Day 16: The Fog of Genocide in Paralell Lives by Ahlam Yassin

I never expected to know what it felt like to live in parallel universes, but surely this must be it. 

We exist, going through the motions of our lives - and every aspect has echoes of genocide. The sights and sounds of brutal death live streamed from our devices…you know what scenes I’m talking about, right? Each one of us has an image, or sound seared into their mind that reverberated their heart in a way they will never forget. 

I wake up and brush my teeth in the morning, and think, what would I do if all of a sudden there was no more water? Or food? Or security? How dare I live in safety, when it was no more than a twist of fate? I may have very well been born to a family that fled the Nakba in 1948. I could have been a refugee multiple times over, and lived in Gaza. Or, my lineage could have been tied to a merchant family living by the sea for generations. It was only a matter of a twisted fate that my parents, a byproduct of 1967 crossed the Atlantic, into South America then straight into the Belly of the Beast. 

What were they expecting when they did this? 

A better material life? 

But what is life without the olive trees, the fertile soil, the slow afternoon tea time with extended family? What is life without the call to prayer? Or the sound of church bells? Or feeling like you have a community between faiths, and each celebrates the others’ Eids with Mamool…you see, Mamool is non-denominational. Mamool on Eid and Mamool on Easter, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

But yet, here I sit, with the fog of genocide - and before that, the fog of occupation- in my life at every moment. Is this when the intergenerational trauma is formed? 

Am I the only one who has a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact the ones carrying out a genocide are descendents of those who lived one? Shouldn’t their DNA be predisposed to empathy, to perspective taking, and not the opposite? 

And for those who drew the curtains on this stage - Europeans have painted Arabs and Muslims as the Evil Ones - when they, in fact, set the entire stage to redeem their own evil actions. 

Palestinians are paying the price for something they had nothing to do with! And Europeans sit back and say, look at those savage Arabs. 

But surely, the only savage is the savage of heart. The one who walks up to a paramedic and points a gun, a weapon in part of my own funding, and shoots an Innocent who moments before was praying to God and his mom for forgiveness. 

A savage is one who unleashes a trained beast onto an Autistic boy. 

A savage is one who trains a beast to rape. 

The savage of the heart is the one who laughs as they wipe generations off the “Hamas-run Health Ministry.” 

Savage is the heart who burns the land. 

Savage is the heart that enables and defends. 

Savage is the heart that is silent. 

Solemn is the heart that watches from afar, engulfed by grief, and wonders what it would have been like on the other side. Preferably.