‘I Am You’: A Poem From Gaza To Israel By Refaat Alareer

Two steps: one, two.
?Look in the mirror:
?The horror, the horror!
?The butt of your M-16 on my cheekbone
?The yellow patch it left
?The bullet-shaped scar expanding
?Like a swastika,
?Snaking across my face,
?The heartache flowing
?Out of my eyes dripping
?Out of my nostrils piercing
?My ears flooding
?The place.
?Like it did to you
?70 years ago
?Or so.

?I am just you.
?I am your past haunting
?Your present and your future.
?I strive like you did.
?I fight like you did.
?I resist like you resisted
?And for a moment,
?I’d take your tenacity
?As a model,
?Were you not holding
?The barrel of the gun
?Between my bleeding
?Eyes.

One. Two.
?The very same gun
?The very same bullet
?That had killed your Mom
? And killed your Dad
?Is being used,
?Against me,
?By you.

?Mark this bullet and mark in your gun.
?If you sniff it, it has your and my blood.
?It has my present and your past.
?It has my present.
?It has your future.
?That’s why we are twins,
?Same life track
?Same weapon
?Same suffering
?Same facial expressions drawn
?On the face of the killer,
?Same everything
?Except that in your case
?The victim has evolved, backward,
?Into a victimizer.
?I tell you.
?I am you.
?Except that I am not the you of now.

?I do not hate you.
?I want to help you stop hating
?And killing me.
?I tell you:
?The noise of your machine gun
?Renders you deaf
?The smell of the powder
?Beats that of my blood.
?The sparks disfigure
?My facial expressions.
?Would you stop shooting?
?For a moment?
?Would you?

?All you have to do
?Is close your eyes
?(Seeing these days
?Blinds our hearts.)
?Close your eyes, tightly
?So that you can see
?In your mind’s eye.
?Then look into the mirror.
?One. Two.
?I am you.
?I am your past.
?And killing me,
?You kill you.

Refaat Alareer is a young academic and writer from Gaza who blogs at www.thisisgaza.wordpress.com. You can follow him on twitter at @ThisisGaza.

by Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. Mondoweiss is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss is 55 and lives in New York state. Horowitz is 37 and lives in New York City. "We maintain this blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, and our Jewish background."

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