In such a situation of inequality and injustice, oppression and desperation – all those coherent pairs that negatively became inseparable from my daily life – confusion got the better of me. I had to find a sanctuary for my brain in order to keep it neutral, effective and organised. I couldn’t find a better one than mathematics – where equations are predictably tricky, challenging and entertaining.
It’s like a rough surge that after a while will gently turn into a kind of pure water. I deal with nearly everything around me with numbers, equations and logic that leads to reason. For instance, when I meet someone new, I declare him a new variable and I give him a value that will classify him into a circle. Surely, I will assume the best possibilities for him.
Then day-by-day his record either rises up to take him gently to an advanced circle, or falls down to throw him to a lower one till his value changes again.
Our life here in Gaza is yet another equation. It’s still being filled with negative variables from wars and suffering. But what is keeping it in balance is the inexhaustible hope for change in that equation – a positive, respectable life to come.
However, while my brain is being fed enormously well with mathematics, my heart desires another shape of humanist offspring. I’ve chosen to taste the savour of words because words will always retain their powers; words offer the means to meaning and for those who are listening, the enunciation of truth.
We must strive to find our own voices because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.
Thoreau said: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
We mustn’t resign ourselves to that. We should “break out”!
So when I first sought for a good voice, I found it in poetry.
I wrote my first couple of verses when I was 11 years old, when meanings were optimistically different from now and I was fond with roses;
The perfect blossom will arrive soon,
Kindly changing everything with it.
Spring is a magical great boon,
Let’s prepare ourselves for a refit.
After the 2008 war, Operation Cast Lead (I was 15 years old) I started losing the optimist’s words, savours changed aggressively, and meanings in my mind started to be replaced.
My inspiration turned to be the rubble, shreds and endless nights in deep dark agonisingly with only the sound of merciless artillery and my mother’s prayers. It was then that I wrote “Never wish wars”;
Meteors are failing on a non-safe land,
Taking our dreams in a blink of an eye.
No one questioning how many die,
Thus humanity sanctifies another’s lies!
And:
“Christmas never visits my home,
I’m a denied legend.
Nights escape from me,
I’m a spirit.
O me, if I could die
Like others doom.”
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and meanings repeatedly still changing, each time for more aggressive ones gained from the surrounding cruel environment.
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i wish you peace x