I. WE ARE TRYING TO LIVE WITH THE SITUATION
New Year’s Eve, 2023. It’s snowing. Nadia and I are at a Free Palestine rally in downtown Chicago. She holds a hand painted sign that reads “UKRAINIAN JEWISH TRAUMA THERAPIST FOR FREE PALESTINE … with snacks.”
After the speeches, we begin to march down Michigan Avenue. Several hours later, the sign attracts fellow marchers. Some are hungry for snacks. Others, for therapy.
We finished where we started, in Grant Park, beneath the 17-foot tall monument called The Bowman, a romanticized bronze statue of a Plains Indian warrior commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1928 to the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović, who cast the work in Zagreb, and who reportedly had never met a Native American nor had any interest in Indigenous culture. It’s notable that The Bowman, by artist design, is without his weapon, without his bow.
I stood there, gazing at the bronze figure, thinking about that genocide, listening to the march organizers report on this genocide, thinking, in horror, how capable we are of creating terror, how incapable we are at taking responsibility for it, and how terrifying it must feel for us to face own pain and our own demons.
Two days earlier, we stood in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, holding vigil and calling for a cease fire of Israel’s war on Gaza. We honored essential workers targeted by the Israeli army—doctors, health care workers, journalists, educators, poets, artists. Many held signs in the shape of a kite, honoring the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, whose name, along with hundreds of others were read into a scratchy megaphone.
I first encountered his poem, “If I Must Die” in November, a few weeks before he did.
If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale.
On December 7, Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike, along with his brother, his sister and her four children.
I reached out to a Palestinian friend who lives in northern Israel. She couldn’t say much. She did say their phones are being monitored. She did say people who are speaking out are being arrested, are getting expelled from school, are blacklisted.
We are trying to live with the situation. You know there is nothing we can do. We can’t express ourselves. It’s all forbidden.
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“…how terrifying it must feel for us to face own pain and our own demons“—every single word. I’m especially caught by the word ‘must.’ Thank you for sharing this piece, it touches me deeply.