In the English Department we are using the Writing process to help students deal with the current events and to defend their rights. An entry for the “Writing Contest in the Latin Patriachate Schools, Laila Sameer Daibes, Zababdeh School, Tawjihi student.
In the English Department we are using the writing process to help students deal with the current events and to defend their rights. An entry for the “Writing Contest in the Latin Patriachate Schools, Laila Sameer Daibes, Zababdeh School, Tawjihi student
Questions Never Answered
The Al-Aqsa Intifada is one of the intifadas in Palestine that, in my short life, has awoken in me my hidden Palestinian feelings. It made these feelings rise with the sun of every morning when many Palestinians who share with me the love of our precious country – which was and still is holding them in her arms – were being killed by the fire of the Israeli occupation. I shared all my feelings with them: love, defense of Jerusalem the eternal capital of Palestine, and the insistence to be a state of our own.
One of these early mornings, specifically the 30th of October, I had just woken up when I heard in the news about the two brothers of Yaa’bad who were killed in the same day while they were fighting against the fire of the Israelis with the stones of dear Palestine. They were planning to have their weddings together and they had the best wedding ever…they were wedded to the soil of Palestine and the wedding gift was their pure blood on her dress. Every Palestinian was invited to this wonderful wedding and I was one of them. I was filled with emotions and I wore silence as a beautiful dress for the wedding.
I dressed up and went to school. I was walking along the street with too many questions as if I was wearing a pair of question marks. Why should Palestinians die like this? Why should we all suffer? Why should we be wounded in that way? Why should we be killed in our towns and homes while asking to recover our shelter, our home, our Palestine?…I fell in a deep gap of sadness and pain.
While arguing with some friends at school, I told them about Mrs. Madeleine Albright who was wearing a pin of the “Seeds of Peace” (a program which was made by the USA to make peace between young people from Palestine and Israel). I wished I were there in that conference where she was wearing that pin to ask her a question that came to my mind: How could someone like her wear a pin like this when one of the martyrs who was killed in Nazareth was a member of the “Seeds of Peace” and when he was killed he was wearing the program’s t-shirt? Meanwhile, some young Israeli people like him were shouting “Death to the Arabs,” and they’re still talking about peace. They killed peace with him and with every martyr in this Intifada.
I returned home carrying many souls and too many questions that I had to wear to keep myself from the cruelty of answers. And, in a moment of emotional absence, I felt myself getting on a train towards more questions…I knew I wouldn’t arrive to anything. I didn’t know where the answers were leading me…because answers are blind…only questions can see…I was sailing on a boat made of paper and I was raising words as sails in front of logic waiting for answers. But in spite of all this I will build a castle from my hope and the blood of all the martyrs…I will kill anyone with my anger…I will take his body and I will put on him the first brick of our new independent strong country…We will never give up Palestine nor will we part with our dreams…Our steadfastness will continue and so will our defense of our holy country until the sun of freedom shines again.
