{"id":9353,"date":"2012-11-21T15:02:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T19:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=9353"},"modified":"2012-11-21T15:02:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T19:02:35","slug":"gaza-darwish-memory-repetition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/gaza-darwish-memory-repetition\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza, Darwish, Memory, Repetition:"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Fieldworkers with Gaza human rights groups are documenting the impact of Israel\u2019s bombing campaign day and night. (Yasser Qudih \/ APA images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Gaza repeats & repeats. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again but not funny: murderous hellish inferno. I could scream when I hear American liberals, proud to have voted for Obama & with impeccable anti-war credentials, idiotically repeating the Israeli government’s fascizoid Benjamin Netanyahu’s\u00a0line that the assaults & bombings are justified because “they fired rockets into Israel.” Even if later today a ceasefire were to come into effect, more than a hundred people will have lost their lives. And it will happen again & again. So I go & reread Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s account of surviving Israeli bombing, from\u00a0Memory for Forgetfullness<\/em><\/a>, the 1982 memoir he kept while Beirut was being shelled daily by Israel. Here, the opening pages of the book:<\/p>\n

“Out of one dream another dream is born\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Are you well? I mean are you alive?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 How did you know I was just this moment laying my head on your knee to sleep?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Because you woke me up when you stirred in my belly. I knew then I was your coffin.Are you alive? Can you hear me?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Does it happen much, that you are awakened from one dream by another, itself the interpretation of the dream?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Here it is, happening to you and to me. Are you alive?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Almost.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 And have the devils cast their spell on you?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 I don\u2019t know, but in time there\u2019s room for death.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Don\u2019t die completely.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 I\u2019ll try not to.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Don\u2019t die at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 I\u2019ll try not to.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Tell me, when did it happen? I mean, when did we meet? When did we part?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Thirteen years ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Didi we meet often?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Twice: once in the rain, and again in the rain. The third time, we didn\u2019t meet at all. I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I\u2019d forgotten you. I was dreaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 That also happens to me. I too was dreaming. I had your phone number from a Swedish friend who\u2019d met you in Beirut. I wish you good night! Don\u2019t forget not to die. I still want you. And when you come back to life, I want you to call me. How the time flies! Thirteen years! No. It all happened last night. Good night!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>* * *<\/p>\n

Three o\u2019clock. Daybreak riding on fire. A nightmare coming from the sea. Roosters made of metal. Smoke. Metal preparing a feast for metal the master, and a dawn that flare sup in all the senses before it breaks. A roaring that chases me out of bed and throws me into this narrow hallway. I want nothing, and I hope for nothing. I can\u2019t direct my limbs in this pandemonium. No time for caution, and no time for time. If I only knew \u2014 if I knew how to organize the crush of this death that keeps pouring forth. If only I knew how to liberate the screams held back in a body that n0 longer feels like mine from the sheer effort spent to save itself in this uninterrupted chaos of shells. \u201cEnough!\u201d \u201cEnough!\u201d I whisperm to find out if I can still do anything that will guide me to myself and point to the abyss opening in six directions. I can\u2019t surrender to this fate, and I can\u2019t resist it. Steel that howls, only to have other steel bark back. The fever of metal is the song of this dawn.<\/p>\n

What if this inferno were to take a five-minute break, and then come what may? Just five minutes! I almost say, “Five minutes only, during which I could make my one and only preparation and then ready myself for life or death.” Will five minutes be enough? Yes. Enough for me to sneak out of this narrow hallway, open to bedroom, study, and bathroom with no water, open to the kitchen, into which for the last hour I’ve been ready to spring but unable to move. I’m not able to move at all.<\/p>\n

Two hours ago I went to sleep. I plugged my ears with cotton and went to sleep after hearing the last newscast. It didn’t report I was dead. That means I’m still alive. I examine the parts of my body and find them all there. Two eyes, two ears, a long nose, ten toes below, ten fingers above, a finger in the middle. As for the heart, it can’t be seen, and I find nothing that points to it except my extraordinary ability to count my limbs and take note of a pistol lying on a bookshelf in the study. An elegant handgun\u2014clean, sparkling, small, and empty. Along with it they also presented me with a box of bullets, which I hid I don’t know where two years ago, fearing folly, fearing a stray outburst of anger, fearing a stray bullet. The conclusion is, I’m alive; or, more accurately, I exist.<\/p>\n

No one pays heed to the wish I send up with the rising smoke: I need five minutes to place this dawn, or my share of it, on its feet and prepare to launch into this day born of howling. Are we in August? Yes. We are in August. The war has turned into a siege.1 I search for news of the hour on the radio, now become a third hand, but find nobody there and no news. The radio, it seems, is asleep.<\/p>\n

I no longer wonder when the steely howling of the sea will stop. I live on the eighth floor of a building that might tempt any sniper, to say nothing of a fleet now transforming the sea into one of the fountainheads of hell. The north face of the building, made of glass, used to give tenants a pleasing view over the wrinkled roof of the sea. But now it offers no shield against stark slaughter. Why did I choose to live here? What a stupid question! I’ve lived here for the past ten years without complaining about the scandal of glass.<\/p>\n

But how to reach the kitchen?<\/p>\n

I want the aroma of coffee. I want nothing more than the aroma of coffee. And I want nothing more from the passing days than the aroma of coffee. The aroma of coffee so I can hold myself together, stand on my feet, and be transformed from something that crawls, into a human being. The aroma of coffee so I can stand my share of this dawn up on its feet. So that we can go together, this day and I, down into the street in search of another place.<\/p>\n

How can I diffuse the aroma of coffee into my cells, while shells from the sea rain down on the sea-facing kitchen, spreading the stink of gunpowder and the taste of nothingness? I measure the period between two shells. One second. One second: shorter than the time between breathing in and breathing out, between two heartbeats. One second is not long enough for me to stand before the stove by the glass facade that overlooks the sea. One second is not long enough to open the water bottle or pour the water into the coffee pot. One second is not long enough to light a match. But one second is long enough for me to burn.<\/p>\n

I switch off the radio, no longer wondering if the wall of this narrow hallway will actually protect me from the rain of rockets. What matters is that a wall be there to veil air fusing into metal, seeking human flesh, making a direct hit, choking it, or scattering shrapnel. In such cases a mere dark curtain is enough to provide an imaginary shield of safety. For death is to see death.<\/p>\n

I want the aroma of coffee. I need five minutes. I want a five-minute truce for the sake of coffee. I have no personal wish other than to make a cup of coffee. With this madness I define my task and my aim. All my senses are on their mark, ready at the call to propel my thirst in the direction of the one and only goal: coffee.<\/p>\n

Coffee, for an addict like me, is the key to the day.<\/p>\n

And coffee, for one who knows it as I do, means making it with your own hands and not having it come to you on a tray, because the bringer of the tray is also the bearer of talk, and the first coffee, the virgin of the silent morning, is spoiled by the first words. Dawn, my dawn, is antithetical to chatter. The aroma of coffee can absorb sounds and will go rancid, even if these sounds are nothing more than a gentle “Good morning!”<\/p>\n

Coffee is the morning silence, early and unhurried, the only silence in which you can be at peace with self and things, creative, standing alone with some water that you reach for in lazy solitude and pour into a small copper pot with a mysterious shine\u2014yellow turning to brown\u2014that you place over a low fire. Oh, that it were a wood fire!<\/p>\n

Stand back from the fire a little and observe a street that has been rising to search for its bread ever since the ape disentangled himself from the trees and walked on two feet. A street borne along on carts loaded with fruits and vegetables, and vendors’ \ufffccries notable for faint praise that turns produce into a mere attribute of price. Stand back a little and breathe air sent by the cool night. Then return to your low fire\u2014If only it were a wood fire!\u2014and watch with love and patience the contact between the two elements, fire colored green and blue and water roiling and breathing out tiny white granules that turn into a fine film and grow. Slowly they expand, then quickly swell into bubbles that grow bigger and bigger, and break. Swelling and breaking, they’re thirsty and ready to swallow two spoonfuls of coarse sugar, which no sooner penetrates than the bubbles calm down to a quiet hiss, only to sizzle again in a cry for a substance that is none other than the coffee itself\u2014a flashy rooster of aroma and Eastern masculinity.<\/p>\n

Remove the pot from the low fire to carry on the dialogue of a hand, free of the smell of tobacco and ink, with its first creation, which as of this moment will determine the flavor of your day and the arc of your fortune: whether you’re to work or avoid contact with anyone for the day. What emerges from this first motion and its rhythm, from what shakes it out of a world of sleep rising from the previous day, and from whatever mystery it will uncover in you, will form the identity of your new day.<\/p>\n

Because coffee, the first cup of coffee, is the mirror of the hand. And the hand that makes the coffee reveals the person that stirs it. Therefore, coffee is the public reading of the open book of the soul. And it is the enchantress that reveals whatever secrets the day will bring.<\/p>\n

I I I I I I I<\/p>\n

The dawn made of lead is still advancing from the direction of the sea, riding on sounds I haven’t heard before. The sea has been entirely packed into stray shells. It is changing its marine nature and turning into metal. Does death have all these names? We said we’d leave. Why then does this red-black-gray rain keep pouring over those leaving or staying, be they people, trees, or stones? We said we’d leave. “By sea?” they asked. “By sea,” we answered. Why then are they arming the foam and waves with this heavy artillery? Is it to hasten our steps to the sea? But first they must break the siege of the sea. They must clear the last path for the last thread of our blood. But that they won’t do, so we won’t be leaving. I’ll go ahead then and make the coffee. (…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gaza repeats & repeats. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again but not funny: murderous hellish inferno. I could scream when I hear American liberals, proud to have voted for Obama & with impeccable anti-war credentials,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,59,67],"tags":[341,499],"class_list":["post-9353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaza-strip","category-israel","category-man-made-disaster","tag-gaza","tag-mahmood-darwish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9353"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9362,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions\/9362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}