‘That’s what we do as Palestinians – we turn grief into fuel and feed others with what little we have left.’
I stopped writing
about the genocide–
The first siren I learned in Aotearoa wasn’t the one that split the air– it was the silence after March 15 in 2019. At the flower wall in Hagley Park, a friend handed me a pastel green chalk the size of an olive pip. Her hands shook– so did mine. There were no right words. Just me, my friend, her hand on my back and a piece of green chalk. I kept that moment. It became my measure of what it means to be a Kiwi: not a certificate, but a practice. The choice to turn towards one another, even when the news is unbearable. To place a hand on their back and watch as they write their fathers name – with a piece of green chalk the size of an olive pip.
because the coloniser
lodged in my throat
made me feel ashamed
for still
writing–
You said to me, They are us. But did you mean it? Because us must include them and they are an extension of me. That’s what it means to be diaspora – to see family in every other Palestinian. A reminder that even in exile you never walk alone.
My name is Sara Qasem. I am a Palestinian woman who immigrated to New Zealand at a young age. I am a writer and an educator. My parents carry gentle magic. My baba could always find a ruby-red watermelon just by quietly tapping its rind. Mama taught us how to fill the space where his seat once was with love, again. That’s what we do as Palestinians – we turn grief into fuel and feed others with what little we have left.
The author’s father, Abdelfattah Qasem, young
What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank right now does not end at the borders – it lives in the chests of those who carry its dust on their tongues. I am a Palestinian New Zealander. My family’s stories queue at airports. Displacement is not a stranger. We carry keys, recipes and Arabic inside our English. Here in Aotearoa, we carry March the 15th: the echo of one grief informing another, informing another, informing another.
about the genocide–
running out of letters, words and poetry but
bountiful in bullets
where medjool pips once were–
Saying this must end is not the same as ending it. Your currency is courage – ours is with people. My people are starving and courage does not feed empty stomachs. Horror is easy to name in parliament but how is it that horror has no expiration date when it isn’t your own? Words don’t break blockades and statements don’t stop bombs.
But they are us, they are us, they are us, I tell myself — no, really, they are us:
Has anyone heard from Baba’s family? What about Auntie in Gaza? Who passed today? How many? Was it quick? The whole building? Flour – how much? Leave? Leave where? North? 2,200 families erased?
No thanks, I’m not
hungry.
I stopped writing
about the genocide
because the coloniser
lodged in my throat–
I ask the country I had no choice but to call home to listen. We have been handed wars we did not start, from the year of 1948, and yet continue to pay with our people. I ask you to look. Look like your life depends on it. Look, even when seeing means never being able to unsee. You get used to that – the never being able to unsee. Write to representatives, even when silence feels safer. Refuse to normalise what we know is wrong. Remember that solidarity is not sympathy. Remember that language matters. Call it what it is. Not a conflict. Not a war. Give generously – money moves quickly even if time mends slowly. People, not numbers. Always people. Never numbers. And finally: Palestinian men matter as much as our women and children. Believe me.
Made me feel ashamed
for still
writing
about the genocide
As the sirens sound in Gaza and wider Palestine – for over 660 days – our task is to remain human. Audible to one another. To say they are us like we mean: we are all in this together. Convince me that you and I are made of the same – that you and I matter, the same. My friend, with my grief, now hers too, her hand on my back, a piece of green chalk the size of an olive pip – and a nation that knows the weight of collective grief.
The author with her father at home in Kuwait, and her father in the Port Hills in Christchurch two months before he was killed at Al Noor Mosque
I hold onto what I know. I hope you do too. I am Sara Qasem. I carry two keys in my pocket. I carry the grief of my father Abdelfattah on one shoulder, the weight of a nation on the other, and hope in a tidy backpack that I refuse to set down. We are Palestinian diaspora. We carry memory, longing and resistance across oceans. And when we, as New Zealanders, are asked where we stood, I hope it can be said: we stood with Palestine – not in silence, but as humans for humanity – in defiance of the world’s indifference. Because indifference in the face of oppression is no longer indifference – it is the slow consent that lets cruelty bloom. The unplanted olive pip, a watermelon still ripening, the setting down of the green chalk at the flower wall and walking away, where our dead still wait to be named.
While the genocide
was still
happening—
still.
660 days
I stopped writing
about the genocide
because the coloniser
lodged in my throat
made me feel ashamed
for still
writing
about the genocide-
running
out of letters, words and poetry but
bountiful in bullets
where medjool pips once were–
I stopped writing
about the genocide
because the coloniser
lodged in my throat
made me feel ashamed
for still
writing
about the genocide–
while the genocide
was still
happening–
still.