"My sister": A new poem and a few words on why I wrote it
A new solidarity poem and a transcript of the accompanying speech from the Activist Social event in Belfast, 12/04/24
On Friday I had the privilege to read out a new poem of mine to a number of people in Belfast. Solidarity events are a fickle beast, you're speaking, but you have to make sure it's not about you, and as a writer you always have that nagging thought of “is what I'm doing here serving a good purpose?” Events like this, where the main objective is to get acquanited with different activist groups (the BDS Movement, Cairde Palestine and its queer wing, Artists Against Genocide, Patches for Palestine, The Socialist Party, People Before Profit) and their activities, must be opportunities to truly examine how we spent our lives centering ourselves, dismantle that toxicity and use our voice to amplify the voices of those affected, the people of Palestine. You can call this one a feminist poem, absolutely. Palestine is and always have been a feminist issue, it can't be any other way if our feminism is worth anything. In both the poem and the speech before it, it was important for me to detangle the narratives served to us through alienation, dehumanisation and white feminism as an agent of capitalism and colonialism, and to make it clear that first and foremost we must listen. I’m very much hoping that in a close future we will be able to hear Palestinian poets in Belfast; our solidarity events are good and necessary, but we always have to make sure they're not a replacement for giving platform to Palestinian artists. Solidarity must always be Palestinian-led. Here goes.
I'd like to read a poem that I titled My sister, but first I’d like to say a few words about why I wrote it. For me, this poem is the words I feel I owe to the women of Palestine, and the women of the whole world really. I feel the entire Western world owes these words to indigenous, brown and black women who have been silenced and unrecognised not since the 7th of October, not for the last 75 years, but for centuries. I emphasise silenced and unrecognised because I often see pro-Palestinian people saying that we have to be the voice of the voiceless. That's wrong. Palestinians and all oppressed, colonised people around the world are not voiceless. They don't need us to be their saviours, like the colonial white saviour complex taught us to be. Palestinians need us to listen, to stop the silencing, and to amplify their voices.
Silencing is really the hallmark of the West. The sad truth is I wasn't raised in a society that cares about women and their voices. I was raised in a society that silenced all of us, that sanitised and whitewashed every aspect of our lives, in a society that reduced feminism to “once upon a time women fought for the right to vote and work”, in a society that conditioned us to compartmentalise and close our eyes to that which is not happening in our own backyard. I think many of you here will share the experience of half of your life being coloured by the American post-9/11 propaganda. Generations have been raised to believe terrorists hate and threaten Western freedom and democracy. Middle Eastern men were automatically terrorists in everyone's eyes. Hijabi women were automatically hiding a bomb. Even kid's animated movies have traditionally been filled with villains who were a caricature of an Arab man, to make sure we soak in what a terrorist looks like from an early age.
We were conditioned to categorise and dehumanise people and, at the same time, to centre ourselves and pursue mindless individualism, so that we're invested in this manufactured fear, racism and othering so much that we don't see the wood for the trees. So that we don't see the real enemy. So that we refer to colonialism as something from the past, so that we talk about living in a postcolonial era and close our eyes to the fact that colonialism is a living, breathing thing. Our shared enemy across the planet is capitalism and colonialism, two sides of the same imperialist coin.
The lies of our freedom and democracy didn't disappear, they're here as much as they were 20 years ago. Everyday microaggressions are just about everywhere. Just a few days ago, I saw some insane islamophobic comments in the most unlikely place. Believe it or not, it was the official Instagram profile of Peter Rabbit. The admin of that page wished their followers Eid Mubarak, to which some people responded by shouting “you're posting about a false religion” and “you're posting this and I saw you post about a Hindu holiday, but you never posted about any Jewish holidays, this profile is antisemitic!” So apparently, Peter Rabbit is Hamas.
When you look at this room or our weekly protests, it's easy to think this is Ireland. Ireland that stands with Palestine and understands the systems of oppression and supremacy. But we have to remember this is not the whole picture. Yes, this is Ireland, but Ireland is also people who don't understand that the struggle for liberation is global and interconnected. People who don't acknowledge that Ireland is still colonised and occupied. People who think we can somehow build our unity and liberation in some sort of vacuum. Political parties who love British and American establishment more than Ireland. Parties who give themselves the right to speak over Palestinians and have the audacity to think that they know what Palestine needs better than the Palestinians themselves. Ireland is also American warplanes in Shannon and Belfast airports. And the government that refuses to cut diplomatic ties with the so-called state of Israel. And millions in exports and imports to and from Israel every year. And two weeks ago, a young immigrant man, Josip Strok, was beaten to death in Dublin on a night out because he was speaking his own language. It just so happens that I myself was born in the same country as him, Croatia. The assailants told him and his friend that they should speak English. The coloniser's language. He was attacked for not speaking the coloniser's language in a country that has been colonised for 800 years and counting. I bet these lowlives don't have a word of Irish. This colonised mindset that readily copied right wing ideas from Britain is also Ireland. All of the things I just mentioned have the same root cause - colonialism.
So when we speak of Palestine, we have to understand that we also speak of global colonialism and of our own liberation. And we have to understand that we listen before we speak. We listen to people who tried to tell us all of this for decades. We have to understand that this solidarity means uprooting everything we've been taught our entire lives and decolonising our minds. And it's a brutal process, it involves dismantling your own privilege; it's a process that can cost you your friends, family, job. But it's necessary. Time's up. We owe it to the 40,000 lives that perished in the blaze of imperialism. We owe it to the men we saw as terrorists, only to watch them cry and dig their children's bodies under the rubble with their bare hands. We owe it to both people and our exploited planet that is screaming in agony.
Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul wrote the now famous words “In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent.” And for me, this speaks about more than just poetry, it's a call to always be political in everything we do, in our poetry, art, job, relationships, consumer habits, all aspects of life, because the warplanes are always flying somewhere. When not in Gaza, they're flying somewhere else in the world, and we can never ever unsee that again and accept the status quo as peace. We have to listen because no one is free until everyone is free. And now for the poem.
My sister
My mother's womb never gave me a sister Yet I do have one — she lives in faraway land We have never met, nor do we know Each other’s name or deepest fears We do not understand each other’s tongue Yet I can hear her words clearly And the small fragrant leaves of zaatar Understand her when she whispers We do not look the same Her silky hair is tucked under a cover But if the wind tried to blow her veil away I'd hold onto it for as long as she needs My sister lives in the land of oranges And olive trees that overlook the sea But her sons do not sleep at night Like mine do, safe in warm beds Her husband does not come home After a hard day's work, like mine does Her husband lies under the rubble Of what was once her family home My sister, my sons too live in an occupied land Only I was blessed to be able to fight For their freedom with my pen and my voice Not forced to do it with my flesh and my bones My sister, I will repeat your words until my throat goes dry Even to those who listen to no one but themselves Until your sons are able to hear the birds And pick the oranges and olives that grow free For my sister's name is not a noun My sister's name is a verb
My reading of “My sister.”
Beautiful in every way. And not a word of the intro was spilled. Thank you for your voice and your clarity.
A very touching poem. I spent too many of my young adult years fighting for something I didn't know about. I just followed orders until I went to Afghanistan in 2002. Living with these wonderful people and learning about their peaceful culture and the poverty they endure without much complaint was an eye opener and changed me dramatically. I returned home and reevaluated my values on life and I have been working on that ever since. I am a very different person than the soldier who went off to fight another war in a foreign country again (this was my eighth and last before I retired). I grew up on the old stories of our family and the myths of Cu Chulainn, Fionn mac Cumhaill and the fae. I also got into trouble with the American authorities for supporting the Sinn Féin back in the early 1980's when they were considered part of a terrorist organization. Now I openly support them with donations and support whenever I can. I have seen apartheid and what it does to people. I have been to Israel and left with a serious bad taste for the arrogant Zionists. Now, I fight for peace and equality as I can until the Americans come for me for supporting terrorists. Given the new bill working its way to the senate, and the fever over anti-Semitism, it may not be too long.