloveds beneath the rubble with bare hands as
bombs and white phosphorous continue to rain above,
fearing nothing but the One who Created you.
When you own your softness and rough edges with tears flowing down your face
mourning all that the enemy steals from you,
75 years and counting.
When you raise our martyrs high through the streets,
chanting with as much loudness as your lungs can handle to deliver them to Allah’s mercy.
When you taunt the armed pigs, confronting them with your prideful smirks and laughter
that make me swoon every time.
When you arm yourself with whatever is at your disposal, refusing to die in vain.
Your blessed hands transform shreds from the occupation’s most-advanced weaponry,
turning death machines that showered on your homes and families into self-defence tools.
If that isn’t labour of love and life that drips with dignity, I don’t know what is.
And still, the pundits acknowledge neither your existence nor death.
They can’t behold your integrity, it’s too bitter for their hollow eyes and lying mouths.
Depraved puppets across the political spectrum
left right centre
parrot fascist talking points, throwing around “terrorist”
left right centre.
You, our beloved freedom protectors, have more courage than all these cowards combined.
We know that. You know that. And Allah knows best.
I breathe in all your hues of being:
our righteous hotheads sticking the middle finger to colonizing settlers
our writers’ words reverberating among the colonized all around the globe
our intifada warriors bringing imperial powers to their knees and reclaiming what is ours
our playful icons mocking the weaklings who remain complicit in our plight
our faithful beloveds summoning the wrath and justice of the Almighty
our kings jumping over walls imposed by both apartheid and cishet duress
our farmers reminding us of the soil we fight for
our mountain guardians creating all kinds of poetic ruckus
our poets helping us make sense of the senseless
our steadfast journalists whose press gear couldn’t save from zionist cruelty giving the world
a crash course on truth-telling
our medics and doctors and nurses refusing to abandon the sanctity of each breath
and every beating heart you’ve sworn to preserve by any means necessary
our boys and men robbed of simply being,
shoved into martyrdom through prisons, orphanages, amputations, and mass graves.
May you continue to avert pitiful gazes and make them pity themselves
May your rough edges catch a break and your softness roam freely across our homelands
May we get to raise you and be raised by you
Hold your hands to liberation
Feel our laughter echo with yours
Bicker with you
Make babies with you
Witness you reap the fruits of your labour in this lifetime
as you tenderly grow old and transition into the hereafter.
That’s the fate I lay on my prayer mat every night when I kneel to my Creator,
summoning a free فلسطین where I reunite with you, too,
alongside our children and our women and all our kin entrenched
in the veins of olive trees that interweave your destiny with mine.
Ameen.
Musings Every time I Read Another Epic Romance Novel
My grandma used to refuse to visit us in kkkanada,
she said she didn’t want to die and get buried with depraved colonizer heathens…
I get her now, may her soul rest in peace.
So, my muzzie girl rite of passage involved a wish-list called “finding my Muslim king”,
where I brought to life the righteous husband who will help me escape this heathenistic ‘West’.
I shared this wish-list with close friends
Gave it to my mother and asked her to pray on it
An auntie even lit a candle in a church near the birthplace of Jesus as per my request.
Summoning my Muslim king is an interfaith community effort
and yet here I am still (im)patiently waiting for his appearance!
I imagine loving me could get tough
a chaotic glory
a charming nuisance
requiring rigorous
effort
time
patience.
For the right person, perhaps a fulfilling responsibility.
I don’t know when my feet will walk the right of return,
when I’ll be able to dig them into the soils of my lands and say,
“I’m from here. I belong. I’m finally back home.”
But maybe long before I made my wish-list, my ancestors had made one for me,
and only Allah knows how those blessings have taken life-form.
Dearest Muslim king, you can never replace my yearning for Falasteen,
but you can be the waterway that nourishes my roots en route to her.
Be my sanctuary in diaspora.
Count on me to always remind you that I am finite but Falasteen is timeless.
The only way you get to claim me as the love of your life is to co-struggle with me for
her liberation.
Don’t worry, Falasteen is generous. I think she’d be willing to share me with you,
so long as you’re worthy of us both.
In that case, I’ll happily belong to Allah, to her, to myself, and to you.
An earlier version of “My Love Letter to Palestinian Men” was originally published in TOMORROW: FUTURES OF RESISTANCE (2022) by Palestinian Youth Movement in their Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology.
Maisaloon ميسلون (she/her) is a Palestinian Muslimah living on the stolen homelands of xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ Peoples in so-called Vancouver, committed to translating this awareness into actively supporting Indigenous sovereignties on their own terms. She is invested in contributing her skills to transnational solidarities between Palestinian, Black, and Indigenous beloveds not only on basis of friendship and principles, but also on the conviction that this is a winning strategy for collective liberation. Maisaloon is the granddaughter of Palestinian orange and olive tree farmers, whose feet and hands planted lineages from the river to the sea. Poetry is where she tends to tap into the nexus of faith and liberation, which is how she attempts to make sense of this messy world.
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