By Elena Hijazi | Junior Editor

I attended the “Writing Back to Palestine” event hosted by the AUB Writing Center during Palestine Week. Seeing the wonderful photographs of Palestinian riots and icons all around made for an environment that declared honoring its people. Every time I held my pen to write, my tears would flow instead of the ink. 

I looked outside at all the graceful green of the trees, listened to the humming tunes of the birds, stared at the glistening, pulchritudinous sun, and I thought of how audacious I am to be sitting here. So, I wrote down my first lines:

I would ask for your forgiveness, but how dare I plead? Seeing your olive trees crumble into ashes as the world takes a seat?

It was a full house as many came to write back to dear Palestine. The writers were helping each other brainstorm and put their emotions into words. There was an air that breathed love out to our neighbouring land. However, we all had this shared look on our faces that screamed: how can we find the words for this? So, I continued:

Words seem to be brittle before your spilled blood.

Before the stolen innocence of your children.

Before this unfathomable injustice that keeps getting denied without shame.

I read a few pieces of those around me. “A phoenix mourning on a branch,” brilliant Daniella wrote, “May their skin continue to burn under the wrath of Palestine’s sun,” adept Lana wrote, “For your land was as warm as a thousand suns,” my dearest Rahaf wrote, and so I carried on:

Born into a holy land that has yet to see its rightful glory. The land that will always know death but will never die.

Your stories break our hearts while yours tremble and triumph. And here we are writing letters under the sounds of birds chirping like we have any single clue about the way your limbs are hurting.

We were drinking tea and sharing thoughts. We were laughing at times but were silent during most of it. Silently thinking: what is there to say, really?

What is there to say about the way they shred your skin? About how you are expected to throw rocks at the rifles they aim? About the bombs they breed and release at the hospitals you’re in? About the masked massacres denying the blood that stains?

For the first time ever, words seemed to tremble, words seemed to fail to suffice, words seemed to lack sentience. If we feel helpless, how do you feel?

We applaud your resistance like it is a badge of honour. And use your blood as paint on our canvases, when all we can offer you are our tears and our riots.

I thought about the olive trees that have seen more torture than I can ever begin to comprehend. These trees of life on this land that has been maimed yet continues to persevere. This holy land. This paradise on Earth infested with demons. This heaven of the world.

The twigs of your olive trees like the gardens of heaven. Heaven is full of your people.

You are living our greatest fears. You are living our worst nightmares. You are suffering by the hand of the dystopian West. You teach us things you never signed up for. You are not born to be lessons. You are not born to be pitied. You are not born to be resilient. But you have no other choice. I’m sorry forever.

You’re forced to recognize your moms by their hair, and to write on your bodies the words you want engraved on your tombstones.

How do I address you, dear Palestine? I speak to you with my head down. I write to you in ink of disdain. Palestine. Oh, Palestine. Till when? The day you are free is the day Paradise is no longer lost.

Dearest fugitives of heaven may your heaven stop resembling hell. 

And may you live beyond the atrocities that you are forced to tell. 

إلى بلاد قلوبنا،