The Ruins of Kafr Bir’im. 2006. Photo Credit John Halaka ©The other day some one sent me a message mentioning a film called "The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir’im" A Film by John Halaka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzjoZRwZWUY
I am always entranced by the way the land holds onto ruins- to hints of time past. How flowers bloom and life goes on no matter what. This is true everywhere- but it is most poignant in historic Palestine because the Palestinian refugees have been wrongly denied their inalienable legal, natural and sacred right to return to original homes and lands.
Even if there is no obvious structure left, often gardens planted long ago come back to outline what was once- within living memory- when the children of historic Palestine were simply free to ramble anywhere and every where in the land of their ancestor's birth. And their parents were free to live and work and build libraries and grow gardens honoring a storied past as well as a promising future.
I suppose, inspired by the message in my email "The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir’im" , I should ramble off into talking about films or photographs or..., well many many things really, as my mind and heart tends to leap and tumble every where, eager to explore so many different aspects of what Palestine was as well as what Palestine might be- but I cannot help but think of poetry again today:
"Shot on location in the ruins and cemetery of Kafr Bir’im, a Palestinian village located in the Northern Galilee, the film introduces the viewer to Mr. Ibrahim Essa, an elderly poet who survived the ethnic cleansing of his homeland in 1948. Mr. Essa’s family has lived in Kafr Bir’im for the past 700 years. Through his narrative and poetry, Ibrahim Essa recounts his experiences as a youth in the village, the hardships of a life in exile and the intense emotional, physical and historical connections to the land that he shares with the 5,000,000 Palestinians who currently live in the Palestinian diaspora. Mr. Essa employs an ancient oral tradition of poetry that, in style, is similar to what is now referred to as “Spoken Word Poetry.” This improvisational oral tradition has been around for centuries in Northern Palestine and continues to be used by farmers and villagers to express the community’s intimate relationship to the land; a yearning for past times; and their cultural, psychological and physical attachment to the ancient and modern ruins that exist throughout that region." Description of The Presence of Absence in the Ruins of Kafr Bir’im provided by John Halaka:
Beloved poet and Palestinian patriot, Kamal Nasir, a Christian, assasinated by Ehud Barak in 1973, addresses exile and return in this excerpt from "Kamal Nasir's Last Poem,"
Tell my only one, for I love him,
That I have tasted the joy of giving
And my heart relishes the wounds of sacrifice.
There is nothing left for him
Save the sighs from my song...
Save the remnants of my lute
Lying piled and scattered in our house.
Tell my only one if he ever visits my grave
And yearns for my memory,
Tell him one day that I shall return
--to pick the fruits.
Do your worst.
Here we shall stay.
We guard the shade
of Olive and fig.
Tawfiq Zayyad
#
One of my own favorite poems is by the late Tawfiq Zayyad, poet, former Mayor of Nazareth and Knesset member:
I never carried a rifle
On my shoulder
Or pulled a trigger.
All I have
Is a lute’s memory
A brush to paint my dreams,
A bottle of ink.
All I have
Is unshakeable faith
And an infinite love
Another favorite poem of mine is by Hanan Ashrawi
Hadeel's Song
- Some words are hard to pronounce—
- He-li-cop-ter is most vexing
- (A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible)
- But how it can stand still in the sky
- I cannot understand—
- What holds it up
- What bears its weight
- (Not clouds, I know)
- It sends a flashing light—so smooth--
- It makes a deafening sound
- The house shakes
- (There are holes in the wall by my bed)
- Flash-boom-light-sound—
- And I have a hard time sleeping
- (I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but no one scolded me).
-
- Plane—a word much easier to say—
- It flies, tayyara,
- My mother told me
- A word must have a meaning
- A name must have a meaning
- Like mine,
- (Hadeel, the cooing of the dove)
- Tanks, though, make a different sound
- They shudder when they shoot
- Dabbabeh is a heavy word
- As heavy as its meaning.
-
- Hadeel—the dove—she coos
- Tayyara—she flies
- Dabbabeh—she crawls
- My Mother—she cries
- And cries and cries
- My Brother—Rami—he lies
- DEAD
- And lies and lies, his eyes
- Closed.
- Hit by a bullet in the head
- (bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills,
- my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes)
- What’s the difference between a shell and a bullet?
- (What’s five-hundred-milli-meter-
- Or eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?)
- Numbers are more vexing than words—
- I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two
- But what happens after ten-and-ten,
- How should I know?
- Rami, my brother, was one
- Of hundreds killed—
- They say thousands are hurt,
- But which is more
- A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf)
- I cannot tell—
- So big--so large--so huge—
- Too many, too much.
- Palestine—Falasteen—I’m used to,
- It’s not so hard to say,
- It means we’re here—to stay--
- Even though the place is hard
- On kids and mothers too
- For soldiers shoot
- And airplanes shell
- And tanks boom
- And tear gas makes you cry
- (Though I don’t think it’s tear gas that makes my mother cry)
- I’d better go and hug her
- Sit in her lap a while
- Touch her face (my fingers wet)
- Look in her eyes
- Until I see myself again
- A girl within her mother’s sight.
- If words have meaning, Mama,
- What is Is-ra-el?
- What does a word mean
- if it is mixed
- with another—
- If all soldiers, tanks, planes and guns are
- Is-ra-el-i
- What are they doing here
- In a place I know
- In a word I know—(Palestine)
- In a life that I no longer know?
Outlandish Look Into My Eyes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P12aqVeZkQ
I want my garden to be a place of peace- of progress- and potential. I don't want it to be a Holocaust museum obsessed with the horrors of what was- although there must be a place for remembering.
Yesterday I received a charming note concerning Growing Gardens for Palestine:
"My garden is my own personal therapy, i love the feel of dirt in my hands and feel joy watching things grow. I have a date palm that I planted from a seed and this year it looks as if we will have dates, so very exciting. Thank you again, Diana"
And I just noticed that my favorite blogger Umkahlil left two comments in the comment section of Growing Gardens for Palestine Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 17th concerning poems:
Poetry and gardens- both can be therapeutic, as well as informative, each in their own way... to everything there is a season turn turn turn...
| To everything there is a season, |
| ecclesiastes 3:1-8 |
Palestinian Poppies
What a beautiful way to start my Sunday. An inspirational post, and a brilliant poem that evokes so many memories of my childhood growing up with loving aunts, uncles, good Arabic food, Arabic coffee, summers going from the garden, where we'd bring in tomatos, eggplant for our lunch or dinner . . . my mother, her sister, my sittie (grandmother) traipsing around the vineyards of Kern County, picking their grapeleaves for the season . . . my mother laughing as she recalls my grandmother who'd just come over from Ramallah, running around the vineyard as if she were a young girl. Keep these beautiful and inspiring posts coming; what a brilliant way to inform people of the beauty of Palestine and its people. Now I will make hummus for my daughter's birthday, recalling my father teaching me how to "break the tahini," as I stir and pound the bit of hard tahini left in the jar (I didn't make it to the Syrian store lately to get the nice smooth tahini one finds at the top of the jar). Then I'll cut into little pieces the leg of lamb for either putting on top of the hummus or the rice (Uncle Ben's, of course), and I'll remember my mother complaining how hard it is to sit and roll grapeleaves, and our neighbor, the manager of the local Sherwin Williams, who used to stir the tahini with the machine he used to stir paint, telling her, "Why don't you stand, then?"
I'd like to add some links here for some beautiful poetry. One must access the video (linked to below; scroll down to "Summer Camp in Bi'rim") to appreciate the beauty of the following poem as it's spoken in Arabic by the poet:
http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=228
Your beauty is God given
Your beauty is God given
A human being strains to describe it.
North, south, east, west
Vistas of hills and valleys
When you tire on the way and feel thirsty
You may drink of al-Safra from the well
And on a dessert of figs you may feast
Feast on a dessert of figs of Bayad and Ghazzali
Tarry as you near the grapes
And when you approach the vine
Give thanks, and lift up your voice
Your people, Bir'im have not died
And will not forsake a grain of sand from you
As long as you have men like these
As long as you have men like these
Who continually strive for justice
they do not care what others may say
And they always say to the oppressor
Our Bir'im is more precious than money.
And the return will never disappear
We will return contented
We will forget the bitter days.