A conversation with a friend inspired the following…
“The war changed the country,” he wrote.
And war changed him too.
Though, the war he wrote wasn’t the same war moving through his veins,
His,
an ancient desperation,
Generations,
of Nakba lived in his bones,
Born outside the borders of his home,
Every breath he breathed,
Was a subconscious reminder of who he was— and where he was not,
So he chased other wars,
His pen, a piercing shot,
Bullseye every time, his eyes never missed a beat, the rhythm of bullets to the clicks the of keys, across the screen,
In the colonizing tongue of the ones who stripped olive groves from his motherland.
And his mother’s ancient faith prayed for him,
in the absence of the nuns at a monastery across borders,
His war torn soul resigned him,
“No conversation was innocent,” he wrote,
an anecdote because
His own ruins had seen better days.
Between the storyteller in him and the commanders beside him
He knew them
And yet,
Not at all.
They were very different men,
Who only shared his mother tongue,
passed down from ancient conquerors with brown skin,
Bespoke traitors moving among symbols of bedouin.
In between the lines of the times,
A longing,
A right of return,
as was his family’s breath-right,
If only he might get the tone
…just...
right…
Under the surface of his very own skin,
In the face of collective cries,
He could hear them, he was them,
With words for weapons at the edge of his fingertips,
And home ever burrowed in the borders he crossed,
The onslaught of a genocide in his bloodline
Ah yes,
War, it had changed him.
I’m going to leave this where it is without commentary. If only we could step inside the stories of those who seen war, and who are targets of it, learn the lessons and be part of radical solution.
Featured pieces of war:
To discover Ash’s writer & book collections, check out ashgallagher.com/books or follow her on Instagram @bearthrevolution