home is where the heart is(n't)

If home is where the heart is, my home is split wide open
gushing the warm blood of my people
and we have run out of gauze
It seems we can't stop the flow; who would've thought, medieval medicine tactics in the modern age 
Who would've thought the future would echo with the screams of the past; I thought I understood the English language well, what does “never again” even mean?

They say that every empire falls, but then another takes its place 
The most powerful people are never the ones with loving awareness because the latter don't seek out power themselves 

and so here we are again looking at ruins, caring for one another, building ourselves back up only to get knocked down again
and it's hard not to despair.
It's hard to face the sheer magnitude of grief inside you and allow it to wash over you without drowning
to instead use the force of those waves to build your strength propel yourself further in the pursuit of truth and justice

I spent so much of my life numbing myself because I couldn't bear the pain of a broken heart
yet now that I've ruptured the seal, there's no going back 
I can't hold back the weight of my grief, of my rage, of my love
I've always resisted the status quo, but there was something stopping me, something by the name of assimilation, whatever you wanna call it 
I spent years learning how to articulate things diplomatically, walking on eggshells, never sharing my thoughts until I was certain I had covered all the bases and chosen just the right words - it was never enough.
Why should I suppress myself, my nafs, for people who will never be satisfied until I have stomped myself right into the dirt?

I grieve so deeply for what could've been. 
Iraq, Kurdistan, my motherland, neighbour of Palestine, enemy of the West.
Genocide, sanctions, political unrest.
I think about what my family would've been like if they weren't so deeply traumatized by oppression and displacement.
I think about what it would've been like to be raised in a warm, loving community in a warm environment; a warm welcome, a warm smile offering me a warm cup of chai beneath a warm Levantine sun.
Being “habibti” to everyone I meet, never a stranger, a khala or an amo on every corner to kiss my cheeks and warm my heart.
Instead, I my cheeks were slapped by the cold icy winds of the West with its harsh winters and people in all its capitalist consumerist processed food streaming service minimum wage pill popping glory. 

What a cursed blessing it is to be safe in complete isolation from home.

It really is the Wild West. They call us the savages and the barbarians and the terrorists, but I've never met such unloving, cruel cold people as I have in so-called civilized democracies 
who will allow people to be bulldozed just so that they can build their own palaces 
and who will stuff themselves while others starve
and who will enact the most horrific evils only to deny, minimize, gaslight, rewrite

All the while, sharing highlight reels of their silly little lives without a shred of consideration for what it means to really be human 
so disconnected from the soul that their individual identity is all they have
it's all they can grasp onto for a sense of reality; losing sight of our interconnectedness, their egos swell bigger than the moon, and they want to conquer the fucking moon too, to colonize everywhere and everything

The colonial mindset is the most sinister hungry ghost that only ever wants to continue to consume everything that is real life
In a flailing attempt to bolster its own legitimacy
it wants to consume things that remind us of our humanity
it wants to consume love and hope and joy and community and shroud it all in the darkness of death 
it wants to dim technicolour into grey, sand away the ornaments of calligraphy in favour of ad-friendly sans serif, strip food of its culture and nutrients and earthly love in favour of more efficient mass-produced sludge

And then it does everything it can to forget the pain of being disconnected from the soul
It does not hesitate to stomp out human life, not knowing that those souls will continue to permeate the dirt of the land they believe they’ve conquered
No matter what they do, how much they acquire, they will always live an empty existence that craves for something more

They can raze Gaza to the ground, but Palestine will still be there, just as Turtle Island is still here, just as Iraq is still there, just as Kurdistan is still there. 

You cannot destroy the spirit of a people. There is no bomb on earth that can do that. We will always rise up again, as surely and as warmly as the morning sun.

Image: Lake Dokan, Kurdistan, Iraq. 2018. 35mm film.