A literature Shaped Like Real-Life Nightmares.

"I cast an envious glance at writers and poets who were born into different surroundings." The speaker’s voice dropped—either the internet or the electricity went out, as usual. Even if the silence came suddenly, it wasn’t sudden for my jumbled thoughts. It slipped into a question that lingered in my mind, tying scattered thoughts and blurred observations into a single one. The matter turned from simply listening to deeply contemplating a specific thought; I wanted to complete it with what I had observed and reflected upon. Thus, it becomes: "I cast an envious glance at writers and poets who were born in settled surroundings. Their words are not about an occupied homeland, nor about ruins and rubble. Their words are about a wish in the sky, about a flower in an orchard, or even about the colors of the rainbow that never fade from their land."

I find no similarity between the Palestinian literature and Western literature. I don’t know why I get fits of hysterical laughter when I read to the writers or poets of Western literature when they are embodying their greatest tragedies, as if all they have left is suicide as the only solution and end. Do you know what their pen narrates? It narrates about a lover and his beloved, about self-development in ideal circumstances, or about a detective novel they fabricate to spark a little excitement and obsession in the reader, keeping them turning the pages of the novel and finishing reading it. But what about the literature of my homeland? The ink of the pen is the blood of the martyrs. The pen begins and refuses to place a dot that would suggest satisfaction with the end of the words, as if it were a burning ember whose flame never dies out. Their pen narrates about a family waiting for a tattered paper that would allow them to reunite after years of separation, it narrates about miserable yet determined attempts of a little girl trying to write with her left hand after losing her right one to an airstrike or a blind bullet. The pen narrates easily, without the need for the writer to brainstorm to create detective novels. They narrate literally and with actual words, then the foreign writer reads them as if they were metaphors. The literature is stained in red, a spectacle to behold, yet dangerous for any reader who dares to come too.

I find myself reading a Nakba novel while living through a present one. I read in the book about the sound of an explosion, and then I heard it exploding in my neighborhood, so I don’t get bored with reality. I go to read war diaries, and I discuss with readers about our written reality between the lines at dedicated gatherings, and I find them like me, deeply immersed.

I don’t have the time to read Western literature, because at times I sometimes feel it’s a betrayal, as if there is no trace of reassurance; fear has become the companion, the maze is the compass, the homelessness is the shelter, and the inhalation here has become without exhalation!

Maybe this is a reason why I am helpless to write another poem far from the red color, the green color erased from the color wheel here. Maybe we will create another similar and special color for us, know it with us, and we won’t share it with those who don’t understand us. Or maybe if my entire surrounding changed, I would be able to write trivial things and wouldn’t care to share them. Because we are nothing but a mirror of this city, a mixture of it, like a dough that takes shape, and its ingredients are the events and the sorrows of the city. Every event that happened to it is reflected back to us; it rages against us to declare that it is the tyrant. So we turn to paper, hoping we might be able to empty out this chaos; we empty it in random words, in a drawing in a black color, and recite it in a poem that doesn’t have a title or end; all of it is nothing but nightmares whether in waking or in dreams,, and if you ever manage to escape them, tell me how you did it!