My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet

Author:Aja Monet [Monet, Aja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608467686
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2017-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

a voice from azadi square

for Neda Agha-Solatan

after Hamid Panahi

a scorching bullet hushes

sparks stanching

small gulps of blood

i hold her and feel her waft away

i plea, stay

light rustles from her face

i grasp a corpse, an utterance of refuge

don’t be afraid, neda

don’t be afraid

remember the song

we rehearsed it

no fear

carry on

freedom is coming

don’t be afraid

the giving tree

after #ddpalestine

at the core of suffering, there is always a door, a wall.

the knob shouting, they came in violently. before

the sun rose, there was an Israeli flag

posted outside. Beit Hanina, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah. They came in

violently for her home, her dignity or both, veins on

a grandmother’s wrist pleading over a stove that fed

the faces around it, rusted faucets cleansing tired hands

and rinsing cauliflower, potatoes, carrots. picture frames

of memories smiling back to her, knocked down.

doors arrest the body, walls are everywhere. if her wrinkles

could speak, they’d say: is there a country where humans will

find refuge? her dimple would follow, Here

is my grandson, Muhammad, a poet. Please bring him. there

is killing all around, blood thirsts the ground, land littered

by weeping olives, a boy in Galilee demonstrates, runs

as soldiers chase after, they strike Asel with the base of a rifle.

he trips & falls. a seed of peace, face down in an olive grove.

they shoot him—execution-style—his parents cannot rid

the image of when he first discovered his toes out of their bodies,

the baby they brought home together, now a young man,

feet fumbling out of the rubble. witness a child die,

and quickly descend into a realm of demons. witness your child

die, and you become the demon, hurled to the earth, manacled

everlasting to who you are after—They came in

violently. every Sunday is bloody, every mouth is a house

of prayer. They came in violently, every hand is a God

who heals or hurts, heals and hurts. twenty-nine foreheads

kneeled to worship the ground and never rose again. there was no flag,

no supper. one hundred and twenty-five open wounds wail

the last fast, dawn to sunset—an offering? what sort of God

murders during invocation? in their own home? what God murders at

all? tongues torn from praise, mourn. we cried loudly for

who we were before, knowing we could not unknow

what was felt. we listened loudly. still, violently. our laughter

startled their grimaces. we came with our joy, our heartache,

our pain.

shoved through checkpoints with passports

music

customs

beliefs

faith

protest

song

artists

activists

visions

in Hebron, a web of wired mesh flickered above us, shards of bottled

threat, and scraps of garbage thrown by settlers. we were

welcomed

by Umm Yasin for a meal of maklooba.

They came in violently, she says, while placing a pile of plates and utensils

on the table, even a fetus is not protected. tear gas thrown in her

courtyard, soldiers stomped down the door. she was

brought to the hospital. its heart. its heart stopped beating, she says

she serves us olives she stole from her own trees and we huddle

in the bone-clinging cold, witnessing the want

to belong, flung foreign through a door. They came in violently, she says.

we came in violently. displaced, black, and american. still, still.

she fed us.

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