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FREEDOMWAYS FIRST QUARTER 1973 Demanding, possessive, jealous, Your love Knows no mercy. Your deserts, hot and barren, Sear our flesh. Our feet Sink in the Jordan's muddy trap. Your fields, green and tender, drink Our blood. Your craggy mountains Scoop the skies, Stab innocent clouds, and mock The yearning of ancient trees. Valleys echo our footsteps, embrace lost bones. Faceless, changing, ageless, You take your terrible toll. He turned, placed his Kalashnikov on moist earth, Nodded to fighters telling tales of glory Hamad's eyes sought his with a question "As legend I could never love her." He answered "She lives." Hanan Mikhail Passages from THE CHILDREN OF RAFAH* I The sun on a conqueror's bayonet was A naked corpse despised: Bleeding silence Over rancorous prayer beads amidst Bold-congested faces An occupier with legendary features yelled: "Aren't you going to speak? Fine: Upon you then a curfew will be im- posed as of . . ." Aladdin's voice splintered: the birth of the birds of prey, "I threw the stones at the military vehicle, distributed the leaflets and gave the signal; I painted the slogans *Rafah is a town in the Gaza strip. carrying a brush and a chair from a neighborhood . . . to a house . . . to a wall; I also gathered the children And we swore By the exile of the refugees, To resist As long as a conqueror's bayonet shines in our street. Aladdin was no more than ten. II The acacia trees are crushed And the gates of Rafah are sealed with sorrow Or with wax Or a curfew (The girl had to take bread and bandages to a wounded man that returned after midnight. She had to cross a street overcrowded by the eyes of the strangers the wind and the mouths of guns.) The acacia trees are crushed and like a wound, a door of a house in Rafah was opened. She leaped. Lancing in the lap of a jasmine tree; Once on the sidewalk of terror a palm-tree was her shelter, cautiously . . . with every footstep now jump A patrol, Flashing lights, A cough "-Who are you, Stop!" Five guns were fixed at her Five guns. In the morning, The invaders' court was called They brought her in: Aminah "The criminal" A child of eight. Samih Al Kasim CONCERNING HOPES Don't tell me: I wish I were a baker in Algeria 46