Power has thousands of faces in thousands of postures. When you cut off one of its heads somewhere, many others shall take shape elsewhere.
Iskandar Abdalla
“Are you asleep?” “No. I am in love with you.” I answered him and rushed to fall into his arms. I wished the warmth of his presence would delineate a new geography of salvation. I wished the stickiness of our bodies would carry us off to forgotten shores of intimacy; to an unexplored land between sleep and wakefulness; shielded from the nightmares of a haunting past and the pungent realities of a ruthless present.
I am craving an impossible home.
In my dreams, I used to live out the past of a home that failed to be a present. But lately, the night has been stripped of its soothing angels. Cold armies of fear did smuggle into my sleep. Do you think we can overthrow the nightmares if we hold each other tighter? Do you think we can retrieve our dreams if we caress our scars with the healing touch of love?
I came to Berlin marked by a revolution. Many call it a failed one. They tally its vices. They evoke the wounds, the losses, the frozen times, the vanishing places, the perishing souls, the poured blood, and the nightmares to evince its failure. But they nevertheless fail to reckon with what remains from a revolution — the relentlessness of memories, the hauntings of the past, the afterlives of home in exile, the imprints of exile on the shadows of home, and what it means to be marked by a revolution.
Certain moments we live in might only be conceivable in reference to the time and space that called them into being, and yet, they are never confined to nor determined by their parameters. So are many of the moments that unfold during a revolution: the moment of showing rage in the face of oppression, the moments of feeling the fortitude that dispels fear, of rubbing against masses of the wretched and the weak rising in dignity to move mountains, of shouting the thunderous cry of resistance that speaks truth to power: justice is the ultimate condition for peace. And the moment when we fall in love, longing for a future that brings us closer to each other.
We grew apart from each other. The cries of rage have dwindled. The Maidan was stolen from beneath its people. The empire of fear has struck back. Power has thousands of faces in thousands of postures. When you cut off one of its heads somewhere, many others shall take shape elsewhere. They will lurk behind you, cutting through your ways to get hold of you. A decade has passed. Mountains and seas, fences and checkpoints have stood between us until our roads finally crossed each other.
And here we go again. We stand side by side, holding hands, shouting on the streets in familiar rage: “Free Gaza!” and “Stop the genocide!”
It is much colder here.
We have grown older and wearier. But whoever is marked by a revolution is spectered forever; whoever has tasted the bitterness of oppression and probed the freedom of breaking its chains is ceaselessly bound to the urge of justice. I hear you shouting, “Run away!” I see the policemen pushing the masses violently. I see them crushing the candles the protestors lit as a vigil for the innocent they commemorate. I see our past fading in our present. I feel the nag of my old scars. I take you “home.” I kiss your tears and remind you that home will be reborn elsewhere.
“Did you fall asleep?” I asked him, listening to the sound of his breath growing deeper and calmer. Clutching myself into the softness of his skin, I closed my eyes. The darkness enveloped me. An echo filled the room:
Near is the day of tumult.
Your doom will come to you.
God might be dead, but the pain of the oppressed will live forever.
They will not petrify their dead in stones.
They will feed their starving children and grandchildren with your hatred, instead.
They will whisper in their ears and tell them to keep looking behind, at valleys of blood and mountains of sorrow, at lost homes and broken dignities, at their stolen future.
They will whisper it in the ears of those who are present to whisper it in the ears of those who will come.
They will keep looking behind, but only to look back to you in rage and turn your cities into pillars of salt.
