It Is A Nominal Sentence

I first read this poem by Mahmoud Darwish while in university, and in the past years lines from it keep popping into my mind. I am trying to translate it with the hope that more people can appreciate it, although my imperfect translation hardly does justice to the beauty of the words in Arabic. Please do comment with any suggestions for a more accurate and just translation. I love this poem, so beautiful and haunting.

هي جملة اسمية

هي جُمَلَةٌ اسمية ’ لا فِعْلَ
فيها أو لها: للبحر رائحةُ الأَسِرَّةِ
بعد فِعْلِ الحُبِّ... عطرٌ مالحٌ أَو
حامضٌ . هِيَ جملة اسمية : فرحي
جريحٌ كالغروب على شبابيك الغريبِة .
زهرتي خضراءُ كالعنقاء . قلبي فائضٌ
عن حاجتي , متردِّدٌ ما بين بابَيْنَ :
اُلدخولُ هو الفُكَاهَةُ’ والخروج هُوَ
المَتَاهَةُ .أَين ظلِّي – مرشدي وسط
الزحام على الطريق إلى القيامة؟ ليتني
حَجَرٌ قديمٌ داكنُ اللونيْن في سور المدينة’
كستنائيُّ وأَسودُ , طاعِنٌ في اللاشعور
تجاه زوَّاري وتأويل الظلال . وليت
للفعل المُضَارِع موطئاً للسير خلفي
أو أمامي’ حافيَ القدمين . أين
طريقيَ الثاني إلى دَرَج المدى؟ أَين
السُّدَى؟ أَين الطريقُ إلي الطريق؟
وأين نَحْنُ, السائرين علي خُطَى الفعل
المضارع, أين نحن؟ كلامُنا خَبَرٌ
ومُبْتَدأٌ أمام البحر, والزَّبدُ المراوغُ
في الكلام هو النقاطُ علي الحروف,
فليت للفعل المضارع موطئاً فوق
الرصيف


It Is A Nominal Sentence

It is a nominal sentence. No verb
in it or of it: for the sea the scent of the bed
after making love... a salty perfume or
sour. It is a nominal sentence: My joy is
wounded like the sunset at your strange windows.
My flower is green like the phoenix. My heart overflows
my need, hesitant between two doors:
Entry is a joke and exit is
a labyrinth. Where is my shadow, my guide amidst
the crowding on the way to the day of judgement? I wish I were
a stone, ancient, of two dark colors in the wall of the city,
chestnut and black, protruding in subconscious
towards my visitors and interpretation of shadows. I wish
for the present tense, a foothold for walking behind me
or in front of me, barefoot. Where is
my second road to the staircase of expanse? Where is
futility? Where is the road to the road?
And where are we, marchers on the footsteps of the
present tense, where are we? Our talk is predicate
and subject in front of the sea, the elusive foam
in speech is the dots on the letters,
so I wish for present tense, a foothold on
the pavement...

The Inception of Al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions

This week the US added a new group to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The State Department's list is about fifty groups long, made up mostly of Islamist groups and nationalist groups fighting for things like self-determination and sovereignty (oh the horrors!). Inclusion on the list means that any organization assets under US jurisdiction are frozen, and that any engagement in transactions with the organization becomes criminalized. According to the State Dept website, for a group to be included on this list it must be: a foreign organization, it must threaten US national security, and it must engage in terrorist activity- yes you got it, the terror group must be terrorist!

In a January 5 press release, the US State Department announced intentions to add "Al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions" to the list. According to the State Department's release, the AQKB was "established in 2007 from the remnants of other Kurdish terrorist organizations". Curiously enough an online search for "Al Qaeda Kurdish Battalions" yields no articles or news stories mentioning a group by this exact name prior to January 5, the date of the US State Department's press release. This begs the question: do the Al Qaeda Kurdish Battalions actually exist? Was any group operating under the name AQKB prior to January 5?

The US State Department claims that AQKB has been behind a number of attacks in Iraq against Kurdish targets, including a May 2007 truck bombing in Erbil, a July 2007 attack killing border guards in Penjwan, and a foiled suicide bombing aiming for security officers in Sulaymaniyah. Most press releases from 2007 about the Erbil truck bombing don't hold a specific group accountable, although some speculate that Ansar al-Sunnah would have been capable of carrying out the attack. The internet doesn't yield much information about the foiled attack in Sulaymaniyah, but this article does mention the "the Kurdistan Battalion of Islamic State in Iraq" claiming responsibility for attacking in the border areas of Penjwan.

While I don't doubt, or at least I would hope, that the US government has more intelligence than a nerd at home with a search engine, it does seem that there wasn't a group calling themselves Al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions until the US government coined the term. If anything there is more evidence for a group calling themselves the Kurdish Brigades. We see this name appearing in internet forums as early as 2007, with Haji Arif allegedly releasing a letter in 2007 declaring the group's allegiance to Al Qaeda. The fact remains however, that absolutely no evidence exists of a group calling itself the AQKB prior to this month.

The US invention of the name Al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions helps perpetuate the fantastical paradigm of the United States versus Al-Qaeda, with al-Qaeda as an incredibly threatening and evil and organized monolithic entity. Through this paradigm the US government justifies increasing expansion of its powers, spying on citizens at home and invading and occupying other countries abroad. How will the US continue to justify occupation, surveillance, and indefinite detention without trial, if not in the name of the fight against terrorism?

Intelligence officials now believe that there are no more than 200 surviving members of Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile the US national security apparatus has grown its ranks into the millions. What will this "self-sustaining industry of so-called terrorism experts" do? Do we allow for the fall of al-Qaeda, or do we descend increasingly into inanities, galvanizing huge swaths of the government apparatus to fight against twitter terrorism and slapping the name Al-Qaeda onto groups that may or may not claim it? A professor at LSE wrote recently that, "the power of Al-Qaeda can only be eradicated when the fantasies around the group are laid to rest." So, what is our course? Are the AQKB real? This is the decade of the war on terror- a war on who and what, exactly?

Remembering the Gaza Massacre

"In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him." -Maan News Agency reporting from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on on December 27, 2008

On Saturday December 27, 2008, an Israeli drone bombed the police headquarters in Gaza City killing 40 people, including several dozen police cadets at their graduation ceremony. Israeli forces wounded more than 700 Palestinians on this day, and killed over 229. December 27 was the most deadly day in Palestine since the Nakba. This day marked the beginning of a month-long massacre in which the Israeli army killed over 1400 people. The video below shows the first minutes of a massacre. It shows innocent people dying on the ground, pronouncing their faith in God, making the Shahada, even as they have been so unjustly murdered. The depth of this faith would later move scholars to tears.

Israeli analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the strike was "shock treatment...aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement, "The United States...holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza." The US govt held HAMAS responsible for the violence while the Israeli Army deployed F-16 and M-84 warplanes, attack helicopters, Hellfire missiles, 100,000s of American artillery rounds, GPS-guided mortars, Merkava tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, unmanned aerial vehicles, remote-controlled weapons stations, white phosphorus, depleted uranium, and I could go on.

When I first went to Gaza, in March 2008, I looked so many people in the eye. I saw bullets made in America that were pulled out of the bodies of children. I saw that while kids in my neighborhood go hungry, Americans' tax dollars go to destroy schools, places of worship, and innocent lives. I saw the destruction wrought by this violent hegemonic system that connects all of us. Yet when I first went to Gaza I looked so many people in the eye. I feel like my liberation is so tied to this place. I am not altruistic. The small things are coping mechanisms- Oh I went to a march, I did some BDS research.. people are dying and the small things rest my conscience but they shouldn't. I feel so tied up, my identity is so tied up with a people an a country that makes weapons, tells false history, colonizes the world, asserts supremacy. Some people try to cope with records of true history by making it less real, or they go around acting so self-righteous, like they have a duty to help the poor, or the Palestinians, or whoever. If people don't get that they're tied up in it too, then they don't get it at all. I hope I have the courage to speak the truth, to find a way to be in the world that fits with my commitment live for justice.

God bless all the martyrs on the third anniversary of the Gaza Massacre. May we never forget, and may we have the courage to live justly, and work for change in the face of injustice.

The Problem with 'Free Palestine' Stickers

Something about all these 'Free [insert global south occupied place here]' slogans totally freaks me out! What's with all these hippie granola soccer moms smacking 'free tibet' stickers on their subaru outback bumpers and hipsters sewing 'free palestine' patches onto their ironic purple american apparel hoodies. First of all, last I checked hipsters by definition are not politically engaged! Perhaps the palestine patches are preferable to the hipsters-wearing-keffiyehs phenomenon, a fad which I'm fairly certain has in and of itself caused Yasser Arafat to turn over in the grave and throw down the olive branch. Yet even if we could put aside the problems associated with wearing someone else's national symbol for style and decorating your wardrobe with political slogans just for kicks, I would still have questions!

Free Palestine! Free Tibet! Free Hawaii!

Free Palestine! Free Tibet! Free Hawaii! What does it mean?! Are these phrases meditating on a far-off ideal or are they advocating for some action? Is it a command to the reader like "Hey you! 'Free Tibet'! Now!"? Who would be doing this freeing? I mean, let's face it, American operations to free other people don't have a great track record! Operation Enduring Freedom anyone? The same people who buy 'Free Tibet' stickers to decorate their hip and sustainable nalgene water bottles would probably be totally freaked out by a support-our-troops-ribbon clad pick-up truck sporting 'Free Iran' stickers. The American government invaded Iraq in the name of freedom, and yet now we hear cries of 'Free Iraq', meaning to free Iraq from the violent American colonial occupiers. To hell with good intentions (I don't really think the government had many good intentions in the case of invading Iraq, but i do love Ivan Illich so wanted to throw that phrase in)!

So, perhaps while carefully applying the new 'Free Palestine' sticker to the prius, we can also be thoughtful about whose indigenous struggle we are talking about. What does freedom really look like? Who gets to define freedom? Who should decide how to create freedom? And once you've thought through all of that and thought about how to best take action and actually do something, what is the need for the sticker? To raise awareness for change? Then you might as well be more specific than just "Free Palestine". How about "Zionism is racism", or "Obama stop funding Israeli war crimes" or a simple "Fuck you colonial occupiers"? Seriously! The Free [insert global south occupied place here] slogans are just a little too granola for me. If your purpose is just for image or to be stylin, I bet the Kardashians can provide ample information on how to be stylish without exploiting free-the-third-world slogans in the name of fashion. If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps you would like one of these t-shirts?

From Tahrir Square to Oscar Grant Plaza

On April 6 2009 I was in Tahrir Square on the Day of Anger. There were police trucks on every side street prepared to round up any person with the courage to come out and stand up against the regime. A brave few were out that day, from the Kefayah Movement and April 6 Youth Movement- the youth who were willing to stand up to the police state before the world was watching, before the revolution. As it happened, I was fired from my job in Egypt for writing an article about the parliamentary elections, and so it was that I found myself in Oakland in January 2011 watching Al Jazeera from my living room. I could have barely imagined in the years prior, yet as the world watched, the people of Egypt believed, and came out to protest en masse, and overthrew a dictator. It reminded me so distinctly of one of my favorite lines of poetry, from Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi:
‎ "إذا الشعب يوما اراد الحياة .. فلا بد ان يستجيب القدر"
"If the people one day really want life, then fate must respond"


Tonight in Oakland, at 14th and Broadway, demonstrators were yelling in Arabic.
"الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام " "The people want an end to the system" I have never had so much tear gas caught in my throat. The police, cops, homeland security, SWAT teams or whoever they were seemed so militarized. When they threw tear gas canisters hundreds of people would run, and as we were running I heard someone yelling "Allahu Akbar". I am not Muslim, but it reassured me in the moment. Everyday at work I see videos from Syria, of people dying at the hands of the Assad regime, thousands of people shot with live ammunition, reciting the Shahada as comrades die around them. So, tonight, I counted my blessings. As I was standing in Oscar Grant Plaza, my friend Ahmad was texting me advice from Egypt: "If you get gassed remember to breathe. Don't rub your eyes. Soak your koffeyyah in vinegar if you can".

So tonight I was thinking back to Tahrir Square in 2009. I was thinking about how I felt so lonely when I got fired from my job. Since then revolutions have been in progress. How amazing is it that tonight in Oakland, I was receiving advice on staying safe at a demonstration from an activist in Cairo? How amazing is it, that tonight in downtown Oakland, American protesters are facing up to a huge policy presence, chanting "ashaab yurid isqat al-nizam". Something about hearing slogans from Tahrir in Oakland tonight felt right. It made me believe that maybe people really can decolonize their minds, and that maybe the 99% all over the world really can draw strength from each other. From Tahrir Square to Oscar Grant Plaza, Thawra Hata Nasr.

‎ "إذا الشعب يوما اراد الحياة .. فلا بد ان يستجيب القدر"

The Egyptian Masses are Heroes Today

"The American government gives our dictators tear gas, but our American friends gave us Facebook"

"There will be no revolution in Egypt. Mubarak will get a grip by tomorrow." Change has always got its nay sayers and haters. We have also got our analysts and academics. We've got people sitting around and thinking, unsure of what will happen, waiting to pounce. They're gonna write something about the would-be revolution, say something about the struggle. Today however, I want to send all my love to the people on the ground. I saw video of an old man, literally lying on the ground as if reclaiming his country yelling "Tahya Masr, Tahya Masr, Tahya Masr..." I never saw someone lie on the street with such dignity. I feel as if Egypt is my second home, yet I cannot imagine how much courage it must take to go out and protest in Egypt, to face the police state, and have the audacity to hope for change after so many years of military dictatorship.

Today a friend said, "The American government gives our dictators tear gas, but our American friends gave us Facebook. We are together in the streets. For tear gas wash your face with coke, for electric shocks put plastic under your clothes and wrap it with tape. For bruises put ice. If you're attacked just run. Night protests are good. Buy loud speakers and give them away. You can buy them in Bablouk. Most of the people can't afford them but buy small ones and you can hide them in your bag."

These small details of courage impressed me, and I just hope that later on the world can hear at least some of the story from people like my friend, instead of me, or academics. In Memory of Forgetfulness Mahmoud Darwish laments how Palestinians do not come on stage “except as a subject for others to take up and interpret”. Today I felt America was talking, talking, talking and there was something shocking about it, the ease at which people encapsulate struggle in words, pinning meaning to a fight that someone else has lived their whole life. So often it seems that even when the people speak truth to power, it's still power writing our history books. I know there are stories of people's struggles that in my position of privilege I cannot even know. I'm putting my love and my tears up in the air tonight for you.

In our inherently flawed and mysterious world to persistently seek knowledge and justice is to be a warrior. My love and solidarity with all the people in Egypt and around the world who are fighting for justice. Your courage and hope rock me to the core. Masr wa7shetny, Thawra Hata Nasr, Viva La Revolución.



"All I can say is that I miss you and my sisters, and I think of you all endlessly. I am trying to study hard but I find myself struggling to study at all, so I study struggle instead. And it does not escape me that I am fortunate enough to study it while others live it; so I breathe it, dream it, talk it, write it, love it, spread it, and sip it. But still I cannot say that I live it." - Ismail Khalidi