Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had
to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had
to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to
counter measured response.
And I perfected my English and I learned my
UN resolutions.
But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don’t you
think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much
hatred to your children?
Pause.
I look inside of me for strength to be
patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over
Gaza.
Patience has just escaped me.
Pause.
Smile.
We teach life, sir.
Rafeef, remember to smile.
Pause.
We teach life, sir.
We Palestinians teach life after they have
occupied the last sky.
We teach life after they have built their
settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.
We teach life, sir.
But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made
to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
And just give us a story, a human story.
You see, this is not political.
We just want to tell people about you and
your people so give us a human story.
Don’t mention that word “apartheid” and
“occupation”.
This is not political.
You have to help me as a journalist to help
you tell your story which is not a political story.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre.
How about you give us a story of a woman in
Gaza who needs medication?
How about you?
Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover
the sun?
Hand me over your dead and give me the list
of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to
fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to
terrorist blood.
But they felt sorry.
They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.
So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics
and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.
And these are not two equal sides:
occupier and occupied.
And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a
thousand dead.
And between that, war crime and
massacre,
I vent out words and smile “not exotic”,
smile “not terrorist”.
And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, two
hundred dead, a thousand dead.
Is anyone out there?
Will anyone listen?
I wish I could wail over their bodies.
I wish I could just run barefoot in every
refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to
hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.
Today, my body was a TV’d massacre
And let me just tell you, there’s nothing
your UN resolutions have ever done about this.
And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up
with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no
sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.
No sound-bite will fix this.
We teach life, sir.
We teach life, sir.
We Palestinians wake up every morning to
teach the rest of the world life, sir.
