Under the skies of Haifa, Jbala & Cergy
Merci à Sarah
Mon pied,
You and I fear our bodies in different ways.
Your body aches.
Mine blisters.
soft voice
translated tongue
Roll your r
Stretch your b
Forget your p
Why won’t you answer me?
There is a home in a memory I’ve invented. One that lives in a garden surrounded by the mountains. Flashing lights and the sound of burning trees.
I’ve been told I should lean into softness.
The scorched earth scratches as I make my way up the stairs.
What are you looking for when you ask?
I lift my head up. The sun is piercing. We’ve been sitting in a room of boxes.
Ça va ma go?
I think of a pomegranate sitting on a shelf watching us. Somewhere I hear the stickiness of the echo of a chant.
justice pour
pas de paix
assassine
What was his favourite place?
Quelque part où la lune lui tourne le dos, et il dort si tranquille.
I feel like I’m stuck inside a temple aflame, daydreaming of plucking a fig from a blaze.
I want to ask you if you think we’re too young for this ghorba, but I don’t.
Je suis désolée, I just don’t think I could remember.
[ghorba: a deep feeling of
strangeness, foreignness, or
alienation, often accompanied by
homesickness and a longing for
familiar people and
p l a c e s .]
The lack of AC makes the boxes reek of a specific TV static, and the resonance of voices is lifted by the warm air that reminds the two of us of very different peaks. And always of the scent of burn.
There are stains on the wall. They look like calcified bees.
The pistols and the knives smell of rough metal.
The geometric tiles are beige and green, grey with thick stormy ash. Unconcerned with the world they live in. Somebody recently told me tenderness suits me much more than violence.
The pomegranate laughs and turns into molasses.
Do you think blood tastes like a whisper?
I turn to another box because I’m scared to answer that the dead do take some things with them.
The heat burns my dried-out hands. Water here does not soothe our skins. It reminds me of windstorms. My fingers slide against the edge, and another story jumps out to slap me. I memorize the gust rushing through my tears. I remember silent sirens. I retain la douleur-miroir.
Nobody knows a mountain better than her guerilla fighters. Ses grottes et ses veines ouvertes.
I can still hear him mouthing in pain
call
Do you think you’ve ever tasted shame or
You’ve left the room, taking with you the smell of old leather, five spices and withheld morphine. I often wish I could recreate the village, her song, the trip, the proximity and the cry. But how do you take back a soil that has been defiled by inflicted disease.
The door to the fire escape is open and I follow you onto the makeshift balcony, bottle of olive oil in hand to roast our skins.
Il y avait un taxiphone en bas de chez moi et des yeux partout. C’était comme une sensation de devoir être observé. One that was mostly welcomed and felt safe.
You tell me about the daily pile of bodies lined up, with heavy footsteps.
Waiting to call home in a small container.
Ready to tell tales of a cold journey to a voice they might not even know anymore.
As I listened to them then and to you now, there is something so gentle about watching lines draw themselves around bodies that have been erased. And maybe, in this lasting discomfort, we might learn to find different rooms, filled with seeds, stench and song.
What’s his favourite melody?
Celle où tes yeux restent rivés aux lumières malgré les brûlures.
Perhaps those eyes are the kind that forgot how to breathe, but if you look hard enough past the chaos and the scattered fauna, each of them carries a little mold from being watered from afar and fighting against rot.
Do you think violence is the opposite of softness?
When I think of silence, je pense que la violence, c’est une réponse. Tu sais, j’ai pas pu connaître beaucoup de gens très longtemps.
Ton souffle est lourd. You breathe slowly and I forget to translate. Comme un h qui se perd.
Its name comes from its resemblance to the smell of mustard, gaz moutarde.
In the flora of my mountains, mustard grows free. She’s a beautiful, small, bright yellow flower. When I walk through the curves of the green dunes, that’s what I seek most. I’ll pluck and eat, pluck and chew, pluck and inhale. And sometimes I’ll just let her fragrance fill my hands.
You don’t like the smell of mustard, and yellow is my favourite colour. I think we are both soft and violent at the same time, like stretched bonds and suspended soil.
I am leaving the city soon. I think I desperately yearn to be away and in the mountains. I think I believe that somewhere there, I could inhabit the dead.
I want to ask you about his favourite colour, but you talk about return
and you don’t smile
and so I worry.
Comme un livre où les mots s’allongent et il repère des signes.
The sky is clear and still bright, but maybe on our side of the world the moon is counting stars, so he doesn’t have to, while we peel open a new pomegranate, letting her seeds fall from the sky.
Just as you dig into her burst heart, we hear the girls coming in. There is laughter and there is also a prayer. There is quiet too and there is a place where none of us would be in the same room. The little red droplets dance in their plate.
I suppose in a way, here, in the four corners we’re pinned in together, les Arabes du coin, you can be aggressive, and I can ask you about his favourite place.
One that oozes with images of the past and the whispers of those he’s already forgotten.
Like the ones carried in scars.
I wish you’d be softer with me, somebody urged.
The molasses has turned sour. I can feel you yearning to pick at the inside of your body. You keep talking about us being witnesses. You’re always screaming about healing but a few days ago another boy died; today almost a hundred bodies stopped breathing.
What’s his favourite time of day?
Durant la montée du sommeil, lorsqu’un nuage tente de te donner conseil.
And maybe the sky will turn his shade of red.
You breathe in decadence.
The earth screams.
Maybe the air fights with us, not against us.
On my way out, after the sun has set, I step over the whispers.
Then what’s his favourite memory?
Qui sème la hogra récolte l’intifada.
[hogra: widely used term in
North African communities
describing feelings of oppression,
contempt, injustice and humiliation
stemming from abuse of authority
and institutionalized discrimination]
Our bodies hold burn.
J’ai grandi sur les épaules de mon père, et lui et moi dans les mouvements de travailleurs arabes ouvriers. Dans la diaspora maghrébine, la question de la Palestine est omniprésente.
Again, I don’t tell you. I was also raised on these movements, on images of your lands, on your slogans, on your exiles, on your pain and your grief, on your memories and on your commitment. On your anger and on your rage.
We are different in so many and endless ways. But your ghorba is mine. Your hogra will always be ours. When yours cry, we will answer, the same way you do when we burn.
And we will always rage.
Ton pied.
Toujours.
