Suheir Hammad

“What I Willby Suheir HammadI will notdance to your wardrum. I willnot lend my soul normy bones to your wardrum. I willnot dance to yourbeating. I know that beat.It is lifeless. I knowintimately that skinyou are hitting. Itwas alive oncehunted stolenstretched. I willnot dance to your drummedup war. I will not popspin break for you. Iwill not hate for you oreven hate you. I willnot kill for you. EspeciallyI will not diefor you. I will not mournthe dead with murder norsuicide. I will not sidewith you nor dance to bombsbecause everyone else isdancing. Everyone can bewrong. Life is a right notcollateral or casual. Iwill not forget whereI come from. Iwill craft my own drum. Gather my belovednear and our chantingwill be dancing. Ourhumming will be drumming. Iwill not be played. Iwill not lend my namenor my rhythm to yourbeat. I will danceand resist and dance andpersist and dance. This heartbeat is louder thandeath. Your war drum ain’tlouder than this breath.”

“I understand now my father really thought he was doing me good. Education means a lot to Palestinians. We’ve become some of the most educated people in the world through our diaspora. We’ve had to be. When you ain’t got land, your degree may be your only solid ground. May father felt (feels) that being a doctor would give me security. How can I explain that I’m not safe from anything if I don’t write?”

“Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician.Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there.Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16.A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you.Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.”

“one more person ask me if i knew the hijackers.one more motherfucker ask me what navy my brother is in.one more person assume no arabs or muslims were killed. one more personassume they know me, or that i represent a people.or that a people represent an evil. or that evil is as simple as aflag and words on a page.”

“i cried when i saw thosebuildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart.”

“... in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and poor. women will have to bury children, and support themselves through grief.”

“War and tooth enameled salted lemon childhoodsAll colors run, none of us solidDon't look for shadow behind meI carry it withinI live cycles of light and darkness”

“Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.”

“The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.”