Gaza Photo Gallery 5

Photographer: Mahmoud Abu Hamda. Check his FB page here.

https://www.facebook.com/Mahmoud.Abu.Hamda

click any photot, then click right/left arrow to see Pics in their original size.

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2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 20,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 5 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Freshly Baked Souls

As fire balls and sparks descend,

And the little ones rejoice,

Look up, and cheer, unable to comprehend,

Sooner than they expect

They will be blown

(It’s none of their wishes

If only they had known!)

And more freshly grilled balls of flesh ascend.

And fall on full dishes

And fill the boxes.

And the hollow minds.

The full bellies.

They look down. Rejoice. Cheer.

“Freshly baked!”

“Freshly baked!”

“Who wants freshly baked flesh for breakfast?”

“Throw me a piece. “

“Throw me  four.

I have just eaten but crave for more.”

***

The hearts are not hearts.

The eyes can’t see

There are no eyes there

The bellies craving for more

A house destroyed except for the door

The family, all of them, gone

Save a photo album

That has to be buried with them

No one was left to cherish the memories

No one.

Except freshly baked souls in bellies.

Except for a poem .

I am You

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Two steps: one, two.
‏Look in the mirror:
‏The horror, the horror!
‏The butt of your M-16 on my cheekbone
‏The yellow patch it left
‏The bullet-shaped scar expanding
‏Like a swastika,
‏Snaking across my face,
‏The heartache flowing
‏Out of my eyes dripping
‏Out of my nostrils piercing
‏My ears flooding
‏The place.
‏Like it did to you
‏70 years ago
‏Or so.

***
‏I am just you.
‏I am your past haunting
‏Your present and your future.
‏I strive like you did.
‏I fight like you did.
‏I resist like you resisted
‏And for a moment,
‏I’d take your tenacity
‏As a model,
‏Were you not holding
‏The barrel of the gun
‏Between my bleeding
‏Eyes.

***

One. Two.
‏The very same gun
‏The very same bullet
‏That had killed your Mom
‏ And killed your Dad
‏Is being used,
‏Against me,
‏By you.
***
‏Mark this bullet and mark in your gun.
‏If you sniff it, it has your and my blood.
‏It has my present and your past.
‏It has my present.
‏It has your future.
‏That’s why we are twins,
‏Same life track
‏Same weapon
‏Same suffering
‏Same facial expressions drawn
‏On the face of the killer,
‏Same everything
‏Except that in your case
‏The victim has evolved, backward,
‏Into a victimizer.
‏I tell you.
‏I am you.
‏Except that I am not the you of now.

***
‏I do not hate you.
‏I want to help you stop hating
‏And killing me.
‏I tell you:
‏The noise of your machine gun
‏Renders you deaf
‏The smell of the powder
‏Beats that of my blood.
‏The sparks disfigure
‏My facial expressions.
‏Would you stop shooting?
‏For a moment?
‏Would you?

***
‏All you have to do
‏Is close your eyes
‏(Seeing these days
‏Blinds our hearts.)
‏Close your eyes, tightly
‏So that you can see
‏In your mind’s eye.
‏Then look into the mirror.
‏One. Two.
‏I am you.
‏I am your past.
‏And killing me,
‏You kill you.

Picking Olives in Gaza

Click on any picture and then click on right or left arrow to see other pictures

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O’Live Tree

O, beat me more.

Hit me with your sticks;

Step on my leaves

Smother my twigs under your boots

Like how you always do.

The beating I bear;

The humiliation, I do not care

But take me not,

Steal me not.

Even if I burn,

Here I belong

And to them I shall return.

***

If you hear my talk,

You may feel my pain

But you belong not here:

You do not even know

How to touch me,

How to gently squeeze me,

How to hug me,

How to wipe off the dust,

When I am ripe,

And when I am not,

When I need water,

And when I do not,

And how to pick me

Like how they always do.

***

Your smell and heavy boots

And the metal on your backs

And your metal bars!

For God’s sakes who on earth olives picks

With metal bars for sticks?

***

But I ramble again.

Because you won’t understand

And if you understood me,

You would not, in the first place,

Be here.

***

You come and go.

I see you once or twice a year

With either flames or sticks

And I weep for the rest of the year.

But one day

My twigs shall grow,

The oil shall flow,

My people shall glow,

And you, you will go.

Gaza Gallery III: Grapes and SunFlowers

Perhaps I have finally come to fathom why zionists have usually favoured the Palestinians-are-reptiles metaphor. No matter how mighty Israel’s blows, the never kill the Palestinians spirit of regeneration. Seeing the Palestinians it killed and the lands it brutally razed, Israel must be in pain, real pain, over the fact that Palestinains always, always, rise up from the ashes of Israeling blazing fires and the abyss it keeps throwing us into. One more thing, Israel, people have already, defying your racist narratives, started to use the simile ‘like a Palestinian’ to connote perseverance and persistence.

This is Beit Lahia, North Gaza. I lost count of how many times Israel uproots fields and destroyed greenhouses or how many farmers it killed. The Photos speak for themselves.

Pictures are all courtesy of Amjad El-Agha.

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