My head on the pillow in Abu Hazim's house. Another home for the traveler, another pillow for the head. My relationship with place is in truth a relationship with time. I move in patches of time, some I have lost and some I possess for a while and then I lose because I am always without a place. I try to regain a personal time that has passed. Nothing that is absent ever comes back complete. Nothing is recaptured as it was.
'Ein al-Deir is not a place, it is a time. Evidence of the last rain that we can see on our shoes even though our eyes tell us it has dried. The thorns of the brambles trained our hands and our sides to bleed early when we were children returning home at sunset to our mothers. Do I want to scramble through brambles now? No, what I want is the time of scrambling. 'Ein al-Deir is specifically the time of Mourid as a child
Mourid Barghouti, from I Saw Ramallah
Isn't that beautiful? Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteA pleasure, Lydia. I was looking through old posts from 2006 and was surprised by what I found there. This was one quote I had loved.
ReplyDeleteI think that's what disappointed me about peoples response to Gaza. Although this blog is obviously open to the public, I do record periods of times in my life in it. To have lectures or outright anger as I recorded my honest response and understanding of the situation, was deeply disappointing. I deleted most posts because of the problems it created for me and continues to create.
Anyway ... back to happier times and acceptable quotes ;) Thanks, Lydia, as always. xo