I am Jenin

I am Jenin

Nancy Hook I am Jenin and my heart aches with the taste of fear, the smell of vanquishing hatred,, blood spilled and smeared in the toy-strewn rubble, puddled in the dust of where I used to live. I am Nablus and I still hold in my hand the keys to my father’s empty ransacked home. I am Gaza, crowded, teeming with life, but my children’s’ bellies are distended with hunger, Their eyes huge with anger and fear. I am Jaffa and Acra, the stones of ancient arches now crushed underfoot. I am the sun swept hillsides and beloved valleys no longer grazed. My orchards and olive groves have been plowed under and destroyed, My shrines desecrated, my women raped, My men humiliated and killed, My children, -- oh my children! I am Jerusalem, the radiant beloved Bride, raped, Waiting on her once-golden hillside For The one who speaks of Justice and Love. Abandoned, alone, I speak out but the world hears neither my screams, nor my cries nor my reasoned pleadings for justice and common sense if not Mercy. Desperate, enraged, I strike out and am further condemned. My soul is battered but not broken, my hope is shaken but not shattered. (I watch heartsick from afar helpless, tearfully, endlessly pleading that the rulers of my beloved country would do the right thing which they refuse to do.) (Jenin, I share not your blood, and dwell in the land of your oppressors but my soul, oh my soul, is of you, Jenin, is broken for you, Gaza.) (I look out on my hillside, lush, verdant, alive – and I see the scars where once was your world.) Our Lord, the same Lord, Whom we worship in different ways, has not forgotten you, Palestine. He does not abandon His own. Your crowded multitudes will persevere and will yet prevail! I am Jenin and my birds shall sing once more, my orchards and flocks will rise from the ashes, and my cities will hum with the bustle of many peoples. Our God, God of the Oppressed and the Oppressors, will bring Justice, and Peace, His Love will prevail and I shall return to my home. I am a middle-aged Christian American woman who supports your cause.  My husband and I speak neither Arabic nor Hebrew, but follow the English-language press daily and are sickened by what we learn.  We write letters weekly, and are endlessly frustrated with our country’s leaders.  But, because it is our country, your blood is on our hands, too, and we are deeply sorrowful and ashamed.  As believers in the same God, your cause is our cause and we, too, are presently helpless. But just as Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi ultimately prevailed, by shaming those who currently have no shame, we deeply believe that, somehow, with God’s Grace, you will regain your homeland. Please accept this poem – it is from my heart.  I hope that by writing it – by expressing to you my deepest feelings as one who bleeds for you and with you, but is not of you and therefore cannot possibly know the true depths of your feelings – I have not in some unknown way offended you. Zajel / An-Najah National University