[Newspoetry] [Sdas] Suheir Hammad about Sept 11 (fwd)

[Paul Kotheimer]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 16:02:49 -0500
From: "Haber, Laura" <LHaber at admin.housing.uiuc.edu>
To: "'sdas at onthejob.net'" <sdas at onthejob.net>
Subject: [Sdas] Suheir Hammad about Sept 11

(Please forgive the formatting. My e-mail program puts line breaks where
there shouldn't be and I'm not sure how to reconstruct it.)

This is by suheir hammad. I received this through the Students for Palestine
e-mail list.


1.  there have been no words.
i have not written one word.
no poetry in the ashes south of canal street.
no prose in the refrigerated trucks driving debris and 
dna.
not one word.

today is a week, and seven is of heavens, gods, 
science.
evident out my kitchen window is an abstract reality.
sky where once was steel.
smoke where once was flesh.

fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life 
in a way never
before.  and then, and now, i fear for the rest of us.

first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's 
heart failed, the
plane's engine died.
then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now.
please god, after the second plane, please, don't let 
it be anyone
who looks like my brothers.

i do not know how bad a life has to break in order to 
kill.
i have never been so hungry that i willed hunger
i have never been so angry as to want to control a gun 
over a pen.
not really.
even as a woman, as a palestinian, as a broken human 
being.
never this broken.

more than ever, i believe there is no difference.
the most privileged nation, most americans do not know 
the difference
between indians, afghanis, syrians, muslims, sikhs, 
hindus.
more than ever, there is no difference.

2.  thank you korea for kimchi and bibim bob, and corn 
tea and the
genteel smiles of the wait staff at wonjo - smiles 
never revealing
the heat of the food or how tired they must be working 
long midtown
shifts.  thank you korea, for the belly craving that 
brought me into
the city late the night before and diverted my daily 
train ride into
the world trade center.

there are plenty of thank yous in ny right now.  thank 
you for my
lazy procrastinating late ass.  thank you to the germs 
that had me
call in sick.  thank you, my attitude, you had me 
fired the week
before.  thank you for the train that never came, the 
rude nyer who
stole my cab going downtown.  thank you for the sense 
my mama gave me
to run.  thank you for my legs, my eyes, my life.

3.  the dead are called lost and their families hold 
up shaky
printouts in front of us through screens smoked up.

we are looking for iris, mother of three.  please call 
with any
information.  we are searching for priti, last seen on 
the 103rd
floor.  she was talking to her husband on the phone 
and the line
went.  please help us find george, also known as adel.  
his family is
waiting for him with his favorite meal.  i am looking 
for my son, who
was delivering coffee.  i am looking for my sister 
girl, she started
her job on monday.

i am looking for peace.  i am looking for mercy.  i am 
looking for
evidence of compassion.  any evidence of life.  i am 
looking for
life.

4.  ricardo on the radio said in his accent thick as 
yuca, "i will
feel so much better when the first bombs drop over 
there.  and my
friends feel the same way."

on my block, a woman was crying in a car parked and 
stranded in hurt.
 i offered comfort, extended a hand she did not see 
before she said,
"we're gonna burn them so bad, i swear, so bad."  my 
hand went to my
head and my head went to the numbers within it of the 
dead iraqi
children, the dead in nicaragua.  the dead in rwanda 
who had to vie
with fake sport wrestling for america's attention.

yet when people sent emails saying, this was bound to 
happen, lets
not forget u.s. transgressions, for half a second i 
felt resentful.
hold up with that, cause i live here, these are my 
friends and fam,
and it could have been me in those buildings, and 
we're not bad
people, do not support america's bullying.  can i just 
have a half
second to feel bad?

if i can find through this exhaust people who were 
left behind to
mourn and to resist mass murder, i might be alright.

thank you to the woman who saw me brinking my cool and 
blinking back
tears.  she opened her arms before she asked "do you 
want a hug?"  a
big white woman, and her embrace was the kind only 
people with the
warmth of flesh can offer.  i wasn't about to say no 
to any comfort.
"my brother's in the navy," i said.  "and we're 
arabs".  "wow, you
got double trouble."  word.


5.  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 person assume they know me, or that i 
represent a people.
or that a people represent an evil.  or that evil is 
as simple as a
flag and words on a page.

we did not vilify all white men when mcveigh bombed 
oklahoma.
america did not give out his family's addresses or 
where he went to
church.  or blame the bible or pat robertson.

and when the networks air footage of palestinians 
dancing in the
street, there is no apology that these images are over 
a decade old.
that hungry children are bribed with sweets that turn 
their teeth
brown.  that correspondents edit images.  that 
archives are there to
facilitate lazy and inaccurate journalism.

and when we talk about holy books and hooded men and 
death, why do we
never mention the kkk?

if there are any people on earth who understand how 
new york is
feeling right now, they are in the west bank and the 
gaza strip.

6.	today it is ten days.  last night bush waged war on 
a man once
openly funded by the
cia.  i do not know who is responsible.  read too many 
books, know
too many people to believe what i am told.  i don't 
give a fuck about
bin laden.  his vision of the world does not include 
me or those i
love.  and petittions have been going around for years 
trying to get
the u.s. sponsored taliban out of power.  shit is 
complicated, and i
don't know what to think.

but i know for sure who will pay.

in the world, it will be women, mostly colored and 
poor.  women will
have to bury children, and support themselves through 
grief.  "either
you are with us, or with the terrorists"   - meaning 
keep your people
under control and your resistance censored.  meaning 
we got the loot
and the nukes.

in america, it will be those amongst us who refuse 
blanket attacks on
the shivering.  those of us who work toward social 
justice, in
support of civil liberties, in opposition to hateful 
foreign
policies.

i have never felt less american and more new yorker - 
particularly
brooklyn, than these past days.  the stars and stripes 
on all these
cars and apartment windows represent the dead as 
citizens first - not
family members, not lovers.

i feel like my skin is real thin, and that my eyes are 
only going to
get darker.  the future holds little light.

my baby brother is a man now, and on alert, and 
praying five times a
day that the orders he will take in a few days time 
are righteous and
will not weigh his soul down from the afterlife he 
deserves.

both my brothers - my heart stops when i try to pray - 
not a beat to
disturb my fear.  one a rock god, the other a 
sergeant, and both
palestinian, practicing muslim, gentle men.  both born 
in brooklyn
and their faces are of the archetypal arab man, all 
eyelashes and
nose and beautiful color and stubborn hair.

what will their lives be like now?

over there is over here.



7.  all day, across the river, the smell of burning 
rubber and limbs
floats through.  the sirens have stopped now.  the 
advertisers are
back on the air.  the rescue workers are traumatized.  
the skyline is
brought back to human size.  no longer taunting the 
gods with its
height.

i have not cried at all while writing this.  i cried 
when i saw those
buildings collapse on themselves like a broken heart.  
i have never
owned pain that needs to spread like that.  and i cry 
daily that my
brothers return to our mother safe and whole.

there is no poetry in this.  there are causes and 
effects.  there are
symbols and ideologies.  mad conspiracy here, and 
information we will
never know.  there is death here, and there are 
promises of more.

there is life here.  anyone reading this is breathing, 
maybe hurting,
but breathing for sure.  and if there is any light to 
come, it will
shine from the eyes of those who look for peace and 
justice after the
rubble and rhetoric are cleared and the phoenix has 
risen.

affirm life.
affirm life.
we got to carry each other now.
you are either with life, or against it.
affirm life.

suheir hammad

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