Poem composed during the July-August 2014 summer war, what Israel called “Operation Protective Edge” on Gaza.
Ammiel Alcalay
You know as well as I do that a people under occupation will
be unhappy, that parents will fear for the lives of their precious
children, especially when there is NOWHERE TO HIDE.
You know as well as I do that a husband’s memory of his wife forced to
deliver their child at a checkpoint will not be a happy one. You know as well as
I do that the form of her unborn child beaten to death in the womb
will never leave a mother’s mind. And you know as well as I do that a girl will
have cause to wonder at the loss of her grandfather, made to wait on his
way to the hospital, and she’ll have cause to cry at the bullet lodged
in her brother’s head — You know as well as I do that watching
someone who stole the land you used to till water their garden
while you hope some rain might collect to parch your weary throat
might cause bitterness — You know as well as I do that a family,
a village, a city, and a people punished for the act of an individual
might not react well to the idea of “two sides.” You know as well
as I do that Hamurabi’s Code was a great legal precedent and that
the translation of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth means
ONE PUNISHMENT FOR ONE CRIME— no thing more and
no thing less. You know as well as I do that aerial bombardment
and white phosphorous and naval blockade and tanks and snipers
and barbed wire and walls and house demolitions and land
confiscation and the uprooting of olive trees and torture without
trial and collective punishment and withholding water and
access to the sea and even the sky itself are no match for rocket
propelled grenades and all the nails ever put into every homemade
bomb ever made even though metal still pierces every skin — You
know as well as I do that justice dwells in the soul as in the soil
and though you can’t ever know what you’d do if you were in
someone else’s shoes, maybe you would have the strength to carry
your elders on your back, the courage to stay at the operating table
or drive an ambulance after your children were killed, the nerve
to face the daily grief compounded by loss after loss until all
you have left is the unutterable scream you possess in the
heave of your breast and the depth of your chest. But you also
know as well as I do that the size of the prison increases the
capacity to resist, and the extent of the suffering makes fear
just another feeling among many because the most
occupied are also the most free since there are no
illusions left but the vision of freedom and how to
realize it. You know all this but you know
too, just as I do, that enough is enough
and those below will continue to rise up.
—Ammiel Alcalay,
August 1-3, 2014
“Letter to the Americans” translated by Anton Shammas:
