.استاذة من الجزائر و هي تحب عن تغني. انا و زملائي  عملتنا هذه الاغني من مصر في الاول يوم. 

هذه الأغنية هي المنومة.



Helwa Ya Baladi

غنوة حلوة و غنوتين حلوة يا بلدي
أملي دايما كان يا بلدي اني ارجع لك يا بلدي
و افضل دايما جمبك على طول
و ذكريات كل اللى فات فاكرة يا بلدي؟
قلبي مليان بحكايات فاكرة يا بلدي؟
أول حب كان فى بلدي مش ممكن انساه يا بلدي
فين أيام زمان قبل الوداع

كنا بنقول ان الفراق دة مستحيل
و كل دمعة على الخدين كانت بتسيل
مليانة بأمل ان احنا نبقى موجودين
 فى بحر الحب على شطين

كلمة حلوة و كلمتين حلوة يا بلدي
غنوة حلوة و غنوتين حلوة يا بلدي

Link to translation

انا تعبانة كثير.

 

Last words...

Yesterday morning I signed a pledge that I wouldn't communicate in anything but Arabic for the next eight weeks. Today is day #2 and I just couldn't help myself. I had to get out a few last words. It feels like being swallowed up by a giant tidal wave, and wanting to tell someone how insane and beautiful that tidal wave is.

Truth is, it is an insanely beautiful thing to be living with a few hundred people who won't speak English with you. It's disorienting, and awkward, and fantastic in a way I couldn't have foreseen.

 The Language Pledge has turned this campus into a strange social experiment, where people choose to speak in Arabic and sound like toddlers rather than sound their age in their native language. That's basically the trick to nailing a language, but you'd think college-age humans would be too self-conscious to pull this off 24/7. Even in the dining hall, when you're surrounded by young, interesting people, you have to accept the fact that you're not going to learn 1% of what you want to learn about them unless you step up your speaking skills. It's refreshing to see that kind of commitment, and vulnerability.

One of the most confusing things here is that most of us don't look like Arabic speakers. It's going to take another few days before I'm used to walking around campus, seeing a white person, and instinctively saying "marhaba," "ahlan" or "keef halek al-yom?"

We have six hours of class during the day, and around five hours of homework at night. I've never been so jazzed to study in my life.

 My goal is to emerge from this program an Arabic speaker. I don't know exactly what work I'll find myself in, but the ability to communicate effectively with Arabic speakers is something I value highly, and I think it's good for the world. I think my speaking Arabic is good for the world, at least in my experience, whether in the Middle East or in the States, it brings joy.

 I have an IndieGogo campaign set up to help me cover some of my tuition costs. If you'd like to help, you'll receive some calligraphy from me, with your name, your friends' names, and/or a prayer/blessing in Arabic. You can also request a phone call where I serenade you with Egyptian or Lebanese tunes. Here's the link!: Morgan's Arabic-Learning Adventure

I'll be updating periodically here, but for non-Arabic speakers I'll have Before and After videos of myself being interviewed at the beginning and at the end, in August. The difference should be clear, inshallah!

Thank you all, and surely ashufkom badain (see you later!)
 Morgan

T minus one night.....

Ashufkom badain actually means "see you all later..."

See what I mean.....this is going to be HARD.

                                          The possibilities are endless......

May the Pledge be with you...

Tonight was convocation for the language schools that are starting now. I think it's just Arabic and Japanese. The vice president of the language schools gave a very lengthy speech which, while at times I was like, why are you giving a synopsis of a book about a Russian interpreter, was overall really engaging and funny.

He wrapped up the speech by talking about the Language Pledge we were all about to take, and quoting Obi Wan Kenobi, sort of.

"The Pledge is what gives the Language School its power. It's an energy field created by all students and faculty. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the Language Schools together."

Basically, speaking English after today is like going to the Dark Side. He got a good laugh out of that.

It felt pretty daunting, sitting in an auditorium with 300 or so students, knowing we're all about to plunge into awkward communication for a while. It feels like we're all going to be without light or something.

The closest comparison I can make is going on a silent retreat. I imagine some will go crazy. Well, here goes!

W Hala La Wein?

Last night everyone in the Arabic school gathered in the Music hall to watch a film. It was a Lebanese film called W Hala La Wein? "Where do we go now?" 

When the director started it, there were only Arabic subtitles. Everyone immediately burst out laughing....like...seriously? We're going to watch this whole movie without subtitles? I wasn't faring much better than the Level 1 students, the colloquial Lebanese made almost no sense to me. Somehow it was funny and sad, that we all (ok, almost all) of us needed subtitles. The director promptly switched it to English and everyone chuckled and then, applauded wildly. 

I'm looking forward to the day when I can watch it again without, but I'm glad for the translation. It was beautiful, and hilarious, and I might have cried.

Talking about what TV shows we're going to watch on our last night before the Arabic pledge...

Game of Thrones, Freaks and Geeks.....

Fear of speaking a new language

Two nights at Moishe

Last week, I went to the San Francisco Moishe House to attend a discussion hosted by the New Israel Fund. The discussion was about Israel's borders-what are they? what do they mean?

Call it infiltration, call it what you like. I'd been told by a young Jewish activist friend (who is also a kick-ass local musician) that the New Israel Fund, while being Zionist in nature, attracts a lot of people who want to hear different points of view and meet people with on-the-ground experience in Palestine. It made a lot of sense to me...the NIF crosses the green line more than any other Zionist organization I know of. They partner with Breaking the Silence, a very controversial group in Israel, to say the least.

It was a group of about twelve, all ages, very intimate, very respectful. Despite my initial anxiety that I would be dismissed for not being Jewish, I felt like I melted into the conversation like butter. At least I tried to mimic the facilitators by listening well and voicing peoples' thoughts back to them. It put my mind at ease that the facilitators were trying to push the boundaries--"you said the existence of the security Wall felt ironic--what made you say that?"

We looked at pictures of the Wall, and political cartoons from Arab and Israeli media.

There were some differing opinions in the room, there was an Israeli, an American or two with Israeli citizenship, and the rest American Jews, save for one guy my age who looked African-American and at one point described himself as Native American. It put my mind at ease to have him there, talking about his experiences with his Palestinian friends, and their obviously very different experiences with the Wall.

Even so, halfway through the discussion, I was bringing a glass of wine to my lips and I realized I couldn't keep my hands from shaking. I tried to put the glass down without wobbling it.

Really? I was that nervous?

I talked more than most. I had a lot to say about Area C, and demolitions, and traveling around the West Bank. A little later on one of the guys stopped mid-comment and looked at me and said, "Morgan, do you think it's Apartheid?"

"Umm, wow!" I stammered, instinctively trying to protect myself from I don't know what, and sheepishly laughing at everyone around the table. Maybe I was just shocked that someone had appointed me answerer of that question, in front of the group. Someone had just given me authority.

Then I got a hold of myself. "Umm, yes, I do. In the West Bank, I do think it's Apartheid."

I listen to people like Noura Erekat and Rebecca Vilkomerson. They're not just good public speakers, but they have their talking points stored away for all the questions and criticisms that follow. It takes a lot of memory to be outspoken on this issue, and to be respected. I got a small taste of that, and I still couldn't keep from shaking, because I'm not Jewish or Palestinian and I'm afraid of offending people.

At the end, we went around and talked about what we learned today. One of the guys, a house resident somehow brought up the MUNI bus ads that said "End U.S. aid to Israel" or "Boycott Apartheid Israel", and there was a lot of confusion in the group about where those ads came from, and there seemed to be a bit of dismay and a little scoffing too. I said the ads came from American Muslims for Palestine, with the support of Jewish Voice for Peace, and that at future meetings I'd be happy to have a discussion about different forms of activism, because I've been involved with campus divestment and church divestment, and it'd be great to sit down and debunk some of the myths associated with BDS. In any case, some of my friends would be engaging in the summer conversations and they'd be more than happy to talk about BDS.

That was it, I just threw it out there. Maybe BDS didn't sound as foreign, or scary when I said it. In any case, there was a handful of people who couldn't say they didn't know any BDS activists who cared enough, like they did, to show up at a group discussion. 

The take-away from the evening was that I felt like a valuable part of that conversation. One of the women said at the end that she heard from people, like me, who had experience on the ground. As I was about to leave, the young ladies who just seemed like awesome people and were facilitating the discussion thanked me for coming and asked me some more questions about my time in the West Bank. I got invited to a storytelling session with NIF. One of the Moishe House guys invited me back for Shabbat dinner the next night.

So I went back the next night. It was a full house, there was singing and breaking of bread, then we all ate, drank, mingled, and I had a lot of good conversations with a handful of people, who gave me their cards because want to see the website....again, I felt validated, like that was a place I could keep going back to.

This was my favorite interaction:
Me: Oh, you just got back from Birthright! Did you like it?
Guy: Hahaha, umm, yeah! Doesn't everyone love Israel?
Me: (same damn nervous laugh) Well, there are a lot of different opinions...

Then comes the "wait, you're not Jewish?" part. 

I imagined trying to explain this to my Jewish activist friends. Was this a refreshing experience for me because I'm an outsider? Was it something they considered to be much more stressful and exhausting?  Quite likely.  One of my friends told me it was painful for her that major parts of her Jewish life were severed-namely mainstream communal Jewish life, and her peace and justice work. That's why belonging to Jewish Voice for Peace was a point of healing and reconciliation.

Was it an unspoken rule that those kinds of Jews were unwelcome at institutions like Moishe House? One of my friends in Chicago had been disenchanted, he doubted that the conversation could broaden there. Best to continue activism from the outside. But many people do have the energy for working from the inside.

From what I've experienced after two nights, I have the energy, and growing confidence to do this a bit more....

---

In retrospect, I'm still glad I went, but I wished I had brought up in the discussion how problematic it was that there were no Palestinians present. The experience reminded me of this panel at the Cambridge Union that one of the Israelis backed out of for that reason. Honestly, it's icky to have a real discussion about the Wall when you're not the one being walled in.

The Wall was built by arrogance. That one people can build a wall on another peoples' land is so arrogant that it needs to be shamed. The Wall, the act of building it, and our own attempts to discuss it around a living room table over hummus. Again, again, I felt like I didn't do quite enough.

Human after all.

I heard a familiar 80's song on the radio yesterday, and have been binging on it ever since.

I thought the song was called "Human After All." I thought it might be by Tears for Fears.

It's actually "Something About You" by Level 42. If I were more savvy with my smart phone, I would've used that song-finding App while the song was playing. I think it's way more satisfying to Google the lyrics and follow the "what is that 80's song that says human after all called?" message board. There's a sense of camaraderie in it!

While I listened to this chunk of 80's cheese, I thought about the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. When I read this article in the Guardian on Sunday, the biggest thing I felt was relief. I was relieved that there was a human voice calling out from inside of what looks like an out-of-control machine, that his voice made it into a newspaper and people were calling him a hero. It's sad that it took this long for someone to speak up, and for people to pay attention (now that it's not mainly Muslims and activists being targeted) but the world felt a little more human because of what Edward Snowden did.

In other news, this video is a trip. The main guy's resemblance to Heath Ledger's Joker is crazy.


Level 42 - Something About You (Official Music... by fort55

Now, how can it be
That a love carved out of caring
Fashioned by fate could suffer so hard
From the games played once too often
But making mistakes is a part of life's imperfection
Born of the years
Is it so wrong to be human after all?

Drawn into the stream of undefined illusion
Those diamond dreams, they can't disguise the truth

That there is something about you, baby, so right
I wouldn't be without you, baby, tonight

If ever our love was concealed
No-one can say that we didn't feel
A million things and a perfect dream of life
Gone, fragile but free
We remain tender together
If not so in love
And it's not so wrong; we're only human after all

These changing years, they add to your confusion
Oh and you need to hear the time that told the truth

You know, there's something about you, baby, so right
I wouldn't be without you, baby, tonight
Because there's something about you, baby, so right
I couldn't live without you, baby, tonight

Something about you, the way you are, so right
I wouldn't be without you here tonight
There's something about you, the way you are so right
I couldn't live without you here tonight

Before There is Nowhere to Stand

Last week I went to the Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley, to a poetry reading called Before There is Nowhere to Stand. Most everyone read a poem out of that compilation of poems. The writers are Palestinian, or Jewish and/or Israeli.

Some of the poems I found really powerful. The first poem was by a Palestinian, and the second by an Israeli. The first was about memories-of childhood, and family. It was really sweet. The second was about dividing Jerusalem (you take the dates, I'll take the figs) and the absurdity of separation. I really liked them both.

There was a Darwish poem too. Now I wonder what Darwish would have thought of his poem being in there.

People bare their souls in their poetry. The words can be so honest, and so raw. So how could you tell someone that their honesty, and their confession isn't enough? That allowing their words in this anthology could be misleading, and even harmful?

I looked for the poems I liked on Google, and found a few of them posted on The Velveteen Rabbi. One comment really resonated with me:

Thank you for sharing, these are both breathtaking poems. One thing that I was struck by in your juxtaposition of them here is the sense of equivalence evoked. Both poems begin with incredible tenderness and beauty and end with horrible violence. Reading them together suggests that there is a fundamental sameness between Israeli and Palestinian experiences of violence. I find this both profoundly true--when someone you love is killed, does the context really matter?--and also very troubling, because I believe the violence is unequal, both statistically and structurally. Clicking through to the book's site, I found some of my thoughts mirrored in Vivien Sansour's critique, which I'd encourage others to read. (Viven's letter is below)

Reading that allowed me to articulate what I'd been feeling. I was uncomfortable listening to a Darwish poem being read intertwined with an Israeli poem. Two poets, one line here, one line there, one line here, one line there. I was sitting next to a Palestinian friend who had just arrived. I'd heard his poetry at the Nakba day event, and thought he'd like to see this event. Sitting next to him and listening to this back-and-forth made me squirm. It sounded silly, the partnership. Carthartic for one poet to talk about fear and emotions, while imaginably mounted on top of the other.

I felt a strong connection to people at this event. Some are friends, Palestinian and Jewish/Israeli Americans with a long history of activism and family connections in Palestine/Israel. I can't claim to have either. Some of the poems didn't sit well with me...but how can I say the event wasn't enough? Several of us had a wonderful lunch and tea afterwards, and talked nonstop about Palestine and activism. I was completely at ease with everyone. So how can I complain?

I wasn't going to mention any of these questions here. But as I was looking for the poems I liked, I read a review of the book from Lost Horse Press, which includes Vivien Sansour's letter, "in lieu of an introduction." Vivien writes:

Unfortunately, I do not see myself participating in such a context. Perhaps I would if one day justice is served and we are in a state of reconciliation. However, this reconciliation whether through poetry or otherwise is not possible at this point. As I would like to describe it, it is like having to sit down with my rapist and understand his pain while he is still penetrating me.

I knew I had to include her letter, if I was going to mention the book at all. How would the poetry reading have been different, for better or for worse, had someone had gone up on stage and read these words? I think they're important, and something that everyone in the audience could have understood and appreciated.

Especially in Berkeley.

----


"Vivien Sansour gave permission to print her correspondence in lieu of an introduction, along with two of her poems. Even as the editors do not assume there to be a singular Palestinian or Jewish “voice,” Vivien’s letter may echo opposition and challenge normalization. Because what is absent is as telling as what is present.

from a Letter from Vivien Sansour
Dear Joan and Grace,

Please accept my sincerest apologies for being so late in responding to you. I have been reading the manuscript and really struggling with it to be honest. For the sake of full integrity I would like to share with you a couple of things. I do not feel a just representation and I am afraid that in the context of an unfortunately misunderstood political reality the anthology, although I know and trust that it is well intentioned, perpetuates an idea that I am very uncomfortable with and that is of framing the situation as two people who just need to get along and who just don’t understand each other.

I have been discussing it with my dear friend Ayelet who is a former Israeli soldier and currently lives in Los Angeles as she refuses to return to Israel and have her kids serve in the army. We had both performed poems we wrote to each other in the past and we have found that, unfortunately, the reality of a military occupation becomes clouded when the message of “bridging gaps of understanding between two people who just don’t get along” is perpetuated. In that spirit, I write you with my deepest regrets because I feel I cannot participate in your anthology; not in an introduction nor with my poems.

As I was making my trip from Jenin to the U.S. (via Jordan because I, like most Palestinians, am not allowed to use the airport in Tel Aviv) our car was stopped on the road by an Israeli checkpoint and we were forced out of the car and made to stand in the cold for half an hour. After being humiliated and screamed at by a young Israeli soldier (move, stop, walk, go back) we were finally let through to make it to the bridge to cross with thirteen different checks and stops in Palestinian-only buses that we were stuffed into like animals. It is hard for me on a personal level as well to compare and equate my experiences in the same context as my oppressor.

The poem for the people of Sderot, for example, makes it look like we all suffer from the same demon of fear. While all human suffering is awful, in the grander political context there is a political force, a powerful military force that the people of Sderot are supported and protected by. They are part of a system that is systemically and slowly exterminating an indigenous population. Not to mention that Sderot is a settlement built on stolen land. The people of Gaza are imprisoned with no access to sea or land to run away to even.

I do not want to focus on these details, I just want to explain why in the struggle to achieve justice, which is the only way to peace, I am growing more and more convinced alongside my Israeli and international colleagues who are also struggling for justice, that it is important for us to present the situation as it is: A military occupation and not a conflict between two people. Jews, Muslims, Christians have lived together in Palestine before 1948 and it was not until a European colonial project was started in the beginning of the 1900s that we started “not to get along.”

Unfortunately, I do not see myself participating in such a context. Perhaps I would if one day justice is served and we are in a state of reconciliation. However, this reconciliation whether through poetry or otherwise is not possible at this point. As I would like to describe it, it is like having to sit down with my rapist and understand his pain while he is still penetrating me.

My only regret is that I have taken a long time to come to this conclusion and I am afraid I have caused you an inconvenience in your process. But I would have also done you injustice to write an introduction that would not be in integrity with where I stand nor with how I think the struggle for justice is best served.
Respectfully,
Vivien

Silent Frisco, Ocean Beach

Recent presentations

On Sunday I presented at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in San Carlos, and yesterday I presented at St. Andrews United Methodist Church in Palo Alto! I'll have some pictures up soon. Both were small groups, which allowed for a lot of discussion, and it was a real pleasure getting to sit in on the Lutheran service as well. Holy Trinity is a lovely community, as is St. Andrews.

Washington Alliance for Middle East Peace

I'm crossing my fingers that my student loan comes through in time to start Arabic school this summer. The program starts in 10 days.

We just received an e-mail from the program asking if we'd like to observe Ramadan. Several faculty will be observing, and some students usually choose to observe.

I responded and said I would. What an amazing experience.