It is one of those times that everything intersects and merges in a flow of un-understandable situation. The personal and the national. The private and the public. Everything becomes one but yet separate.
In one of those moments when you find yourself standing amidst a cloud of people and words and images that twilight in your mind trying to convince you that where you are standing and what you are really witnessing and living is not true. It is the cloud of everything else what counts. What makes your reality?
A state of total disillusion.
A state that gets you closer to ultimate craziness.
What takes place behind the TV screens jump on your couch. The debate of what you know and you don’t know. Of what you believe and you don’t believe in …what is justice what is not. What is right what is wrong? Suddenly joggle before your eyes in a factual argument even among those you are convinced at least carry your principles.
Amid the state of hallucination I am currently living … maybe this debate that took place at home is worth mentioning. It is not a scenario of an invaded house or an arrested child or a killed family member. It is just a scenario of an argument that took place among people whose homes haven’t been demolished yet.
My family.
My daughter’s Dabkeh school decided some weeks ago to do a training camp outside Jerusalem, they postponed because it was too dangerous, since rockets were falling in unrecognized directions. Last week they decided they would organize it again. My daughter came to me and I said no. The situation is not just dangerous, but it is improper, when people are getting killed every day, and the invasions are still viciously ongoing. I find it unacceptable to practice collective recreational activities. It is a sense of solidarity that I insist that my kids get. I expected that the school also consider it the same way. I tried to explain to my daughter, that you can still train, you can go daily here in Jerusalem, but it doesn’t have to take the approach of a training camp. We entered in an endless debate. First that it s not dangerous anymore and that I shouldn’t worry. This point actually wasn’t really my point. My point was clear. It is about showing solidarity.
There is an ongoing aggression on Gaza. Children my daughter’s age and younger are being targeted by Israeli forces while playing. I cannot just not see it. I cannot just pretend that life should go on normally.
Life will go on normally when the aggression stops. I cannot see children that could be mine. Houses that are no longer sheltering its residence demolished. Hospitals over packed with injured.and I have to pretend life needs to go on.
No life cannot go on, when it is stopping over there. Not now. Not while missiles are targeting every living creature in Gaza.
I just hated it that I had to do a patriotic lecture to my daughter. That I had to send the school principle a letter asking him for his understanding. The result that I was stormed by my daughters being accused of doing things that could turn out into an embarrassment for my daughter in the future. That I am excluding her for something important she is doing. She and her friends are representing Palestine proudly in this dance they do. After all ,, all other 25 students’ parents agreed to send their kids.
I had to appear like the person who is standing against the future of childhood. That I was stubborn and mad and of course unbearable.
Of course I am all those.
I never denied that.
But this is where we lost it as a nation.
When we stopped feeling what the others feel. When we stopped seeing the pain of others, and we chose the place of spectaculars.
Shouldn’t be asking the world to stand on my side … it is making my family be one. First.
( I learnt later today that the school cancelled the event )
Often when we just stand for what we know is right the world does follow.