If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
***
Refaat Alareer was a Palestinian writer, poet, academic, activist - killed with his family on 6 Dec 2023 by an Israeli airstrike in Northern Gaza.
The world is poorer for the loss.
I posted this last year on my old website, but I lost most of my blog when I changed over to this one. So I'm posting it again. If you, like me (and millions of others worldwide), have been watching a brutal genocide livestreamed daily to your social media feeds and mobile phones for 600 days, then you'll understand how this poem continues to resonate.
There has to be an endpoint at some stage, a moment where colonizers should feel satisfied that they have collectively punished and slaughtered enough civilians (mainly children) to appease their bloodlust. But alas, if the past 300 years of history has taught us anything, it is that settler colonialism is rarely satisfied until stolen lands are bathed in 'dehumanized' indigenous blood and all the resources are stripped from the natural world.
Can anyone stop the empire or hold it to account? Time will tell. In the interim as we wait for our leaders to act, we can take action. Resist, boycott, protest, educate, donate and call out the powers that be in order to hold perpetrators to account, to stop the impunity, to save humanity from itself.
Grace & Peace.
UN World Food Program (WFP) provides aid to vulnerable people all over the world https://www.wfp.org/
UNICEF Australia provides aid to children in emergencies https://www.unicef.org.au/
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Doctors without Borders https://www.msf.org/
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) provide urgent healthcare https://www.map.org.uk/
*Note: I am not affiliated with these agencies. They provide humanitarian aid and assistance to people living in crisis worldwide. As such their website links are not owned or operated by my site in anyway. Please research and carry out your own due diligence before donating to anyone online.