Birds of Palestine
A piece for Palestine. Just them.
Did you know, there's a lot of birds flying over Haram, Makkah? You can see them fly around the Kabah, going from one pillar to the other. They're impossible to miss. I remember, sitting outside on the paper white floors and looking up to see the paper white birds. I'm not sure which type of birds they were, I don't want to search it up. I think they were a type of pigeon, though. I remember, all I could think of when staring at them flapping around was Palestine. Could Palestine’s birds fly this freely? Did they have pigeons? Or just vultures?
In 1948, when the israeli occupiers took over Palestine. Is when they stopped having birds. When they looked up, they would see fighter airplanes. Waving a flag that wasn't their’s. Their homes would be taken, given to israeli settlers. Generational residence, decades upon decades of history and memories, stripped from them like nothing. Their papers, the documents, disregarded. Their land stolen from them as they're shipped off to a side of the country, like they're the settlers. Like they're in someone else's country. They were forced to see their homes. Their beautiful homes. The ones that smelled like bread and tea. The ones in which every generation of a family grew. The walls watched over them like another set of parents. The tiles never harsh on their feet. The fans noisy but did it matter? When it is your home, does the crack in the wardrobe and the loud traffic from your window really matter? When it's your home, your people, your ceiling. Does it matter? And when all that is taken from you, stolen out of your hands. How would that feel? If that was your home. Your walls. Your family. Your life. How would you feel?
Riyadh is a two hour flight away from Palestine. That's less than Pakistan. When I have to go to my home, I sit for a longer time. Sometimes I'd close my eyes and almost hear their screams. The bombs. So many of them. I would hear the cries die down, their lives squashed like ants. Like they're nothing. I'd wonder. I'd wonder if israel had chosen this place instead. If they had went a little west, a bit south. Landed upon Saudia. Upon Riyadh. It was just a two hour flight away. It was so close. If the suffering was upon me. I couldn’t imagine it. That amount of death. It is unimaginable. Unthinkable. To wake up everyday with someone you knew dead. To imagine your brother under that rubble. Your sister shot and killed. Your father's leg blown off. Your mother starving to death. It is impossible to imagine it. Your heart will drop, your breath catching in your throat. Your hands will shake and your eyes will well up with tears. You're imagining, no, you're trying to. Palestinians are living it. They're living it everyday. For them this isn't news. They pick up pieces from the ground and put them in plastic bags. Pieces of human flesh. Unrecognisable. They make up a moderate weight and give it out to whoever comes looking. Think about that. Human flesh collected in plastic bags. Weighed to fit a common weight. And given out to people. How is this real? How is this our reality? Where are the rights that the West chants about? Where the rights that the UN chants about? Oh fuck that. Where's the humanity and you all chant about? Fetuses are ripped out of their mother’s wombs and hang over the rocks. Dead bodies are collected in ice cream vans if they're lucky enough to be in one piece. Kids. Little kids. The ones you see sitting outside of a school or holding a lollipop in the grocery store. Kids, like your little sister. Kids are digging up to find their siblings. They're carrying the debris to somehow get their little sibling out from underneath. Is that humanity? Is that what we are?
I will have no shame, I will have no fear as I say this. israel is nothing but a genocidal state. A state built upon theft and invasion can never be a valid one. What about those freedom and revolution movements you all read in your history books? Those oppressors are bad but these ones aren't? israel can never be a peaceful state, it can never be one that you can make amends with because a country that imposes violence and destruction can never be peaceful. They came over and took over Palestine, and now they're killing them. Killing them like they're pests, infecting their country. israel will never get what they want until they cleanse out the entire Palestinian population. They have bombed the Gaza Strip since the beginning of it’s creation, and their atrocities have just gotten worse since October 7th, 2023. I don't want to hear if I condemn Hamas. Or what they did on October 7th. I will not hear it when israel stole their home back in 1948. This genocide did not start in October 7th, so don't start telling me it did. I won't condemn Hamas until every single person in this world condemns israel for 1948 and every year after. Until every life taken, every drop of blood is accepted. Until then don't fucking ask me to condemn anyone but israel.
So as I sat on those holy tiles. I looked at every bird and prayed. I prayed for every Palestinian in Gaza, every Palestinian outside of Gaza. I prayed for the children who don't sleep. Whose mother’s lullabies can't tune out the loud bombs. The screams. I pray for the pregnant woman who was raped on gunpoint by an israeli soldier. I pray for the men who had to kneel and watch, also on gunpoint. I do not know if the woman survived. Can you believe that? A pregnant woman raped in an hospital on gunpoint with multiple witnesses yet…I can't tell you if she survived. Because the news was the highlight of one day, two days maybe. Can you believe that??? Something worse happened the very next day. I can't tell you her name. That is embarrassing. That is pathetic. And that is sad. I prayed for the father who sat upon piles of rubble, with just a teddy bear in hand. His children were under there somewhere. Crushed. Dead. In pieces. He sat on them. Because what else could he do? I pray for the mothers who watch their kids starve to death, shot and killed. The children they bore in themselves. Their baby. Their whole life. Killed, and added to a mass grave like any other. A number. Their baby is dead. I pray for the old men and women who's skin is getting thin, their back hunched yet they stand on their soil with no fear. Why should they be afraid? That's their land. Their people. They grew up in this country. I pray for every Palestinian. Every single one. The journalists, the doctors and nurses, the humanitarian aid workers, the ones outside of Gaza yet the same blood runs in their veins. Of Palestine. Who sit and watch their people die on screens. These people, who lived down the road. Who they use to buy chips from. These kids who use to be so loud in the street. These kids who would steal their shoes outside the masjid. The same ones, slaughtered. I can't imagine how that'd feel. To watch your country burn, watch it bleed. And be able to do nothing.
I prayed and I prayed. The more I stared at those birds the more I prayed. They flew so freely. So beautiful. The wind must feel so good. I found myself thinking maybe…maybe some of those children are reborn here, as birds. Maybe the ones still in the womb, who's breath was stolen before they even took one. Maybe they came here as birds. Maybe that's why they looked so happy, so relieved. It felt good to think that. Little Palestinian children flying around the Kabah, around Haram. I hoped other people looked at them and prayed too. I hope, they looked down on me and saw the anguish on my face. The words on my lips. I hope, one day, when Palestine is free. They can fly over there and sit on top of the newly build windows. I hope they stare through it, at the laughing mother and her newly talking child and try to tell them. I knew this would happen. I saw people pray for it. I hope they can make their nests over the bakeries and know what their homeland could've been like. I hope that one day. These birds will fly this freely. Not over Makkah, but over Palestine. One day. Palestine will have birds again. I hope. I hope. I prayed for it. And now I hope.
From the river to the sea. 🇵🇸
This is something I've written about constantly in notes but deserves a post. It is 6am here in Lahore, I have to be up early but I do not care. I'm laying in between my cousins, my mom and brothers across from me. On a bed. The fan is above me. I have the luxury to close my eyes and sleep, the luxury of having my family close to me. Alive. Without the worry of them dying because of an airstrike. So I don't care if it's late, I don't care if this is bad writing. I will post this. They deserve that. God, they deserve so much more but this is all I can give them right now.
This post was highly inspired by
's post: day 364. dear Palestine. And 's post: to the dead palestinian fetus on my instagram feed. So please give these a read as well. Both are beautifully written pieces and a lot of what's written here is taken from there as it was fresh in my head. I encourage everyone reading this to post something about Palestine as well, you have a platform. Every single one of you. Use it.Thank you for reading
It's inhumane. No earthly possession could justify these atrocities. I wish nothing but wrath on generals and commanders surrounded by soldiers wrongfully playing God.
Tugged at my heartstrings. Thank you for writing this, and for mentioning me, too. Free Palestine, always and forever