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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

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