Is anyone still interested in this newsletter?
In late 2024, after Syria fell into NATO’s hands, I wrote a few thoughts on the dialectical relationship between the political and the human.
When I close my eyes, I see the corpses of Palestinians, many of them charred and mutilated beyond recognition. Most are unnamed, robbed by their killers from identification. Some names return, and pictures of them resurface on the internet. I say a prayer for them. Sometimes I repeat the names I can remember like a cyclical refrain. Hind Rajab, Refat Al-Areer, Ismail Al-Ghoul, Adnan Al-Bursh, Heba Zagout. How many remain unnamed? How many are still underneath the rubble, lungs filled with dust? How many souls are still restless, waiting for a proper burial?
My heart is heavy and shapeless. I walk around with sludge in my ribcage, slimy and grey. It pours into my arteries and veins and leaks out of them too. It seeps out of my skin and into the world around me. It coats every word I say, every sentence I write.
And yet I wake up every day. I have my morning coffee, I work, I see my friends and loved ones, I take walks and go places. One foot in front of the other. Sometimes I feel joy, but an all-consuming guilt shuffles in shortly after. It lingers.
For a while I’ve been trying to write something — anything, really — but I resented the pain that infiltrated my thoughts. I do not have a plan for this newsletter. I am not sure how many people are reading these words right now. Thank you regardless. Tomorrow I will wake up and live. I will have my coffee and eat. I will go back to sleep and wake up again. One foot in front of the other.
As someone who also deals with a lot of survivors guilt, though not from the same thing, what you're saying hits a bit too close to home. Every school shooting that makes the news here in the States takes me back a bit to my own experience at Michigan State University. In order to see a future of an absence of violence, we must keep going. Your voice is clear, vibrant, and needed. You definitely drew me in with your words at the last two People's Conferences for Palestine. I dunno about in this movement, or any with regard to my voice, but I'll keep knitting together the ties that bind to keep the anti-violence work going. We have a long road ahead of us, but we'll go farther when we go together. I can't wait to hear what you have to say.
Never stop! You shine a light in our lives.