Eyad

By | 1 February 2021

30 May 2020

& as i scan the tweet             Palestinian autistic man’s killing a ‘tragedy’             i am surprised             & i am surprised each time             how platitudes masquerade as mourning             how headlines condense our loss into abstract             & there is nothing abstract about Eyad              i read that Eyad sipped his morning tea & spritzed his cologne & walked to elwyn el quds school             his footsteps rhythming across the concrete             & i see that his caretaker Warda stood at the gates             waiting for him like she had the last 6 years             & in 6 seconds they turned Eyad into an occasional lapse             loose trigger fingers             a familiar sequence of these streets             a fatal sequence of these streets             & i wonder what about Eyad is threat?              & what about Warda is threat?              & what about ambulance is threat?              & i think about a better headline             two israeli police officers shot Eyad/kept shooting at Eyad/executed Eyad – because they can             i do not misunderstand, five bullets were not enough for his Palestinian body             they have stripped all the holy out of this city             & i know his identity card is a death warrant             & his whole face is a frontline             & i see he has a mother, Um Eyad             she is on the tv now             her falastini and weeping stretched thin over this dunya,              as if this dunya didn’t just end for her             as if it didn’t try to end her many times before             & i can’t understand how many of us to change a home an alley a community a country?              the israeli police refuse a Palestinian autopsy             some bodies get a different kind of burial             soon after i read that Abu Eyad and Um Eyad requested the lion’s gate security footage             & the justice ministry said it is not available             & i know though the dimensions of this narrative may vary, its devils and divines do not             & in this place dead does not always mean dead             & i know tyrants do not always end the way suras and psalms promise us             & i have felt this before             my insides corroding in the baptism of this occupier             we are Palestinians carrying Palestinians in our mouths             we know the importance of naming things             & i have run out of ways to ask for my own forgiveness             & i see official condolences coming in as if it were a natural disaster             words to ornament these casualties             words to ornament their collusion             & i’m not sure if it’s ever been as important             to sit here in testimony             at least for those who will come after             meanwhile, a tik tok video of israeli girls shimmying their hips to our hishek bishek music has gone viral             & i just need to get off twitter             & i’ll forget about it then.

after Clint Smith

 


This entry was posted in 100: BROWNFACE and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.
Sara M Saleh is a human rights campaigner, poet, writer, and the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, living on Gadigal land. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in English and Arabic in various national and international outlets including the Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Overland Journal, Kill Your Darlings, Red Room, Rabbit Poetry, the Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II, and global anthologies Making Mirrors, Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word, A Blade of Grass, and Borderless: a transnational anthology of feminist poetry. She has run poetry workshops in countless classrooms, community spaces, and festivals across the country, and has performed nationally and internationally. She is co-editor of the 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. She is the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review’s 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. She is currently developing her first novel Songs For The Dead and The Living as a recipient of the inaugural Affirm Press Mentorship for Sweatshop Western Sydney. She sits on the board of national advocacy organisation GetUp! and is a proud Bankstown Poetry Slam ‘Slambassador’.

More by Sara M Saleh on Cordite Poetry Review →

Related work:

Comments are closed.