There must be beauty: a poem.

on making art in hard places

Today, May 15, marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (which means “The Catastrophe”) when 750,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians were forcibly and violently removed from Palestine to create the state of Israel between 1947-1949.

75% of the indigenous Palestinian population was deliberately and systematically dispossessed in order to establish a Jewish majority state in Palestine.

No Palestinians were ever compensated for their loss of livelihood, land, and homes, and have not been allowed to return to their homeland in 75 years.

The Catastrophe didn’t start in 1948 and it certainly hasn’t finished. It has been ongoing for 75+ years with no end in sight.

Currently over 5.9 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees across the Middle East and the diaspora around the world. Many live without citizenship in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. They lack basic human rights and access to education, employment, and healthcare. They have no path to citizenship in any country and are denied the internationally-recognized legal right to return to their country and live at peace with their neighbors. Today, four generations of Palestinian refugees inhabit dozens of refugee camps scattered throughout the Middle East.

They are still waiting to return home.

On this 75th anniversary, I acknowledge and join with Palestinians in their struggle for justice, their rights, and for freedom.

To commemorate and remember the Nakba today, I am sharing a new poem about making art and survival in Palestinian refugee camps. Share if it resonates and to stand in solidarity with refugees, and also please consider making a donation to support my upcoming volunteer storyteller trip to work in Palestinian refugees camps in Lebanon and Jordan this June.

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There must be beauty

As any ordained beauty hunter
Must know in her bones
And be relied on to find
And capture what’s true and beautiful
Because it means
Survival most times,
Art sometimes and hope
Every time —
I must turn the lens
To see it all around me,
The beauty in unbearable places.
I don't mean not beautiful,
But unjust and unmerciful.

In the camps, I find an atmospheric,
Energetic feeling of despair and
dispossession.
It’s an air-mood-feeling
That has no words.
جَوّ.
But I swear you'll know
When you come upon it.

I trail behind snap-snapping
at all that I find.
My shutter ministers
toward beautiful life
Because that's what I do.
I cite the beauty in plants
Bursting through concrete
And call it Resilience
And birds shedding down
On wires I pray don't start fires
But take flight.

If you've met the bounds
Of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut,
You know there won't be birds here
Just kids who want to grow up
Men who want to provide
Women who want to leave a legacy
Sittis who want to grow old
People who want to return home.
Can you only care what clean water
And citizenship means
If you can't have it?
And electricity and power
That can't be sold
But can be bought?

These refugees aren't able to leave
So my craft is finding beauty
In the midst of tragedy in the bowels
Of the camps and in the darkness.
I enter willingly because I keep my word
To those without a homeland for 75 years
To whom I can't relate but stand
in solidarity in any way I know how
And, sometimes, in ways I don’t.
Through presence,
Through seeing,
Through remembering beyond
the place to the people.

I haven't forgotten what I know
And as long as I keep coming back
And wandering through,
I keep all eyes out for available light,
For any path to beauty
Or survival because, wallah,
I swear to God
I don't know the difference.

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Thanks for supporting my trip and Palestinian refugees. I couldn't do this work without you. Together, we're making an impact.

Grateful,