My father’s Palestinian family, refugees from their Jerusalem home after 1948, lived in a village not far from Nabi Saleh village, where Janna Jihad Ayyad and her family live. I lived between Jerusalem and Ramallah as a teenager and witnessed many of the struggles firsthand, which have unfortunately only heightened and intensified in the succeeding years. It is important to clarify that these poems or sections thereof are not Janna’s actual words. They are “my” words, imagining Janna’s circumstances via her Facebook postings and my own personal and collective knowledge of the situation she was born into and lives with on a daily basis. So the texts presented here are a blending of stories—my father’s, Janna’s, my ongoing research, and my own personal experience living there and on many subsequent journeys. In the way of all poetry, hopefully it gets something true or right.
Also:
Since Palestinians are also Semites, being pro-justice
for Palestinians is never an anti-Semitic position, no matter what anybody says.