A Coward’s Guide to the Intifada by Corinne Goria
October 8
See tragic photos in the NYT—attacks in Israel by Hamas. I cover my mouth. It’s a weird reflex.
I walk to the playground by the beach. The sky is a mountainous gray. Waves are messy like a white and steel-colored fingerpainting. My one year old is toddling towards the swings which are pendulating fiercely with bigger kids and I have to run and grab him before he’s punted up and over the sea wall. Just as I reach for him – his soft belly, downy curls of hair still smelling of warmed milk – I see my friend with her son. Her daughters are in Hebrew school. She says, did you hear about it? I say yes, it’s so terrible. She says, I mean, people taken at a music festival. It’s really horrible. I say, yes, it’s horrible. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t say I don’t want to talk about it, but I already feel accused. She says, at least with social media we’ll finally see what really is happening. I pause. I had no idea she thought the news was biased in the other direction. Or that anyone thought that.
In a month, that friend will have a book reading. She’ll talk about working for the Kuwaiti government; about teaching diversity; about wanting everyone in the room – a hypothetical room – to feel comfortable.
A hand goes up. “So, what did it feel like working for, you know, the Dark Side?” Some laughter ripples through the room.
My friend treats the question with diplomacy. She tries, I think, to make everyone in the room feel comfortable.
But my face has already turned bright red then pale. I want to leave. I wish I could leave. There are people all around me, including my mom whom I’ve dragged to the event with me. My skin is prickling and the hairs on my arms are on edge and I wonder if this is a reaction to a threat.
October 8
Reach out to friends with family in Israel.
They say:
My family’s ok but it is really terrible.
Reach out to more friends with family in Israel.
They say:
Thank you. My family is ok. There has been so much loss on all sides. It’s terrible.
October 9
Call my friend who’s more like a sister from Tunisia via upstate New York. In a quiet side voice because I’m walking around my kids’ school before pickup I say, I am horrified. I feel ashamed to be Arab, or like I’m supposed to be ashamed of myself for being Arab, I mean much more than usual, I say openly, candidly. Without my usual wryness.
She (who is darker-skinned than I am, more like my dad, more beautiful, and maybe more Maghrebian, or more Berber, than Arab. We’ve never really talked about it. Her parents are Muslim, mine aren’t) says – I know. It’s terrible. But you didn’t do it.
I know, I say. But people, I’ve learned, aren’t that interested in nuance. You know, they recoil when I say I’m Lebanese. (Like either, terrorist, or, not at the right address, or at the very least, gaudy. Loud. Uncouth.)
I’m worried about how teachers will treat my kids, how other kids and families will treat our kids.
As I say that last bit, a friend who is half Jewish walks by with her dog and headphones and is sniffling. I wave and say, oh hold on one second to the phone, give her a hug – she looks startled, distracted, tearful. She doesn’t smile or crack a joke like usual. We part and I continue mumbling into the phone and pacing outside the school.
I say, I’m ashamed to be adjacent to the people who did this. And I’m ashamed of humanity.
Yes exactly, my friend on the phone says.
And I’m scared. Scared for what’s going to happen next. It’s not going to be good.
You mean like backlash?
Yes. It’s going to be bad, I think.
I better go.
Text friend who was walking her dog with the headphones. I say:
Hi mama, I’m sorry I was on the phone when I saw you. I wanted to see if you were doing OK? You seemed to be down, maybe from the horrific events that have happened in the last few days. Just wanted to check in and give you a hug through text. (or if I’m imagining it all, please disregard!) xo
She writes back and says she was tired but also, yes, feeling the weight of the world.
I feel relieved. I thought she might have been planning to ostracize me and my sons from our elementary school community.
I ‘heart’ her text.
Check IG. See post by Berkeley-based Jewish Pulitzer-winner who says something about Palestine having been kept in an untenable situation for too long. As in, Israel brought this on themselves.
A few hours later he takes it down and he posts about bringing Israeli hostages home.
Full page full screens of the New York Times are about the massacres.
“TAKEN AT A CONCERT.”
“THE TERROR.”
“NIGHTMARES WREAKED BY HAMAS.”
It’s a shift. It’s as though the NYT leadership saw readers were turning to social media for catharsis and wanted in on the action.
In the face of the all-caps headlines I shield my eyes. I feel as though I’m being yelled at by a dysregulated parent.
More messages about how horrible this all is from high school friends who are all white. Some are liberal. Some are conservative. None, it seems, have a single Jewish friend. Is that possible?
How do we support Israel?
How do we support our Jewish coworkers?
They text.
October 10
The first families are on the move. The first perish. Reuters Journalists are killed in southern Lebanon.
I wait for friends who know that I have family in Beirut, who know that I’m Lebanese, who know that I’m Arab, to reach out.
I wait for at least my closest friends to reach out.
They don’t.
Maybe they don’t know?
October 14
An Asian-American Pulitzer Prize winner is canceled by the Pritzker Center for his criticism of Israel. A Pulitzer-prize winner.
This is frightening, I text to a writer friend.
Frightening, indeed, they say. And that’s all.
I post nothing. I say nothing to anyone. Not even to my husband. He listens to the news of what’s going on in Italian but he knows better than to discuss it when the kids are around.
The kids are always around.
October 16
There is a knock at the door of a Chicago family’s apartment. At home is just the mother and her 6 year old son. She opens the door and it is her landlord. Her landlord says Muslims and Palestinians must die. He strangles her. He stabs her. Then he stabs 6 year old Wadea 26 times. Wadea looks exactly like my plump-faced 7 year old, exactly like my father in his childhood photos. Wadea al Fayoume dies. His mother remains in critical condition at the hospital. My husband sees me sitting on our bed clutching my phone and says, what’s wrong? What happened?
2017-2023
At Cal State, as an adjunct, I teach Susan Albuhawa’s, Mornings in Jenin.
I teach Imre Kertesz’s Kaddish for a Child Not Born.
The class talks about how unlikely it is that Jewish settlers would steal a child from a Palestinian mother’s arms and take it to raise as their own.
We talk about how, on the other hand, we “know” – because of Steven Spielberg films, a student quips – that the Nazis were capable of any sort of atrocity.
In my international human rights class, I teach Corrie v. Caterpillar.
In my Migration Politics and Policy class, I teach Ex Parte Shahid, which asks, for purposes of citizenship eligibility, whether a Syrian is or is not “white”. (Shahid’s “walnut complexion” and primary language and the court’s ‘original intent’ interpretation of the 13th amendment led the court to conclude “NOT white”.)
I show the picture of my great grandfather’s simple gravestone: Born, Zahle, Syria (Zahle before, and Zahle after, was in Lebanon). Died, Brooklyn, New York.
I talk about my great great grandfather, too. He applied for asylum for his wife and four children. He did not want to be conscripted into the Ottoman army. He traveled from Zahle to Mexico when he was 30. Then he died.
According to a tourism website, Zahle is known for its warriors, wine and poetry.
I wonder aloud to my class if any one of these contributed to my great great grandfather’s death in Mexico.
Several months after a letter made its way back to Lebanon with the news of his death, the asylum papers came through. His widow, my great great grandmother, took her four kids and boarded a ship to America.
February 2022
I opened the email asking for the course descriptions for my Fall classes. I was getting to teach a full course load. I’d even get health insurance.
May 2022
Suddenly, I’m pregnant. It was unplanned. I’m married with two kids. We’re economically ok for the moment; it’s not disastrous. But it’s unexpected.
I’m due in the middle of the Fall semester.
I walked out of the doctor’s office in dread.
June 2022
When I tell her the news, the Director of the Department gives a hard laugh and tells me she can find someone to replace me for the year.
That would leave me without any source of income. That would foreclose my dream of teaching a full course load. Of having health benefits.
I tell her I’m already working on how to invite guest teachers to fill in for me for just the few weeks after I give birth.
She says, “You’ll have to pay anyone who takes over your classes. Our department doesn’t have the funds to cover that.”
I hang up. I want to cry but I don’t. I have other things I need to do right then. I’m working and raising two kids already. There’s no time for it.
The following week HR tells me, Of course there is maternity leave. Of course it is covered. This is California. You’ll get five and half weeks of paid time off. I ask about lining up other teachers, and how they’ll get paid. She says, the Department Chair will take care of that. When I ask if I would need to pass my salary to the substitute teachers she froze. Of course they’ll get paid. The Department will have funds for that. No, you don’t give them your wages. Who told you that?
The Director of the Program calls me three times in a row while I’m at the doctor’s office. I see three new texts from her:
“Pls send me the resumes of the writers you propose to take over your classes in the fall when you leave.”
“I am working during my summer, unpaid, to resolve this problem as soon as possible.”
“Thx.”
This problem.
Spring 2023
I am woken up every ninety minutes throughout the night. The baby is a poor sleeper.
I walk through lectures like a zombie. I still love to teach and I still love the students.
In the leadup to the CSU lecturers’ strike demanding better pay, more job stability, parental leave and health benefits, the Director comes into my office late at night. I never usually see her on Mondays.
They don’t need me next academic year. They have professors coming from Israel to teach.
It’s evening and almost everyone on the floor has left for the day but I still have a night class to prepare for.
She walks into my small, quiet office, closes the door behind her.
They don’t need me next academic year. They have professors coming from Israel to teach. Their salaries are paid for by their universities in Israel so it’s a huge savings to the creative writing department.
You understand, I’m sure. But we might have a class or two opening up the following year.
I say, face turning red, my mind flailing about to keep my response dignified, “thank you for this opportunity to teach a full course load this year. Having health insurance has been a huge benefit to me and my family.”
“And maternity leave,” she says. “Don’t forget, you also got to take maternity leave.”
October 2023
Our family’s health insurance runs out.
November 2023
A college roommate forwards to a small group of us an IG post.
“Jewish groups sue UC Berkeley over unchecked antisemitism.”
She says she is fearful for our future generations. She asks about another friend’s family in Israel.
The friend says, Her friends and family are all ok.
I don’t chime in. Even when things have turned lighter. When they forward silly memes. When they talk about a reunion. I still don’t chime in. I’m the only one of 5 on the text chain that stays silent. No one calls me out. One of them might not even recognize my number. It’s been so long since we talked.
Same friend sends the IG post directly to me alone.
If I was my normal self, if I was the compassionate vessel I’ve trained myself to be, a heart listener, I would have asked – did you feel that way when we were at Berkeley? I’m so sorry if you felt that way. I understand. How terrible. I’m so sorry you had to feel that.
If I was the person I want to be I would say something eloquent and eviscerating. About the students, about the US, about AIPAC, about 1948, 1896, about imperialism and xenophobia and ignorance.
Instead, with body trembling, sitting in a parking lot, I write:
Such a sensitive issue and such a terrible heavy time for all sides, in the Middle East and for the diasporas in the rest of the world. I feel a lot of emotions as a Lebanese American, with family in Lebanon. A Jewish friend of mine just published a memoir about her time working for the Kuwaiti government. She said she hopes it will help people remember to always get to know others on a human level, never generalize or make assumptions. How are you feeling these days, friend? Sending hugs to you and your family
I am trying to be diplomatic and kind and magnanimous. I am not writing what I want to write. What I want to write is full of anger and sadness. I am still shaking when I receive her response.
I get out, walk up one flight of stairs to the Persian threader who will rip out my lip, chin and brow hairs. She’ll call me dear, I’ll call her honey, I’ll speak more freely than I do with my own mother even though I don’t speak Farsi. The thread will break and I’ll joke that it’s my strong Lebanese hair-itage that broke it. The threader will laugh and put her palm on my shoulder.
I’ll leave and as I walk back to my car and climb in my mouth floods with acid again.
I make sure the mini mall security guard is far enough away before I scream in my car until my voice goes hoarse.
November
The kids’ school pictures arrive. Matte finish. 8x10s and 5x7s. A red, textured background that looks like bloody plumage.
My ten-year-old sees that I’ve sent a copy to our family Whatsapp chat and he gets angry. Mom, I told you not to share pictures without my permission!
Is he embarrassed about his braces? About the forced smile, i.e., his acquiescence to the photographer? Does he just want some control?
Ok. Ok. I say. You’re right. I’ll ask first next time.
November
Three men walk down the evening street in Burlington, Vermont. A Brown student, a Trinity student and a Haverford College student. Ivy Leaguers? I don’t know what qualifies as an Ivy League. Only one is not a US Citizen. All three are of Palestinian heritage; they are wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic, on their way to celebrate Thanksgiving at a friend’s house. America can be that.
A man spots them from his apartment window. He hears them. He sees the keffiyehs, maybe.
A man spots them from his apartment window. He hears them. He sees the keffiyehs, maybe. He sees the dark, wavy hair. The dark sparkling eyes and beards. Hears the Arabic, maybe. They are not what he looks like. The man watches them. The man descends his apartment stairs half-blind with rage. Half-blind with self-righteousness. The man’s hand is heavy and light. The man shoots them, one, two, three. The man shoots them, one two three four. Four rounds. One was hit in the spine.
“We hope he will still be able to walk.”
December
You should post something, my husband says in a low voice. Our eight year old is kicking the soccer ball against the wall in the other room. Bang. Bang. Our toddler is lying on the floor eating a graham cracker and smacking his hand on the hardwood. Bang. Bang. About your family in Lebanon. Or about Arab Americans. Just some solidarity, my husband says. He is from Sicily. They’re marginalized and proud.
I shake my head. I tell our eight year old to go kick the ball outside but he doesn’t listen. I show my husband the story about Wadea. At first he says, what is it? thinking I’ve changed the subject. Then he is jubilant – oh! Is that the boy giving out the roses in that bar in Beirut? Remember that? He mimics putting the child on his shoulders and raising him up and down. The flower seller with the little black fedora that had been lifted to crowd surf over the dance floor, his dimples flashing shyly as he and his bucket of red roses traveled in a circle around the room, a little prince, a little god, suspended by kind, joyous hands lifting and bouncing him to the beat of the club music, him floating above all of us adults, shy, unsure, until finally he started smiling broadly under the hat, his dimples deep and his eyes all radiant light.
I shake my head. It’s not him. Keep reading.
My husband gets quiet. He pales. He shakes his head. That’s terrible. He says in his Sicilian accent, What kind of people are in this world, he says. He walks back into the kitchen.
December
More chatter on texts. More chatter on social.
I stop reading the news. I stop looking at social. I stop responding to texts.
I sit on the seawall and stare out at a gray glassy ocean. A lone swimmer in a wetsuit breaks through with hand and elbow. A bird dives into the water.
For five minutes, I don’t even look behind me to see if anyone is brandishing a knife. I revel in the safety. I immediately feel guilty for being able to enjoy it.
I am the Room Parent and I sign off on the December email with “Peace on Earth”.
How fucking weak, I say to myself. I think of saying more, even to friends, and then I think of backlash on my kids. My ten year old wants control of his image.
What if he’s called a terrorist, jokingly, by his teacher? By other fifth graders? What if the teacher says, Whoa, watch out! Followed by some deep-toned angry mimicry of Arabic.
What if the teacher or the parents are mentally or emotionally unstable?
What if they are just misinformed?
What if they have guns?
January
My friend who works at the Jewish Museum in Northern California says she is furious at Netanyahu. He’s as bad as Hamas. She has trouble with the use of the word genocide, though. We walk on the beach. She admires the rose-colored cliffs circling the cove. We pick up shells, ogle surfers, take selfies. Our tone dips into despair and then rises into silly laughter. We’ve known each other for twenty years.
I say – not having watched the news in weeks – it might not be genocide.
She says, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you say that.
Later that day, alone, I look at the 1989 Convention on Genocide.
I text her the link and say:
Looks like we’re already there.
But to make her feel better, to try and bridge, I say,
But maybe you were asking
about how this compares
to other atrocities, to other
genocides?
She writes and says:
No, I just wanted some
certainty.
Tearful emoji.
February
My 79 year old aunt sends messages to Biden.
Your policies are killing innocent children. You are funding genocide. You are dehumanizing all Arabs everywhere.
My aunt is furious.
I am still not watching. I am still not reading.
Somehow something trickles through about the protests at Columbia University. There’s even an encampment. Tents.
I am shocked. I am touched. What is that feeling you get when you walk into a surprise party that has been assembled for you? That’s the feeling I have. Why?
I call my other aunt in Beirut. She is 90 years old and she was a history professor at the American University of Beirut and she speaks four languages fluently and she never married and last I saw her, she had traveled alone to my wedding, her gray hair blown into a beautiful style. She had loved the food. She says, I am fine. But it really is horrible. They will try to take the whole region, mark my words. But I am fine. My apartment building has a generator.
I say, Do you think you can come here? You know you can always stay with us. For as long as you want.
She says, Go there? No way! Not the way you treat your university students.
March
I fly to San Francisco. A friend tells me about this famous person being pro-Israel. That famous person being pro-Israel. She tells me there is a groundswell of Palestinian support, though.
We walk through the Mission and see Free Palestine graffiti. A huge Palestine flag painted on the door of a beloved, abandoned Italian deli. I take photos and send them to my aunts and cousin and sister.
We drink beer in the park, my friend and I. We eat sushi. I start to think that the only Arabic thing about me is my fatalism. I start to think Arabic fatalism is not inevitable. I wonder how different I might be if being Arab in this country were an asset not a blemish.
I start poking around IG again. I’m on antidepressants, after all. My feed is almost exclusively Al-Jazeera, Democracy Now and writers for Palestine, peppered by ads for bras, for the perfect yoga pant, for dining chairs, wrinkle cream, comedy shows, pet food. I have to put my phone down after starting to feel vertigo from the incongruence.
April
My dad of all people is the one who has the idea. The message arrives on a Friday.
I’m going to visit the local university’s
pro-Palestine encampment
tomorrow and see if
I can donate to them.
Want to join?
We parked too far away. My kids were complaining halfway through our walk up the campus. But my dad, on reaching the protestors’ table, had softened into a person I did not recognize.
At the table were a lady who looked white and in her thirties, and a girl who looked Asian-American and in her twenties. I said thank you to both of them.
I smiled a little too long at them. I never imagined anyone who had their own battle against the American mainstream would put themselves on the line for Arabs. For Palestine. Something that was so small in me, that seemed long dormant, stirred. I asked if we could bring the protesters anything.
I never imagined anyone who had their own battle against the American mainstream would put themselves on the line for Arabs.
They said, just snacks maybe. Individually wrapped. And maybe coffee, but not from Starbucks, please. I said no problem. I thought about how I could get back the next day with coffee. How to bring it in containers that would reassure everyone that it had not been tampered with. How to bring it hot but sealed. Maybe just bring some cans of local cold brew. Or those packets that you mix with hot water? But how would they get the hot water?
The next day the university arrested 61 students. All of the tents were trashed.
I had been on my way to get coffee when I heard the encampment had been “cleared”. I was too late. I berated myself. I hated myself for being too late.
I reminded myself coffee was not like food and water. Not a proxy for dignity and freedom of speech. I reminded myself the university did not have to arrest peaceful protestors. That wasn’t my fault.
It’s a public university, though, and I’m paying taxes.
I drove around the campus perimeter in circles. I was like a stray ant whose line had just been wiped up by a sponge.
May
Lunch with a friend who works in the theater. She is neither Jewish nor Arab nor Muslim. She is a widow with two young kids and has successfully prioritized the important thing in life, namely, to survive until her children reach adulthood.
When she ordered she asked for a hamburger with no bun. My doctor says I’ve got to lose twenty pounds, she says.
She tells me about theater gossip. People are talking about genocide and apartheid and putting Palestine flags on their cubicle walls. The Theater Director, who is Jewish, is uncomfortable. He wants to issue a statement to the theater – to everybody, playwrights, actors, managers, directors, to keep politics out of the theater. He feels attacked.
I look around and then say in a hushed voice, “Has he seen the DOD or DOS statements? The US is still arming Israel. We always have. Weapons and bulldozers and drones and tactical support and cyber support and assault rifles and bombs.”
I’m not polished, I’m not building a methodical argument, or an argument based in human rights law or international humanitarian law or in logic. I’m flailing wildly and my cheeks are getting hot.
“The Director might feel attacked but the world’s most bloated military budget is behind him. I mean, I mean, everyone on the other side of our bombs and rifles are actually being attacked.”
As I reach for the water glass, my hands are trembling. My fork is still clean and shiny on the cloth napkin. We are sitting outside, a sunny breeze sends a shiver through the leaves, there are a few tables close to us and I feel I’m going to get screamed at or have rocks thrown at me or worse at any second.
My friend said, “I guess I’m in such a bubble in the art world. Everyone is wearing keffiyehs. Palestine is the cause celebre.”
“Well, it’s the first time in my father’s lifetime that anyone in America has cared,” I say. And even if the Director is in the minority in the theater world, he’s in the majority everywhere else. The theater world is not in charge of arms deals.
In the end my friend said she talked the Director out of issuing a statement to keep politics out. You’re in a position of power, she told him. It will be like censorship.
I bet it wasn’t easy to say that, I say.
No. It was so hard, she said. She finished her meal. I took mine to go. I was still nauseous.
May
Warm day. Dallas-Fort Worth. A mother and her children at their apartment complex swimming pool. Her six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter are splashing and shouting with glee in the shallow end. They can’t swim yet but love how weightless they feel in the water. How powerful they feel slapping and pushing the water to and fro with their small hands.
“The suspect approached the mother [who was wearing a head covering] and asked where they were from. The suspect then jumped in the pool and dragged the three-year-old girl into the deep end and tried to grab the six-year-old boy, the police report said.
The mother was able to pull her daughter from the water, police said, and local medics responded to the scene and the children were medically cleared.
The woman is being charged with attempted murder.”
“My daughter is traumatized; whenever I open the apartment door, she runs away and hides, telling me she is afraid the lady will come and immerse her head in the water again.”
May and June
I see the toddler’s naked corpse with no head. It is not cleanly sliced off, the flesh is shredded at the neck. The arms flop lifelessly.
I hold my toddler and I clutch his head and I run my fingers through his soft curls. I think of how I’d like to die quickly if I was the mother of that other toddler.
What about my other kids, though?
I think, would it just make sense, cost-benefit analysis, devastation-life still left to live analysis, would it just make sense for all of us to die quickly?
Is that what the people bombing us think?
When did I start to think I was among those being bombed?
June
My sister calls my aunt sobbing. She can’t take any more images of dead children.
I call my aunt almost immediately after. It was a coincidence.
I tell her I have survivor’s guilt. She says she does too. We talk about traveling to Lebanon next October to see Aunt Shereen. To show the place means something – because Americans are visiting? Who cares? American citizens have already been wiped out on either side of the conflict.
To plead, don’t wipe this place off the map. A hubristic thought.
I don’t plan on bringing my kids.
August
I blow up at my husband. My mom. My kids. My sister. My aunt. I can see myself flailing wildly in life. A loose fire hose. Can’t get steady.
Reach out to aunt in Beirut again. She’s fine.
Reach out to a writer friend. Tell her my 90-year old aunt is fine. She’s going to the beach. She’s having her friends over for dinner. She’s living her life as a fuck you to Israel and the U.S. I text:
My aunt is proof there is courage in our blood, but I didn’t get that gene.
September
I dig out my grad school copy of Orientalism.
“We still have at our disposal the rational interpretative skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular discourse…Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow…
“Humanism is the only, and I would go so far as to say, the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustice that disfigure human history…
“What is quite worrisome is the absence of analysis and reflection. Take the word “terrorism.” It has become synonymous now with anti-Americanism, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being critical of the United States, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being unpatriotic. That’s an unacceptable series of equations.”
“The human and humanistic desire for enlightenment and emancipation is not easily deferred.”
It’s the 2003 edition, with a preface by Said written three months before he died. He writes in that special window of lucidity and honesty afforded those who might intuit their impending deaths.
September
Pagers explode while people are buying cucumbers and tomatoes. Children nearby are killed.
What does that mean? They had pagers rigged before they were even sold? How many steps ahead did they have to plan this? Is “they” the entire supply chain?
Leon Panetta calls it an act of terror.
The UN calls it a war crime.
Sources say Israel was on the phone with the US minutes before the attack.
In the debate, Kamala says Israel has a right to defend itself. Kamala puts emphasis on the massacre of 1400 Israelis last October. Kamala glosses over the estimated 40,000 women, children and babies who have been massacred by Israel.
Is one Arab baby worth one fortieth an Israeli baby?
I would never ask this aloud. I would be afraid of the answer.
Bernie says he will introduce a resolution to block a $20 billion arms sale to Israel.
September
I yell at my eight year old to put his shoes on. I roll my eyes at my husband. I pick up our toddler and nurse him and it works – it silences him. I’m teeming with something I can’t yet name.
All the killing feels close and personal. I stand in a kitchen with four walls and multiple electric appliances. I stand in a house in a wealthy city in a wealthy state in a wealthy country protected by the most expensive military of all of human history. Protected by a military that is helping massacre my relatives on my ancestral homeland. I feel persecuted and utterly ensconced. It is all so dissonant. I don’t know what to do with myself. I stare for a full five minutes at the blades at the bottom of the empty blender.
September
My friend who works at the Jewish Museum texts:
Argh! Israel. (Enraged emoji.)
I hope everyone you know is okay.
It is horrible, infuriating, needless.
I text her:
Thank you for your kind text.
My family is still ok. I love you, friend.
September
I’m letting the carpool out at middle school. My older son, a sweet eleven year old now, can’t find his Fortnite hat. He digs around in the trunk and finds my hat with the Lebanese flag and puts it on. I’d bought it recently but had never had the courage to wear it. It’s still bright and stiff.
Israel has just bombed and killed hundreds in Lebanon. Dozens of women and children. I’d heard about it the day before. We are still waiting to hear from our aunt.
I stop him as he’s getting out.
“A___,” I say. “Wait.”
My heart is beating fast. Should I tell him not to wear the hat?
What will his teachers say? What will the kids say?
Will we all get called into the Principal’s office for advocating violence, or advocating Arab-ness which in America is the same?
Will my son – already the new kid in his middle school – become ostracized? Will he yell at me with tears in his eyes – why didn’t you tell me what this hat meant? Why did you let me wear this?
Or worse?
Or so much worse?
“Yeah?”
I stare at him. His smooth cheeks and long straight hair and deep dimples. His sparkling eyes under the brim of the hat. He’s been happier the last few weeks than I’d seen him in months. He had come out of some long shadow and his smile this morning is blindingly, painfully radiant.
“Mom, yeah? What is it? I’m going to be late.”
“Nothing. I love you. That’s all. Have a good day, dear.”
“Love you, too.”
I think maybe the gene for courage found itself to him, despite skipping me. I think, what a strong son I have. I think, he doesn’t have any idea what kind of risk he’s taking. That’s my job. I should have said something. I should have stopped him. I think all of these things at once and I do not cry.
November
Trump looms. In a few months, he’ll talk about taking over Gaza to build a resort. His face, with Netanyahu’s, will be on an Israeli Security Agency leaflet that litters the sky. “The map of the world will not change,” the leaflet says, in Arabic, “if all the people of Gaza disappear from existence. No one will ask about you.”
I still don’t post. I still don’t speak about it. I write a narrative that I hope no one will read.
