I am ashamed of myself. The people in Gaza – not far from all Arab capitals – are dying while I am here watching them. But I must continue to write, as this is my only means of resistance. For the first time I feel that writing is a trivial profession, and that we writers are not worth the bandage of the injured Palestinian children. We sit behind big desks and on comfortable couches, while they die and get injured one after the other. I have always known that writing is but laziness that we call rationalism or mediation between the tyranny of the ruler and the oppressed that we call message. I knew in my heart that the day will come when we will be exposed. And that day came indeed. The Jews have been painful for 60 years, but their Zionism (I will not call it State) will never be, because God created them as Diaspora. But Palestine is a State with body, spirit and will. It is a State with a deep history and a promising future. It might be occupied now. So be it. After all, 60 years are no more than the blink of an eye. Sixty years are the age of an old woman who might have been born in Haifa and who is now in Gaza protecting her grandchildren from the cruel F-16s. And she is crying: Where are you Arabs? I tell her: Cursed are the Arabs. Cursed are we all. Cursed are we writers. Cursed are our governments. Cursed is our oil. Cursed is poetry. Cursed is Arabism. And cursed is the day we were born as Arabs. My Lady, the death of your people under the rubble of a mosque or a church, and after 60 years of pain, is more honorable than our lives. It is more honorable than our talk in cafes or behind closed doors, condemning our rulers without doing anything about it. I know that writing will never topple a regime or feed the hungry. And I have no answer to your painful question of where are you Arabs. We said you have differed among yourselves and wasted your land with your own hands. We said do not then ask us to go to war. And we said more, even after Israel began to kill you indiscriminately. We were meaner than your enemy. We said Fattah is corrupt and Hamas is extreme. We rejected the opening of the crossings. We praised the wisdom of our president. We said Egypt sacrificed a lot before. But we did not know that Palestine is not only Fatah and Hamas and crossings and some factions. We did not know that Egypt would not have sacrificed had Palestine not been its own national security. And we did not wake up unless Gaza became a carpet of fire on which the bodies of the honorable fall. Am I nervous? Am I reprimanding myself? Indeed I am. And I was ashamed when I saw that old lady before the camera crying: Where are you Arabs?
