Writing by Iman from the first workshop.
Photo from http://ghth.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/blog-7-autumn-rains-and-harvest-time/
Iman
Seven thousand years of known history and seven billion people on earth - that’s a fact.
How many more facts I need to know the simple answers of my being?
Digging into, digging onward, digging at; not to stop digging is a fact.
***
I am from a land that gets very dry in the summer and scarcely wet in the winter
from an olive branch that taught me to pick and prick
from a neighborhood that smells donkey shit and fed me childhood
I am the daughter of a strong female lineage that sowed love and resistance
breast-fed milky-way dairy and backed faces of martyrs to feed my people
I am the happiness of a child finding a shekel on the ground and a rage of an old man not able to cross the road to his village because the road was hijacked by a settler
I am the carrier of a Canaanite bone and beauty and the daughter of the goddess of sacred marriage
I am the autumn leaf that keeps dying and resurrects in all your religions
***
Mary is a name that I always fancied. It was the name of my childhood friend, a name that I wanted to have, but how can I have a Mary name when my mother is called Marie, the French equivalent of the English Mary.
The same name in Arabic is Mariam, a name that people think comes from the Virgin Mary, but it is the name of the northern part of Palestine during the Canaanite era.
A name that grabs the strength of red soil, green land and the music of the waves of the Mediterranean Sea: Miriam, Mary, Marie.
Marie had another name - when she was young, she was called Alice. Every time, my great grandmother gave birth to a daughter she would call her Marie, and the child would die.
She lost three Maries and insisted on calling my mother by the same name, a sadomasochist act that I never understood.
Alice/Mary carried the burden of her dead aunts and kept a promise to her grandmother to fight death despite the many visits he attempted at her.
Mary though was never married. she is still the neighbor of the virgin Mary.
Seven thousand years of known history and seven billion people on earth - that’s a fact.
How many more facts I need to know the simple answers of my being?
Digging into, digging onward, digging at; not to stop digging is a fact.
***
I am from a land that gets very dry in the summer and scarcely wet in the winter
from an olive branch that taught me to pick and prick
from a neighborhood that smells donkey shit and fed me childhood
I am the daughter of a strong female lineage that sowed love and resistance
breast-fed milky-way dairy and backed faces of martyrs to feed my people
I am the happiness of a child finding a shekel on the ground and a rage of an old man not able to cross the road to his village because the road was hijacked by a settler
I am the carrier of a Canaanite bone and beauty and the daughter of the goddess of sacred marriage
I am the autumn leaf that keeps dying and resurrects in all your religions
***
Mary is a name that I always fancied. It was the name of my childhood friend, a name that I wanted to have, but how can I have a Mary name when my mother is called Marie, the French equivalent of the English Mary.
The same name in Arabic is Mariam, a name that people think comes from the Virgin Mary, but it is the name of the northern part of Palestine during the Canaanite era.
A name that grabs the strength of red soil, green land and the music of the waves of the Mediterranean Sea: Miriam, Mary, Marie.
Marie had another name - when she was young, she was called Alice. Every time, my great grandmother gave birth to a daughter she would call her Marie, and the child would die.
She lost three Maries and insisted on calling my mother by the same name, a sadomasochist act that I never understood.
Alice/Mary carried the burden of her dead aunts and kept a promise to her grandmother to fight death despite the many visits he attempted at her.
Mary though was never married. she is still the neighbor of the virgin Mary.
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