Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

You will need to state the reason for your visit. Don’t say because I want to walk down old roads and caress stone walls the color of my skin. You will need to state the reason for your visit. Don’t say because the olives are ready for harvest and I will coax the fruit from the trees, press it into liquid gold. You will need to state the reason for your visit. Don’t say because my parents’ house still sits empty on a bluff overlooking the sea, the green shutters my grandfather had just painted remain sealed shut and the army listed the property’s owners as absentees. You will need to state the reason for your visit. Don’t say because I am carrying prayers in my suitcase for a people who wait, and I’ll unfold them embroidered linens of verse and spread them out across the land.

They call us now, before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic “This is David.” And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think,Do I know any Davids in Gaza? They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of war-time courtesy. It doesn’t matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run. We aren’t trying to kill you. It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back to tell us the people we claim to want aren’t in your house that there’s no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesn’t matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough to find your wedding album or your son’s favorite blanket or your daughter’s almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesn’t matter what you had planned. It doesn’t matter who you are. Prove you’re human. Prove you stand on two legs. Run.

The Guardian reports on a Palestinian businessman who obtained a unanimous fatwa to open a pornography-free online sex shop to help couples reignite their love lives. The imams who approved the venture said: “Islam supports anything that helps a married couple to connect.” I’d like to alert the NSA agents tracking Arab men: anonymous brown paper packages will be delivered to married couples all over the Middle East. Before you call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff let me assure you, our people are starved for love, not bombings. Those late night calls from temporary cell phones? They weren’t plans to attack, just plans to rendezvous bypassing multiple layers of family surveillance. The breathless whispered Arabic on the line? Code: yes, but not sacred verses. Arab love falls under siege. Everywhere is public space and the public are a sober bunch. On our romantic jihads the path is long and arduous and fraught with prying neighbors. We can’t even find a place to take an evening stroll, our war-weary streets dilapidated, our squares overflowing with revolutionary traffic. And even though the garden jasmine pours forth its sultry perfume and a million stars crowd the night skies, everyone is indoors chain-smoking their lives away and watching the news. And the news has been old for a while now. Sometimes, all we have left is prayer. So the women pray for fundamentalism—strict adherence to the Sunna. And the Sunna says: “Let there first be a messenger between you.” Words and kisses first, O bring back the words and kisses.

Do not name your daughters Shaymaa, courage will march them into the bullet path of dictators. Do not name them Sundus, the garden of paradise calls out to its marigolds, gathers its green leaves up in its embrace. Do not name your children Malak or Raneem, angels want the companionship of others like them, their silvery wings trailing the filth of jail cells, the trill of their laughter a call to prayer. Do not name your sons Hamza. Do not taunt the torturer’s whip with promises of steadfastness. Do not name your sons Muhammad     Ahed     Zakaria     Ismail, they will become seashells, disappear in the sand. Do not name your children. Let them live nameless, seal their eyelids and sell their voices to the nightingale. Do not name your children and if you must call them by what withstands this endless season of decay. Name them mountains, call them stone.