A love letter to my Falasteen

A love letter to my Falasteen

I see people visiting you freely, my love, Falasteen. Left and right, flights in and flights out. They leave and never feel the need to go back. Even if they do, it will never be like the way I want to go back home. You are my birthright. You served their worldly purpose, they have somewhere homely to go back to, something that fulfills their identities. The thing is, you have become a large part of my purpose as a human. You are why I am what I am now. My first memory of you started at the beginning of my bloodline. You breathed soul, resistance, and love into my mama, her ancestors, my baba, his ancestors. They are monsters. Terrorizing you, Haifa, Akka, Quds, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Yafa, Ramle. They won’t even let me visit Ghazzeh, the only part of you I have felt, sand and sun and water and all. They will not treat me with dignity when I come to see you, habibti Falasteen. I’ll tell you why, even as I am in pain, seeing people who do not love you the way I do visit you. They do not let me come see you because they know I carry you in my limbs, in my heart, in my soul, in my eyes, in my legs, in my feet, in my words, in my actions, in my every day, in my language, in my efforts, in my life, and in my love for my life. If they let me come in easily, their evilness will dissipate. They cannot rip us away from each other, I will not be able to leave. Their worldly purposes will feel so small and breakable in front of my love for you. I love you ya Falasteen. I can never find a home like you, maybe I need not to be by your side, because you are within me, you are beside me, you are me, and I am you. I love you more than anyone has ever loved anything. I have loved and built a home worlds away from you with so many people because of my, our love for you. You will be okay,

you will feel freedom as real as my love for you, as real as our love for you. Z.J.