The Book of Sumud
They’ll try to make you read the Book of the Dead,
written by the victorious men behind desks. Do not
believe those dusty revelations. They’ll tell you
you’re banished, they’ll say you were never
here, a land without a people for a people without a land.
You’ll say you live in exile, but you’ll also say
your womb is a refuge from monsters. You’ll know
what grows inside is the greatest act of defiance-
creation. Men can build monuments bigger
than men, but never bigger than the graveyard
of bones below it. In Jenin, a giant horse stands
rigid, patched together with scrap metal
left after an attack. This is yours-
what’s destroyed can be transformed. This is ours-
the tea we pass around the table, the songs, the spirit,
the things they cannot take. Your baby will be a boy,
and his first word will be wall, as he watches his brothers
shaking tin cans, as he listens to the tick inside them rat
afraid something will break. You’ve never
met a man without demons, all of them possessed.
Their names will be written against their will
in the Book of Heroes and you believe this is love.
This is love. Your sons will graffiti vibrant murals of peace
on the wall and you’ll hope the colors are brighter
than blood, hope the world will listen. It might
or it won’t: it will respond only with grey blankness
like the other side of the wall.
It will give you the Book of Plagues
and tell you to read. Don’t read it.
Lie intimately with your destruction, let it snake
around your pulse, let it cramp your muscles.
Someday, you pray the Hydra of war
comes with its many-headed machines
and smashes it to ruins. Your sons will pull
each stone away, and they’ll write
the Book of the Living. It will be called Sumud.
Sumud means “steadfastness” in Arabic.
