Memory for Forgetfulness ~ Mahmoud Darwish You ask for a passport, but you discover you’re not a citizen because your father or one of your relatives had fled with you during the Palestine war. You were a child. And you discover that any Palestinian who had left his country during that period and had stolen back in had lost his right to citizenship. You despair of the passport and ask for a laissez-passer. You find out you’re not a resident of Israel because you have no certificate of residence. You think it’s a joke and rush to tell it to your lawyer friend: “Here, I’m not a citizen, and I’m not a resident. Then where and who am I?” You’re surprised to find the law is on their side, and you must prove you exist. You ask the Ministry of the Interior, “Am I here, or am I absent? Give me an expert in philosophy, so that I can prove to him I exist.” Then you realize that philosophically you exist but legally you do not. Out of one dream, another dream is born... It stopped over there, on the other side of the collective voice. But now, I want nothing more than the aroma of coffee. Now I feel shame. I feel shamed by my fear, and by those defending the scent of the distant homeland—that fragrance they’ve never smelled because they weren’t born on her soil. She bore them, but they were born away from her. Yet they studied her constantly, without fatigue or boredom; and from overpowering memory and constant pursuit, they learned what it means to belong to her. “You’re aliens here,” they say to them there. https://youtube/watch?v=oB-RS000NLs
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 08:34:37 +0000
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