drawing histories

Maisoon drew with pencil the history etched into the walls, the sparks of weddings that never were outside the window into the black sky, the cracks between the stones unhealed scars, the mud the dried up blood of life unborn, the dust beneath her legs all those tomorrows that never were. It was a sketch of her grandmother's story the story of all grandmothers the home of all mothers only this one room. Into this one room she poured their laughter from before and also their grief from after and the blood shed.

- khulud, edited from Haifa Fragments, a novel forthcoming by Spinifex Press

breathing in the words

"Sitting here now watching the wrinkles of these old doors and writing such nonsense as the painting of the letters. But no matter it is only words but then I live my life through words I like to breathe them in slowly and fill my lungs with them and then feel them warmly spread through my blood to all parts of my body until I reach the saturation point but I can never reach that point. The more I breathe them in the more I want of them even now when I promised never to breathe these words out of my body again. But a time comes when I can no longer contain them within me and have to breathe them out somehow someway because ultimately I need to take a fresh breath. But life doesn’t wait Asmahan not for me not for you not for us. And so I must breathe all these words out and empty my body of them so that I could somehow someway pick up some fragments of me before they are scattered and lost completely."

- from Majid's doors of writing, edited from Haifa Fragments manuscript, forthcoming by Spinifex Press.