Peace for Palestine! and thank you Naomi Shihab Nye for being a first teacher
Dear Naomi,
In 1994, I heard you read during Arts and Letters Live at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). I’m one of those lucky queers whose blood pumps faster thanks to literature. I’m freer thanks to words written on the page. I’m forever flirty with ethnopoetic opportunities. And yes I live for those singular moments when I’m changed in the face of fabulous writers/writing.
I discovered you a year or two before the other women (Audre Lorde, Jeanette Winterson, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison). All literary witches who flipped switches and invited me to see myself in y’all’s risky creative confidence. (I’ll be able to replay the exact moments of ‘meeting’ each of you my entire life. My literary teaching loves emblazoned in my heart forever).
That night at DMA also offered an opportunity to continue learning about the violence in Palestine. During the late 80s and early 90s, I was close to a French Israeli family and invited weekly into complex conversations about power and relationships to land in the area. As a 13, 14, 15 year old, I dreamed of visiting that part of the world to learn more. In 1999, at age 21, I finally made the trip a reality. I studied for three weeks with an ecumenical priest and Palestinian peace activist in the village of I’billin then traveled across Gaza, into Galilee, and through Jerusalem.
The 1994 Arts & Letter Live magic, the trip to Palestine & Israel, your body of literary work, and my continued intimacy with my people connected to both countries allows me to love more radically and work for collective liberation as we move forward together. Peace for Palestine. Thank you forever Naomi for your poetry, your activism, your art, your voice, your kindness.
In appreciation,
Erin
Hello, Palestine by Naomi Shihab Nye
Hello, Palestine
In the hours after you died,
all the pain went out of your face.
Whole governments relaxed in your jaw line.
How long had you been away
from the place you loved best?
Every minute was too much.Each year’s bundle
of horror stories: more trees chopped,
homes demolished, people gone crazy.
You’d turn your face away from the screen.
At the end you spoke to your own blood
filtering through a machine:
We’ll get there again, friend.
When you died, your long frustration
zipped its case closed. Everyone in a body
is chosen for trouble and bliss.
At least nothing got amputated,
I said, and the nurses looked quizzical.
Well, if only you had seen his country.