Murdered Houses.....

War is an atrocity for which I find words really insufficient….but then, words, however inadequate, are all that we really have…..

And then, sometimes words have an effect that no amount of news overage, no amount of visuals and no amount of passionate arguments can have….it is then we understand that words, spoken by a person gifted enough, angry enough and sensitive enough are weapons in a way no bombs can ever be….to capture a moment too frightful to contemplate for those living and well with a few lyrical words which bypasses everything and touches the human within us, is surely the greatest gift to be asked for….

I believe it’s a perspective bias of literature that not only I, but each of us must attempt to change….the perception that the only good things in literature today comes from the west and usually in English….West Asia is at best a foggy area for most of us and for whom it is not, it is an area of endless conflict and endless human tragedy…more so, for Palestine, a phantom “country”, Palestine – the name evoking the greatest example of arrogance and cruelty in man, a never dying pointer to the worst of this world and of our “civilized” world……

So to connect Palestine with a body of literature or even culture of any kind takes a great paradigm shift for us….but if one is to think for a moment more, perhaps we would realize that the best poetry and the best literature have always been in times of conflict….and so, we should expect to find among a people who have been betrayed at every turn, a great yearning for expression, an expression, when expressed, would surely be above a plane of experience that most of us would ever experience….

I had only heard of Mahmoud Darwish before this, but had never read any of his work….now is a good time as any, I guess…..

The following is written by him (appears on www.opendemocracy.com ) after the relentless and brutal bombing of Lebanon by the Israelis just a few weeks back…..but the words do not speak of Lebanon….they speak for every broken home, every thread of life snapped by forces of violence, every dream cut down and obliterated in an instant, as if it never existed….they speak for every Lebanon that have been and all the future Lebanons waiting to happen…..

But I am not going to write any more….the words express in a way that cannot be explained by reams of pages….let the words wash over you and in the quiet, feel the stirring in your heart…..

Murdered Houses

In one minute the lifetime of a house is ended. When a house is killed, it is a serial killing, even if the house is empty: a mass grave of all the things once used to give a home to Meaning, or, in times of war, to a marginal poem.

A slaughtered house is the severing of things from what they meant, from the feelings they inspired. It's the duty of tragedy to change the gaze of eloquence and to reflect upon the life of Things, for in everything there's a being that suffers: a memory of fingers, a memory of a smell, a memory of a picture. Houses are murdered just as their inhabitants are killed and the memories of things are slaughtered: stones, wood, glass, iron, mortar - scattered like human limbs. Cotton silk, linen, exercise books, books - torn apart like the unsaid words of people who did not have the time to say them. Dishes broken, spoons, toys, old records, pipes, doorknobs, the refrigerator, the washing machine, pots, jars of olives and pickles, cars - all broken, like their owners. The two whites - sugar and salt - are trod upon along with matchboxes, medicines, birth control pills, steroids, strings of garlic and onions, dried okra, tomatoes, rice and lentils - all are trod upon as are their owners.

Land-deeds and marriage certificates torn apart with birth papers, water and electricity bills, identity cards, passports, love letters - torn apart like the hearts of their owners.

Photographs are swept away with combs, make-up, brushes, shoes, lingerie, sheets, towels, swept away like family secrets betrayed to others and to devastation. All these things are the memories of people deprived of things, and the memory of things deprived of people .... Everything ends in one minute. Things die like we do, but they are not buried with us.

Translation: Tania Nasir and John Berger