Three Poems and Essay
Counting the Dead
It鈥檚 like trying to count the stars
while the stars keep falling
each has a name
and a number鈥�
steadily rising
we try to record each one
give them a place in the sky
of memory
but there are so many
shining, falling, shining
by tradition, the brightest stars
were given Arabic names
础肠丑别谤苍补谤鈥�Akhir an-Nahr
end of the river
Fomalhaut 鈥� Fam al-Hut
mouth of the fish
础濒迟补颈谤鈥� 础迟-罢补鈥檌谤
flying eagle
the unnamed ones gleam
in galaxies we cannot reach
so too with the dead鈥�
even the smallest ones
who did not yet have a name
tremble with radiance
long past their dying
each an absence
still present
a gleam of memory
in place of a star
aligned in a luminous rampart
against the tsunami of night
Ya 鈥楢mr
My friend sends me photos of children
lost to bombs, their still-living faces
shining like moons鈥�ya 鈥榓mr!鈥�in hopes
I will write poems to keep them alive.
They are not lost, of course, but murdered,
torn to bits. Sometimes we hide in language
to make it through鈥攖hough the children
had nowhere to hide and didn鈥檛 survive.
Searching for words to stem the grief,
I scroll through images, wincing
at fresh young faces, the smiling eyes.
The pictures are easier to take
than my news feed鈥檚 cruel contortions:
hands protruding from rubble, forearms
and legs inscribed with names
so that victims can be identified
when beheaded by the rain of bombs.
The children laughing into the camera,
hugging siblings or parents, clutching a toy
or ball or schoolbag, demand we refuse
their destruction. Their shining eyes
gaze out, trusting those beyond the lens
to keep them safe, whole, alive.
They do not know, yet, how this
will end: faces smeared with blood,
hands clutching soot, bodies cradled
in ragged heaps by grievers
who rock in anguished keening.
At one bombing site, a girl lifted alive
from the moonscape of devastation
cries out to her rescuer, 鈥�Ammo, uncle,
are you taking me to the cemetery?鈥�
He exclaims tenderly, 鈥淐emetery,
what cemetery! Look at you, child,
you are alive and beautiful like the moon!鈥�
But beyond them, the lunar arc etched
into Gaza鈥檚 black and broken sky
is barely visible. Ya 鈥榓mr, the sky
is so dark, ya 鈥榓mr, the light has left us,
where is the moon?聽
NO
There鈥檚 no poetry in it,
but I need to say something about No,
how it stands up, no matter how unpopular,
in the face of injustice. Maybe it can鈥檛
thwart history: the powerful have always known
what they can do, and they do it.
No can鈥檛 stop an avalanche.
But No could be a retaining wall
built of rough stones and wrested from the earth,
carried one by one up the hill on someone鈥檚 back.
No might be a tree in the middle of a village street:
traffic shifts to flow around it, its presence
a reminder of what used to be, what won鈥檛 be
forgotten. No is the perimeter of stubborn cactus
springing up around destroyed villages.
You can bulldoze houses, evict or kill the inhabitants,
but the thorns of memory can鈥檛 be eliminated.
No is steadfast. It knows what it鈥檚 like
to have nothing in its hands but dignity.
The Road from Beirut
THEY SAY THAT DURING PREGNANCY we absorb cells from our babies into our own bodies: Decades later those cells may still be floating in our bloodstreams. If the past can be so viscerally present within us, perhaps it’s no surprise that almost 22 years after leaving Beirut, I still jump at the sound of a car backfiring and cringe at the sight of fireworks blossoming across a darkened sky. Or that a certain shade of gold–the color of the blossoms the day I left Beirut–still inspires in me a subtle sense of sorrow. Perhaps the past is not really past, but rather lives on in the cells of the body unnoticed, stirred to life by the slightest sensory input: a sound, a smell, a taste, a color.
I fled Beirut in June 1982, soon after the invading Israeli army had begun their destruction of Lebanon’s Southern towns, but before it had encircled and begun to bomb Beirut itself. The American University of Beirut (AUB), where I was a senior, was abloom with the vibrant colors of a Mediterranean garden. Golden blossoms drifted gently down from the trees, clinging like sparks to the hair of passersby. Then the Israeli army crossed the border into southern Lebanon in its long-expected invasion, and the campus filled with students huddled in small groups, transistor radios pressed to their ears. In the dorms, students stared fixedly at televised images of destruction. Those with families in the South strained for any identifying mark that might transform a pile of rubble to the ruins of their family house, a crumpled human form to the broken remnants of a loved one.
As a Palestinian American who had lived in Lebanon for four years, I was a full participant in the collective grief, yet at the same time felt deeply implicated in the events. On the one hand, US support for Israel had made the invasion possible; on the other, the unwilled presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon had provided its rationale. In addition, of course, I was terrified. It was clear that the human cost of the Israeli invasion would be high (most estimates put the largely civilian death toll at 18,000 to 25,000), and that my American passport would not protect me from bombs. As a passport holder with money in the bank, I at least had flight options. But what course of action I should take was far from clear. Should I remain on campus, hoping that the invasion would stop short of Beirut? Leave the city for a safer location? Flee the country altogether? Leaving seemed in some ways a betrayal, but I was vividly aware of how worried my parents must be. (International telephone lines were down, the airport was closed, and I had no way of communicating with them.) I felt completely alone, confronted by a life-and-death decision that no one else could make for me.
Hoping for guidance, I called the US embassy. But the woman who answered the phone was curt to the point of rudeness. “You should not be here,” she snapped.
“But I am here,” I replied, “and I’m registered with the embassy. Don’t you have any evacuation plans for civilians?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Can you at least tell me what route out of Beirut is safest?”
“No, I have no advice.”
I hung up the phone feeling utterly lost. Now what? My only clear thought was to get money in hand. I set out for the bank, cowering when a plane roared overhead, breaking the sound barrier as Israeli jets routinely did. At the bank I climbed the dirty marble stairs to find utter pandemonium. People jostled and shouted, forgoing any semblance of lines. I pushed my way into the office of a manager my father knew. He greeted me soberly, shaking his head when I told him I wanted to withdraw my entire account. “Not possible,” he said. “We are allowing customers to withdraw a maximum of 400 pounds. But because of your father, I will double that.” I accepted the crisp bills gratefully.
Back on campus people milled about in uneasy groups. There was a car leaving for Syria, someone told me: The occupants were Americans, and there was space for one more. Did I want to go? I wrote down the phone number, but hesitated: I didn’t know the people, and I had heard reports of the Damascus road being targeted. (I later learned that the road was bombed the day that car left, killing 57 people, including 4 foreigners.) Another friend mentioned an evacuation convoy to Jounieh; from there, sea transportation could be arranged out of the country. Although the convoy was for scholarship students, he knew the person in charge. This sounded like a safer choice. We went to the bursary office, where the secretary agreed to slip me onto the list. But as she wrote down my name, I felt a strange sense of disassociation. What would it mean to leave? I might live, while others might die?
Back in the dormitory I started packing. We had been advised to take one bag apiece, something we could run with if necessary. I had been in Beirut for four years and had accumulated far more possessions than could fit in one suitcase. As afternoon turned to evening, I folded and refolded, weighing the merits of extra jeans over letters, sweaters over photo albums. I fell asleep late and woke early to the interwoven sounds of birdsong and gunfire. Downstairs, the dormitory was still locked. Looking out the glass doors, I felt claustrophobic, trapped without exit in a country under siege, in a moment without a future.
At the cafeteria, our meeting place, rumors flowed freely: A student had been struck by shrapnel; someone had been shot on campus. I waited under the banyan trees until the trucks came, open-bedded vehicles with slatted sides. We boarded, handing our suitcases up. As we started to move, I reached out and grasped a flowering branch. The truck lurched forward and the branch pulled out of my grasp, leaving me with a fistful of crushed petals.
We drove through empty streets, past bombed-out buildings, beneath a birdless sky smudged with smoke. Once, some people called out as we went by, wanting to know whether our village had been destroyed. At the outskirts of Jounieh we stopped in an apparently Phalangist-controlled area, and the Cypriot students, who comprised the majority of passengers on our truck, were told to disembark. When I tried to get off too, a man asked me, “You, you from Cyprus?” I shook my head, and he motioned me back. Confused and frightened, I watched my friends escorted away. Later I learned the story behind this event: A Lebanese ship owner who had been blacklisted by the Cyprus government for smuggling arms via Cyprus to the Israel-allied Phalangists in Lebanon hoped to regain access to Cyprus ports by “rescuing” a group of Cypriot students. At the time, however, I had no way of knowing why some of us were being taken away while others were left on the truck, and so I was simply filled with panic. Where were they being taken? Would any of us be safe?
The truck moved on, much emptier now. We drove through Jounieh to a hotel run by AUB graduates who had agreed to let us sleep on their floor. In the hotel a small television set showed a broadcaster standing in front of a pile of rubble, the remnants of a building in Saida. A young woman slumped on a metal folding chair in front of the TV, the sound of her weeping jagged and low. Later I went outside to watch the explosions down the coast: a stitchery of flame in gold, red, white, sound reverberating a few seconds after flaring light, the way thunder lags behind lightning. My inability to sleep that night was caused by more than the hard tile floor and the restless movements of unwashed bodies filling the hall.
The next day we waited: for Israeli permission to exit the port, for a boat, for news of the Cypriot students. In the early evening, news spread of a boat. But it proved to be a false alarm, and excitement soon changed to apathy. After another long night, we received word, this time accurate, that we would be leaving that afternoon. To prepare for the journey I bought water and crackers, despite the fact that I had had no appetite for days.
At the port we found our boat, the S. S. Eddy: a small, dirty cargo vessel that seemed unlikely to hold us all. We boarded in late afternoon. Behind us, the hills of Jounieh leaned into the harbor, bulwarks of tree and stone whose beauty seemed almost unbearable. As the boat slipped into the twilight, I watched their outlines grow fainter and fainter till they disappeared into the darkness, signaling that Lebanon was behind us. Bereft, I took refuge at the far end of the boat, staring out to sea. Around us, the darkness became absolute. The only noise was that of waves splashing against the boat.
Suddenly a spotlight came out of nowhere, pinning me down like an insect. I could not breathe. After what seemed like eternity, the light moved on, playing slowly across the ship, pausing at each face to render the shocked, frightened features in stark detail. A voice came out of the darkness over a loudspeaker, speaking in English: “S. S. Eddy, S. S. Eddy. This is Israeli gunboat.”
What came next was blurred by confusion and fear. Several Israeli soldiers with large, oddly shaped weapons boarded the boat as we stood at attention, passports clutched in our hands. They took four students off board. One, we learned later, was rowed around in the dark in a small boat in total silence for an extended period of time, a weapon pressed to his head. The rest of us were left standing there, rigid with fear. At some point I was overcome by a wave of dizziness and exhaustion and collapsed. Several hours later I woke to find the ship moving through the dark, the deck around me littered with sleeping bodies.
With dawn, the orientation of the boat made clear where we were headed: Israel. At some point the gunboat pulled close: a massive steel-gray vessel with a surreal purple eye, complete with eyelashes, painted on the side. An Israeli soldier with a loudspeaker ordered us to turn over all cameras on board. If one hidden camera was found, he warned, we would “never reach Cyprus.” Fearfully, we complied. Meanwhile, our boat continued its way down the coast, eventually pulling into a harbor ringed with red roofs: Haifa!
As we pulled into port, I could see journalists with television cameras on shore. Israeli soldiers boarded with crates of food: tomatoes and cucumbers, cheese and yogurt and bread. Despite the freshness of the food, I had no appetite. I could see the television crews filming and could imagine the headline that would accompany those photos: Israeli Army Feeds Starving Refugees. Someone told me a reporter had asked to speak to an American, but I declined, fearing that to express my views would create problems for my relatives in the Occupied Territories.
Soon after the food was distributed, the soldiers returned, this time with clipboards. Separating us into national groups, they began an interrogation process that went on for the rest of the day. My own questioning was brief: I was asked a few questions about my background and activities. Other Palestinians, however, were grilled for hours.
Night fell. At some point the Americans on board were taken to the US consulate. In a room lit with glaring fluorescent lights, a female officer patted me down and emptied my bag, seemingly disgusted by my grimy appearance and the trash in my pockets. I was unashamed. My disheveled state was as much the fault of the Americans as of the Israelis. In the consul’s office we were offered tea鈥攐ur first hot drink in days鈥攁nd given the option of leaving the boat in Haifa. The choice was in some ways tempting: I could stay with my relatives in Jerusalem and cross the bridge to Jordan. But doing so meant traveling through the country that was at that very moment laying waste to Lebanon. I had until morning to make up my mind, but I knew what I would decide.
The next morning the Israelis returned our cameras (minus film) and allowed us to leave port. Our boat headed toward Cyprus across rough seas drenched with rain. As night fell, I tried to find a corner in which to sleep, huddling into myself for warmth. I woke to find a towel draped over me: some kind person had noticed my shivering. Drifting off to sleep again, I thought about the camaraderie that had grown among our shipboard community. We had shared food and water, blankets and toothpaste, fear and relief. We might never see each other again, but we had been linked by something we would never forget.
As dawn broke, I woke to find the ship approaching Cyprus. We staggered off the boat, grimy and exhausted, to be met by the American ambassador to Lebanon, dressed in shorts and a straw hat, sporting a recent sunburn. Before I could take in the implications of his presence鈥攚hile his staff in Lebanon had been insisting they had no evacuation assistance to offer, he had been sunbathing鈥攚e were ushered into a vast warehouse where our passports were processed and motherly Cypriot women plied us with orange juice and cookies. Eventually we were taken to the airport, where flights were arranged to our home countries. I contacted my parents and my Cypriot friends, safe after an adventure of their own, and boarded the plane to Jordan giddy with relief. I was going home, safe and whole; my family was waiting.
My relief lasted through my family’s fierce embraces, through calls and visits from relatives and friends. It lasted until the moment my sister handed me an issue of Time magazine filled with glossy, terrible photos of what those brilliant flares down the coast had wrought. I turned the pages, haunted, shaken by the understanding of what I had journeyed through and by what the cost had been, and would be, for so many.
You could say that everything afterwards鈥攎y journey to the United States, where autumn leaves sparked fierce remembrances of those golden blossoms the morning of my departure; my slow, fumbling search for a political and poetic voice; my growing awareness of how little and how much one person can do鈥攚as shaped by that understanding. One way or another I have been traveling the road from Beirut ever since.
Lisa Suhair Majaj is a Palestinian-American poet, writer, scholar, editor and children鈥檚 author. She was born in the U.S. to a Palestinian father from Birzeit and Jerusalem, and an American mother from Iowa, was raised in Jordan, and was educated in Beirut and then in the United States. Her grandmother鈥檚 family came from Jaffa. Her father went abroad to work and study after the war of 1948 divided Jerusalem. After the remainder of Palestine was occupied in 1967 he was unable to return. Majaj’s writing has been published in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, India and Korea, and her poems have been translated into at least 13 languages. Her 2009 poetry book Geographies of Light won the 2008 Del Sol Press Poetry Prize. Her poetry was displayed in the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War鈥擜merica and the Middle East, held at the Harn Museum of Art (University of Florida), and was included in Passport of Witness, a 2024 limited-edition art book of Palestinian testimony.聽Why Doesn鈥檛 the Sky Love Us? is a new poetry volume forthcoming from Fernwood Press.
“NO” was first published in Geographies of Light. “The Road from Beirut” was first published in The Women鈥檚 Review of Books in 2004.