za3tar

I just watched the latest Bond movie. I have to say I kinda liked it. This was the first Bond movie I watch ever, so now I am considering watching some of the previous ones.

I can’t take it anymore. As much as i would like to ignore it and move on with my life, it still surrounds me. It is worse than a nightmare because it never ends. You can not wake up. When you wake up you’re dead. I haven’t been able to focus in months. It is haunting my mind. It is haunting my life. … but am I any different ?

When i started this blog i promised myself to minimize the amount of “political” or Palestinian-conflict related articles here so that i can give people an insight into the life of an ordinary Palestinian sampled out of the millions of us. I swear i have 4 articles in my draft folder none of which are about politics. But as much as i try to move past it .. my identity is the world’s inconvenient truth.

It is frustrating. It is depressing. But who am i to complain; i am living a good life, i can eat, i can sleep, i am temporarily studying in the united states, and i am not living the stark reality of occupation (at least on a daily basis). I have it made. But i am still suffocating inside.

Where ever i go, what ever i do, what ever i read or see .. my people are being ignored. Our life and death are meaningless. Our plight and suffering is silenced .. worse yet, turned against us. We are unseen, unheard, and untold of. Like someone wrapped a blanket around your head so you can no longer see or hear, then told you the world is as i tell you .. it looks as i describe, and it sounds as i claim.

We are never mentioned in the media (especially u.s media) except as causers of trouble, and the ones at fault. Everything is our fault. On the news, and in the movies. On the internet, and on the street. We are epitomized as all that is wrong and evil in this world. … “Everything that remotely resembles us should be shunned and abolished”. They tell me we do not want peace. They have the nerve to say that our culture instills hatred of others in us. They speak on our behalf, then judge us, then prosecute us. ….. All is told that if it weren’t for us, there won’t be conflict in the region. If it weren’t for us and our savage ways, there would be peace. I just watched an “unbiased” “debate” about the Israeli-Palestinian, and that was its conclusion. It concluded that our culture is a culture of terror; that our occupation is not an occupation but an act of self-defense; that we have been offered the means to good life; that we have been offered statehood but we rejected it. What nerve!

I am half a world away from home, and i am still surrounded by this. I can’t escape it … it is all around me. I am suffocating inside.

I seem unwelcomed in this world….

I am one Palestinian too many.

I am one Arab too many.

To all who is out there .. i am sorry my life is such an inconvenience… i am sorry my identity is such an inconvenience.