forgetting the political for a moment

(c) copyright khulud kh

yes, I know. This blog is supposed to be about the political constantly forcing its way into the personal, fragmenting my life. But not always. There are many unfragmented moments of joy in life. So here's something small I wrote on the go.

On my way home from my parents
Sitting on a bench, the sun boiling my back into something crispy. In front of me, a thin long strip of yellow daisies. Deep yellow. I feel like I want to taste this color yellow. A car stops right behind me. The sky is clear. Not one single streak of a cloud. It looks as if sleeping - no moving clouds. The horizon is blurred - the colors are swimming one into the other - from light blue to gray to dark blue of the sea.

The car is still behind me, standing but motor running. I don't look back at all. Three birds are chasing one another in the wind. Or the wind chasing after them. Along the sidewalk, baby trees are trapped in dark green metal cages. Lest they take off with their roots and move down the mountain and walk right off into the wild. Have to tame them. The white car is gone now. My shoulders are on fire. Time to go. It was a moment of a pause - short - from life. Only a moment.

"How Arabs Stole Jewish Property"

Riding the bus this evening from the office, a man in his fifties sat across from me. He had a blue folder, and when he opened it, I could read the title "money" in big letters. I tried to think of what he does - is he a student? Or maybe a business man trying to learn how to make more money. He closed the folder. A few minutes later, he opened it again and flipped to an English article with the title "How Arabs Stole Jewish Property." Underneath, I could only vaguely glimpse the years 1946 and 1948. With this new knowledge of the material this man was reading, I suddenly became aware of my national identity, which minutes earlier was very much asleep. And I looked at his face, and all of a sudden it seemed somewhat different. The contents of the title of that article were somehow reflected in his eyes.