Afrasianet - Zahi Wehbe - We do not chronicle in years, but in bullets that passed and were not killed, by the rockets that fell and did not fall on us, by the siege that lasted for a long time and did not lose our patience. Every war has taught us that we are stronger than death, and that if the soil loves someone, it never leaves him.
We who were born in this part of the planet do not count our lives with candles that go out at birthdays, but with lava that pours out. We don't ask, "How many springs have passed since you've been?" Rather, we ask: "How many wars have you witnessed and survived?" Each of us has its own calendar, its days are tinged with smoke, and its months are called wars.
Our childhood was not the songs of the cradle. The sirens were the ones that calmed us. We didn't learn to walk on a fixed ground. We were bears on rubble moving under our feet. We thought that the sky rains fire like clouds rain water, and that the night does not carry stars but fighters, telling us that the sky may fall on everyone, and that Palestine is not an issue we read about, but a wound that we inhabit.
We grew up believing that tomorrow would come until we could see the morning with our own eyes. In waiting, we have mastered something that nations do not master: we wait for the bombing to end and we go out, we wait for the prisoners to return, we wait for the siege to end, we wait for the tobacco to germinate again and the olives to bear fruit.
A prayer awaits us, and a revolution awaits us. Because those who do not know how to wait in this country do not know how to live.
***
In the midst of all this, civil wars and strife were more severe for us than the fire of the Israeli enemy. When the bullet, which we do not know who fired it, met the chest of the neighbor whose name we know and memorize the parts of his face. When the gun stopped protecting the borders and began to draw new borders between houses, when we were looking for the face of the homeland in the scattering of shattered mirrors, and Beirut groaned under the contact lines, which were more lethal than the lines of fire with the enemy.
Those years taught us that the homeland dies not only when it is usurped from the outside, but also when it is fragmented from within, and that the deepest wound is the one that we avoid referring to who caused it. We buried our martyrs twice: once under bullets, and once under the ashes of the strife that always awaits someone to wake it up.
***
In the south, the wound does not heal from the many openings, oranges bleed before they are picked, olives burn standing, and the sea carries to its shore the toys of Palestinian children who were ahead of their age and preceded by bullets.
There were houses made of stone and mud that stood up to iron and fire armored armory. Every village in it is a story that begins with "Once upon a time," and hardly reaches the end until it comes back and starts again from under the rubble. Because this south knows no ends; it is born every morning, it wipes the dust off its face, and it plants tobacco seedlings and rose plants in its wounds.
In the tents, in the Mansouri, in the people of Aita... Women give birth in the midst of the flames and name the newborns after the martyrs. Men hugging the sun, children learning that the rocket passes like a cloud, and that death does not frighten those whose lives were so costly.
***
In 1948, the land of Canaan was stricken by the malignant cancer of the occupation, and the pains of the earth began, and in 1967 the sky fell again on Palestine, and the echo of the fall echoed to us to confirm that the wound is one.
In 1972, we realized that the south was not a margin, but the pulse of the wound itself, and then in 1978 the Israeli invasion was wiping out the houses, and we wrote our names on the stones so that we would not get lost.
In 1982, Beirut was burning and the south was bleeding, but it was the hand that held the gun that was rebuilding the house.
Then in 1996, when another war broke out, and Israel's "clusters of rage" ignited what was left of a green vein, and until 2006, when mass destruction and a new era of steadfastness made the world see that southern Lebanon was invincible.
Between these wars, there is a never-ending war, stretching from Naqoura to Marjayoun and Shaba, and from Bint Jbeil to Tyre and Sidon. A war called "existence". They want us not to be, and we insist on being not only alive, but clinging to the soil, clinging to the stone, lovers of trees.
We grew up cheering for the whole Levant, and for the countries of the Arabs "My homeland", and we know that the enemy does not recognize our borders. When it strikes in Gaza as if it were a suburb of Beirut, and when it occupies the Golan as if it were one of the neighborhoods of Damascus.
When a martyr falls in Gaza, his mother weeps in Amman, a woman in Beirut rejoices, and a Palestinian in Damascus chirps. As for Egypt, we had the "mother of the world" and the twin of the Levant, which was separated by the occupation by land, but the blood ties were never broken. One nation, distributed by geography, but blood It collects under the skin, in veins and veins.
***
We are the people of the soil. This soil is not like any other soil: if you wipe it with your hand, you feel as if the palms of your ancestors touch your palms. If you dig it up, you will find the remnants of martyrs from hundreds of years, as if they are saying: "We did not leave, we are here, in your soil, in your pulse."
The soil in the Levant is not a geological material; it is the first poetry, it is the book of history, it is the marquee of the big family. If you catch it, you find a pulse. If you scatter it on your wound, it heals. The dust here introduces us by our names and calls us in a dream.
When a martyr rises, we do not say "bury him", but "We have brought him back to his eternal home". The dust receives him as a mother receives her child, embraces him, and then brings back to us a song that echoes in the night, or a child who bears his name and walks in his footsteps.
The occupation passes, the tanks rust, and the planes turn into scrap. As for the dust, it waits for us every morning, opening its arms to those who plough and plant it, wiping away the tears of those who cry it, and embracing those who guard it.
***
In the south, jasmine blooms on the bullet-riddled walls. In Palestine, cacti sprout from the heart of the apartheid wall. In Syria, cities bloom despite the wounds. In Jordan, the valley is green despite the drought. This soil does not die, and it does not leave its children.
I remember my mother saying, "The smell of bread in the days of war is different. It's as if we're eating age prematurely." She wrapped the loaves in a white cloth as if she were shrouding them. We were eating under the bombardment as if we were at a last dinner.
But we get up every morning, open the windows on the rubble, and plant. We always plant. Because agriculture is a challenge to death, and an insistence that we stay.
***
We are the generation of wars, we didn't live a normal life. We didn't plan weddings before we were sure the bombing was over. We didn't tell our children, "Tomorrow we're going to the sea," because we don't know who is coming back from the sea. But we lived a life in the true sense of the word, a life not measured by years but by endurance. A life told like the epics: blood, sweat, love, and then a resurrection.
Palestine is not just an issue, it is our permanent wound. Beirut is not the capital, it is our permanent star. South Lebanon is not geographical, it is the beating heart of the world. Syria is not just a state, it is the soul of the East. Jordan is not a border, it is the other ventricle of the heart.
The whole of the Levant is not maps, it is one body that groans when any part of it is wounded, and rejoices when any inch of it is victorious. This is how we dreamed, and this is how we are safe.
***
We do not chronicle in years, but in bullets that passed and were not killed, by the rockets that fell and did not fall on us, by the siege that lasted for so long and did not lose our patience. Every war has taught us that we are stronger than death, and that if the soil loves someone, it never leaves him.
Thus, generation after generation, we write our history on the tombstones that have become shrines, on the ruins of houses that have become icons, and on the faces of children who have become resisters. We move on, with dust in our hands, the sun in our eyes, and our undying tomorrow in our hearts, because we are the children of life.
