Reading Group Week 5
Hello! I've been really gratified with the conversations on bluesky and in the signal group chat, and especially the video chat on Saturday.
Book, Donations, Support
Get the book
If you haven't bought the book yet, you can buy it from the Open Poems bookstore. Buying it from Open Books means the proceeds go to Palestinians in Gaza through The Sameer Project.
You can also buy Perfect Victims by Mohammed El-Kurd, our next book, at Open Poems. If you'd like to look at the list of books that I'm thinking about and buy more books in one purchase, you can take a look at the Format and Roadmap page for a roadmap of likely upcoming books.
Donate
If you already have the book, or you'd like to make an additional donation, you can donate to The Sameer Project directly. You can also donate to the Alareer family on Chuffed. If you have extra capacity to donate, you could also donate to Sudan Funds, a project to get money to Sudanese people surviving genocide, forced displacement, and extreme violence.
Support the reading group
If you're already donating, and you're financially in a position to do so, you can support this reading group and make it possible to do additional and more exciting things: I've made a "pay what you want" subscription option.
If you're not in a position to support the reading group financially, please don't sweat it. You're here and that's great.
Reading
This week, I'd like us to read the following entries:
- Tragedy in One Sentence*
- On a Drop of Rain
- O, Earth (Land Day Poem)
- Narrating Palestine
- The Story of My Brother, Martyr Mohammed Alareer
- When Will Dad Come Back?
- Over the Wall
*I forgot to include "Tragedy in One Sentence" last week, so you'll notice that it's out of order on the table of contents. If you read it last week, you're good. If not, sorry for the confusion.
Reflections
As usual, I'll offer some reflections from this week's reading, but I'd really like to hear what you think about this week's readings. I'm linking to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Twitter threads where I'd like you to comment or share if you have thoughts.
Narrating Palestine
Because of this storytelling, there is a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be so revived: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" no longer connotes the death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation, and restrictions that Israel has injected into the word. [...] While sometimes portrayed metaphorically, Palestine can be a beautiful reality. Palestine is a martyr away, a tear away, a missile away, or a whimper away. Palestine is a story away.
I wasn't initially thinking about drawing such tight connections to the last book we read (Ruha Benjamin's Imagination: A Manifesto), but I feel an undeniable idea in concert with what Dr. Benjamin talked about and advocated for: taking the power of imagination - which has been monopolized and co-opted by colonizers and oppressors for so long - and wrestling it back into our hands. Recognizing the perverse things that these people have done to our world with their imagination, and imagining and telling stories of a future where we've healed from that violence, and restored the damage.
It's so difficult to imagine a future after the suffering, after the deprivation, after the isolation, after the restrictions, after everything - and indeed, after repairing all of that damage, and after enough time has passed to heal the wounds so that these are memories, not ongoing reality. But like Refaat says, Palestine is a story away.
There was a lot from this and the next chapter that stuck with me in ways that I'm still processing. Hamada Mohammed's nickname, thinking about the nickname my sister gave me when I was born, because she couldn't pronounce "Ali" properly at that age; how close "Hamada" sounds to the nickname we gave my cousin Mohammed.
I realize I'm being surprisingly... secretive? protective? of the nicknames my sisters gave me, that I gave my sisters, that my cousins and other loved ones have. I don't know why. But reflecting on Refaat's loss, just makes me grip my nickname a little more tightly, for some reason. I'm not sure exactly what else to do with this thought. I don't even know if it makes sense as it is now.
When Will Dad Come Back?
A month after the Israeli onslaught, Raneem must have realized that her dad would not be coming back again. She approached my mother and said, "Teta, I dislike my dad. He does not come back."
My mother has not recovered from Raneem's remark. It was like her son was killed twice. But I can only imagine the psychological damage that has already caused Raneem, who has developed a tendency toward absent-mindedness, to talk to herself.
Two months ago her mom found her giggling and mumbling. When asked what she was doing, Raneem said, "My dad gave me candy." Her tiny fist remained clenched for a long time.
I've read vanishingly little, all things considered, about the mental health crisis in Palestine and particularly in Gaza. Close to 3/4 of the Gaza population meeting the diagnostic criteria for clinical depression; varying stunning rates of post traumatic stress disorder among children; the observation that "post traumatic stress disorder" implies that the trauma is in the past, when in reality it is ongoing.
Over the time that I've drafted this (over the weekend and today on Monday), it seems like there's constantly a new story of Israeli attacks, more killings of Palestinians.
we’ve moved on too quickly from the pager attacks
— Mohammed El-Kurd (@m7mdkurd) February 15, 2025
Mohammed El-Kurd noted recently that "we've moved on too quickly from the pager attacks"; he is of course correct. It was just a few months ago. Former Biden state department officials got to crack a few jokes about it; there was an article or two floating around almost salivating at how impressive the attack was on a technical level. And then... it left the discourse.
Trump eagerly received a gold-encrusted pager from Netanyahu as a trophy of Netanyahu's accomplishment of mutilating children in Lebanon with the help of the American government. That's perhaps the last time a western media outlet will talk about it.
I was tempted to say that there's no telling what the lasting impacts of the last year and a half will be on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, but it's not accurate to say that. There's no telling what the lasting impacts of the last 70+ years will be on Palestinians. Refaat's story about Raneem disliking her father for not coming home - that story is close to 10 years old now; this isn't from the last 16 months. It's been like this for children in Gaza for decades.
Share your reflections
I'd like to know what you're thinking about with this week's readings. Please feel free to let me know, or tell me about one of the pieces you read that I didn't comment on here.
If you're not interested in commenting on social media, I totally understand; I'd love to hear your thoughts in the Signal group chat, if you're interested in joining.
Otherwise, I'd love to hear from you on Saturday at 12pm ET, during our regular video chat.
Other things
I think I mentioned that I'd like to do readings of a few pieces. Look for an update on that soon (maybe on Friday), or gently chide me until I finally deliver.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. And if I don't reply, please don't hesitate to try again - sometimes after sending these emails I need to take a long breather, and then I lose track of some stuff. I'm reading just about everything, and trying to at least acknowledge every message and mention I get.