Hampton Roads Network For Nonviolence
Thoughts of Peace And Love - Archives
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10/26/2004
Submitted by Alexandra Kendrock, is this poem from Maia Williams, who is on the Israel Delegation of Christian Peacemaker Team:
HEBRON DISTRICT POEM:
Drinking tea on an ordinary day
by Maia Williams
When there was a full
moon, the white light entered the open door of our small house, illuminating the
stone surfaces like a late Georgia O'Keefe painting.
During the new moon,
after the village generator would go off, the village became dark with only gas
lamps shining in a couple of windows; the stars would pierce the darkness.
In the mornings, we
would awake to the grey dawn, walk toward the the sun rising from the edge of
the earth, toward the small village of Tuba to meet the children and bring them
to school.
I try to describe the
truth of living in At-Tuwani, but I can only circumscribe it.
The wind pulled
itself over me like a thin cotton sheet the day after settlers attacked my
friends and the children of Tuba. The
little hand of one girl, Miriam, trembled with trust inside mine as we walked
across the stark mountains to her school in At Tuwani.
She walked surefooted over the rocks on which I stumbled. Her nightmares
lived in a dense forest which divided her home from her school.
During the crescent
moons, I watched the summer become fall in the desert mountains and the sand
flies linger in the house past dark. The
nights looked like a tea glass, steam misting the sky.
I have drunk tea in
ancient stone houses, concrete houses, tents, caves, on dirt roads, on
mountains, in valleys, with sheepherders, with farmers, with women rocking
babies, with old women weaving on wooden looms.
I have drunk tea with little girls imitating their mothers. I have drunk tea while being taught Arabic, while teaching
people English, while swatting flies, while sharing cigarettes, while eating
taboon bread, while singing, while listening, while watching television at night
and not understanding a word of the dialogue.
I have sat underneath olive groves, drinking tea, and laughing while
villagers shared stories about their mothers, their children being attacked by
settlers.
Every house in this
village had a demolition order and every day the men continued to construct new
homes and drink hot zatar tea. Every
year the women continued to give birth to children, bake fresh bread, and
organize themselves in order that their daughters were safe and educated.
At-Tuwani was not a
place to be imagined or described, it was a place to enter, to sit down, to
drink coffee and tea, to learn to talk about the horrors of life and the joys of
living in the same breath.
This was not an
ideal, perfect village. It was a
raw paradise. Beauty and violence
spiraled around each other like waft and weave, like moths circling a light
bulb.
Beyond ideals, there
is ordinary life. On the edge of
the world courage lays in surviving, because living is the most challenging act
one can do in the face of childhood nightmares and annihilation.
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