The Palestinian Horror Story

Last night as I lay in bed wishing for sleep, I thought I saw a spider scurry across the moonlit ceiling. I closed my eyes only to have uninvited thoughts intrude in that drifting space between wakefulness and slumber. Images floated by. There in that nether world, shimmering threads criss-crossed the darkness of the unknown luring me to come closer until I saw the faces of millions caught in a gigantic, glistening spider’s web. The faces were my own.

I was the girl screaming on a blood-stained beach strewn with the body parts of her family. I was the boy huddled against his father as the bullets sprayed around them. I was the woman faint with labour pains at the checkpoint willing her unborn child to stay in the womb a few more hours. I was the man paraded blindfolded and handcuffed, tortured and jailed for resisting the occupation of his people. I was the family of thousands clutching the memories of lifetimes as the bulldozers tore down the walls of their homes. I was the generations, terrorised and driven from their land and villages in one of the cruellest acts of inhumanity perpetrated by one people against another. I was Palestinian caught in a web of deceit, despised and shunned by a world blinded by Biblical myths and twenty-first century spin.

In those nightmarish scenes, I knew what it meant to be walled in where there are no horizons. I knew what it meant to wait forever in queues going nowhere. I knew what it meant to tremble at the rumble of tanks and the sound of jackboots and to lie waiting for the bombs to tear open the ground beneath. I knew what it meant to be kept from family and loved ones by identity papers that say we cannot live together. I knew what it meant to scrabble for food and to thirst for even a drop of water. I knew what it meant to feel self-loathing for betraying my people to save my sick child. I knew what it meant to be tempted with privileges while others are ground into the dirt. I knew what it meant to be played with by overwhelming outside forces sent to divide and separate and turn us against each other. I knew what it meant to be humiliated and ridiculed, lives not worthy of the world’s compassion. And, in that web of suspended prey, the devourer has no reason to hurry. More