My Olive Oil Blood By Maryam Haddad


Palestine is our mother,
Our love, our blood, 
Our sweet and tender Teta
She is our Friday mornings,

The adhan
Mint tea, zaatar, warm bread and olives
We were plucked from her by force, 
Forefathers forced on foot,
Miles from home
To find a new home
away from home 

We cling onto anything we can,
Knafeh and
Keffeyeh brought to life 
To revive our memories, our Teta’s stories 
Make them flourish
Flowers blooming in foreign faraway lands
 
To grow up in the diaspora
Is to grow up a silent fighter
Fighting for the right to hold a passport,
to identity,
culture,
heritage,
homeland. 

The right to be Palestinian 
To grow up in the diaspora 
Means whispered prayers at every Breaking News

Our hearts sinking at each name uttered by the journalist
Our eyelids stripped back against our will,
to witness
helplessly,
aimlessly, 
The constant nakbas,
The very horrors on our own land,

Our blood
On foreign soil every footstep is murder.
Murder of our heritage,
Murder of our identity,

Straying further and further away from our roots
Our identity an abstract outline now,
The outline of our land 
So we wear our gold chains with pride
The outline of her map seeping into our skin

We may not be there
To hold them hand in hand
But we will always be part of the land 
Woven and stitched into her tatreez,
The intertwining roots and thread holding our beings together.
In the roots of her olive trees,
Letting the olive oil
Flow free in our veins. 

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