Detaining a Poem – Poem by Dareen Tatour

Detaining a Poem – Poem by Dareen Tatour

Translated from the Arabic by Andrew Leber

One day,

they stopped me,

shackled me,

tied up my body, my soul,

my everything…

Then they said: search her,

we’ll find a terrorist within her!

They turned my heart inside out—

my eyes as well,

rummaged through even my feelings.

From my eyes they drew a pulse of inspiration;

from my heart, the ability to sketch out meanings.

Then they said: beware!

She’s hiding weapons deep in her pockets.

Search her!

Root out the explosives.

And so they searched me…

Finally, they said, accusing me:

We found nothing

in her pockets except letters.

We found nothing except for a poem.

————–

Dareen Tatour at the Nazareth Magistrates’ Court, July 31, 2018, where she was sentenced to 5-months prison for her poetry by the Zionist.

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A Zionist colonial state or a secular, democratic state?

— Nasir Khan

In my view, the Zionist oppression in Palestine will not stop or come to an end as long as the Zionists have power in Israel, no matter what we may wish or hope for. We know that in their brutal treatment of the captive population of Palestine, they are aided and abetted by the Arab reactionary despots and collaborators while the major source of the Zionists’ power lies within the US government, the US Congress and the deceptive media.

That also means that democratic forces and people standing with the occupied people of Palestine have to carry on their political struggle without any illusions.

One day the whole of Palestine will be free from the clutches of the colonial settler state of the Zionist oppressors. It is possible to replace this anachronistic supremacist and racist state with a secular, democratic state in which the Jews and the Palestinians could live as equal citizens in peace and freedom and thus build a model state in the Middle East for others to emulate.