The Interviewer Wants to Know About Fashion
“They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
—Ayelet ShakedThink of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
I watch a woman and the watching is a crime,
so I return my eyes. The sea foams like a dog.
What’s five thousand miles between friends?
If you listen close enough,
you can hear the earth crack like a neck.
Be lucky. Try to make it to the morning.
Try to find your heart in the newsprint.
Please. I’d rather be alive than holy.
I don’t have time to write about the soul.
There are bodies to count.
The news anchor says oopsie.
The Prime Minister says thanks.
There’s a man wearing his wedding tuxedo to sleep in case
I meet God and there’s a brick of light before each bombing.
I dream I am a snake after all.
I dream I do Jerusalem all over again. This time,
I don’t shake my hair down when the soldier tells me to.
I don’t thank them for my passport.
Later my grandfather said they couldn’t have kept it.
You know that, don’t you?
I don’t know what they couldn’t do.
I only know that enormous light.
Only that roar of nothing,
as certain and incorrect as a sermon.
—Hala Alyan
I took back the habit of journaling at the later end of October. Emotions were high; a cocktail of confusion, guilt, frustration, sadness, anger, and loss filled most of my days. I call my mother more often; we exchange sighs and silences. She ends with a warning to be safe. Her words linger within me as our student organization board deliberates for the third hour. It’s our duty as an Arab collective to speak on this. But do we want to draw more attention to ourselves? Is it safe? They’re not safe, so why do we have the right to be? I leave our meeting feeling small.
Underneath the Faunce Arch, we sold baklava and sweets to fundraise for the UN’s World Food Programme. Questions of safety are disregarded as we solicit passersby for donations. No political statements, no emblems of our Arab identity with the exception of our appearance; solely a sign stating “Fundraising for Children in Gaza.” Nonetheless, our existence was enough to elicit accusations: “How do you know this money won’t be going to Hamas?” The UN loses credibility when paired with Gaza, I learned. I leave the booth feeling small.
Comments flood Sidechat after every rally held. “Terrorist sympathizers” is a label thrown around plenty. Justifications for the deaths of children, mothers, and fathers appear under any post of support. I find it ironic that the bill I chose for my policy class project, long before Oct. 7, deals with defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The assignment hits closer to home, and while grateful for the extensions, I submit the half-baked papers feeling small.
How does one find strength and motivation to continue to fight in and against a system that seems too large, too powerful, and utterly irreparable? The divestment movement at Brown had started years prior, and despite consistent student support and action, the university had all but ignored its students' demands. Here we were at an impasse that felt all the more a matter of life or death. I am transported back to 2021, when Israel, for the umpteenth time, waged a war on Gaza and threatened to expel residents of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. I’m in high school, albeit virtually given the pandemic, at an utter loss on how to explain to people whom I thought were friends and allies that Palestinians deserve the right to exist and to live.
I’m older now, but still faced with the daunting task of conveying that Arabs are not a monolith. We are not “terrorists!” Palestine has always existed, and its people deserve to live in dignity. I attend rallies, I miss class, I scroll endlessly through videos that communicate unimaginable death, destruction, and bodies suffocating under the rubble. I go to sleep feeling small.
Debates within the Arab Student Society continue to ensue. Our board is torn. It’s obvious everyone has a differing opinion on remaining apolitical as the only Arab club on campus, but one thing is made clear: we cannot remain divided. No statement is a statement. There is an urgent moment that demands a position. Was it not hypocritical of us to demand that the university acknowledge the pain of its Arab and Palestinian students while we tiptoed around language and signing letters? Those who are uncomfortable step down, and we choose to back the statement put out by Students for Justice in Palestine, but not without the knowledge that our previous silence had not gone unnoticed. Here again, in choosing to accept responsibility for a decision, I could not but help wonder if it was too late.
We’re granted an opportunity to have a conversation with Amal Ghandour, acclaimed Lebanese and Jordanian author whose memoir, “This Arab Life,” documents the cascading catastrophes generations of Arabs have endured. The tension on campus was high, and we wanted advice on how to protect our members without sacrificing our beliefs. She shares anecdotes of her time organizing in college, emphasizing that strength lies in numbers. There’s always risk involved; you need to come to terms with what you’re willing and capable of risking. We decide our best course of action is to supplement the protests with programming and safe spaces. We want to convey to our campus that we’re human. Maybe the administration would be forced to reckon with our existence then.
On Nov. 8, 2023, 20 Jewish students chose to conduct a sit-in in University Hall, drawing inspiration from the countless student actions of Brown’s past. Five hours later, they were arrested and marched one-by-one through crowds of students singing in support. I recount two things in my journal later that night: an utter disgust with my institution and a growing sliver of hope for my peers. It was 35 degrees Fahrenheit, but I recall the warmth of a collective of students coming together, one that could hardly be explained beyond a feeling of safety.
Thanksgiving break seemed surreal. Tensions on campus seemed to grow every day, and student frustration with the administration was at a peak. Meetings with administrators to voice safety concerns were dead ends. Being home was a respite, albeit temporary. Returning to the news that a peer, Hisham Awartani, had been shot was a plunge back into an unwanted reality. It took the paralysis of a beloved community member for the first use of the word “Palestinian” in campus communication. Protest breaks out during the university’s vigil for Hisham.“Is this how you want to honor your friend?,” the University President pensively says. I could think of no better way to do so.
Forty-one more students were arrested in December. The semester comes to an end and I am no closer to an answer when friends’ ask how we are meant to fight an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I assume the answer lies somewhere: and so I listen more astutely in our Palestine: A Comparative Ethnic Studies Approach class, which was intended to learn about Palestine in relation to other global movements.
Throughout the course, I found solace in the collective exploration of narratives, histories, and struggles for liberation. It was an intimate 18-person seminar, and each week, we delved into the complexities of Palestinian life and resistance, the concept and practice of Sumud, the dynamics of gender and sexuality, and the relationship between the Palestinian grassroots and various structures and institutions of power. Classmates from all walks of life felt safe sharing connections and past experiences regarding oppression, resistance, struggle, and solidarity. It is through Professor Qutami’s class that I believe answers were revealed to me.
Before classes started, I received messages from our liaisons within the Brown Divest Coalition about an upcoming action. Medical liabilities prevent me from participating, so the time leading up to the hunger strike is spent reaching out to potential strikers and cultivating programming for the week of the strike. Teach-ins, rallies, and art builds take place throughout the days despite the daily additions of rules and regulations the Student Activities Office suddenly began to enforce. While sitting in the campus center, I have a conversation with an Indigenous friend on mental health and its ties to identity and community. They reflect on their community’s shared history of oppressed identities through residential schools and predatory government policies. We come to the conclusion that despite the differences in these respective struggles, there are common threads that bind us together: the resilience of communities enduring and surviving systemic oppression, the importance of collective healing and solidarity, and the need to reclaim and celebrate our identities and cultures as a political act of defiance.
I recall that conversation after watching Mahdi Fleifel’s A World Not Ours, one of the documentaries assigned maybe two weeks after the conclusion of the hunger strike. The content is raw and real, and the state of Abu Iyad’s frustration within the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the various forces complicit in his subjugation strikes myriad similarities with that of my parents, friends, and community members. To me, the film intimately explores how long-term displacement affects identity and mental health. The conditions of the camp and the legal status of the refugees affect their outlooks on life, and it’s apparent that these conditions cause a prevalence of mental health issues in an environment inaccessible to proper services, opportunities, and full personhood. Abu Iyad’s experience is not unique, and it showcases that violence and subjugation of Palestinians extend past Gaza. What are the long-term consequences of generational trauma that is reinforced within every lifetime? It may be years before we reach a scientific conclusion, but perhaps we can turn to community healing in the same manner Abu Iyad and the rest of the refugees came together to enjoy the World Cup.
As if fated, the solidarity encampment on Brown’s campus begins April 24, the same day I start my reading for the 14th week of our class. The reading that week included a conversation between two Palestinian healers, one that solidified the answer to the question that had been on my mind since the start of this sixth war on Gaza in 17 years. “I have come to believe that the only way to overcome the sense of pain and guilt for those who are killed in Gaza is to keep active. To see every action as action.” With the addition of community healing, Abu-Rayyan’s belief can be applied to combat the threat of hopelessness as well and maybe provide a coping mechanism for the effects of generational trauma for the time being. In other words, our desire to and impulse to do something is as much for us as it is an act of solidarity with Palestinians. It is a method to cope, heal our broken hearts, alleviate hopelessness, and feel a sense of worth and responsibility in this time of genocide.
From struggles for Indigenous sovereignty and land back to Civil Rights and Black Power movements, to the genocide that continues to unfold in Palestine today, I have found that community healing and resilience play a pivotal role in navigating and sustaining struggles and movements for rights and freedom. In the face of systemic oppression, violence, trauma, and injustice, the most marginalized bear the brunt of the harm inflicted upon their communities in different ways. However, through collective healing practices and resilience-building efforts, communities can reclaim agency, restore dignity, and foster deep and meaningful practices of solidarity. By coming together to share experiences, support one another, and collectively address the root causes of their suffering, communities can create spaces of safety, belonging, and empowerment. Despite the bumps and many challenges along the way, I witnessed this and felt this throughout the encampment.
Community healing serves as its own unique form of resistance against the forces that seek to divide and oppress, affirming the inherent worth and humanity of all of us. That is at the core of the Palestinian practice of Sumud. It was through the steadfastness of the students, the will to continue on despite retaliation and punishment, and the commitment to do it collectively, that the administration felt forced to offer a vote on divestment. A small step surely, and perhaps not cause for celebration, but was it not proof that community healing and resilience through collective action not only nurture individual well-being but also strengthen the fabric of any movement for social justice, helping lay the foundation for lasting change and transformation?
When you are surrounded by a collective community with similar pains and goals and do something rendered impossible together, it becomes a little harder to feel small.
