God gave this land to me, one says.
The land is mine, another. Their too-close
stories
jostle to root in the same soil.
Lines
are scratched to separate the people
of
one story from the other – Green Line,
Blue
Line; Area A, B, and C; H1 and H2.
The
stories get shouted. Rocks
rockets
and reprisals follow. The lines
harden
into concrete walls capped
with
barbed wire.
Bah! What do I know of lines?
I
am the land, hurled into the cosmos
eight
billion years before Genesis.
What
I know is that fire is hot and burns
the
hair of Marwa; that rounds at rifle
speed
catch and cripple Mohammad;
that
Ayat’s 18-year old arms and legs
become
missiles when she pulls
the
cord at her waist. What I know
is
that the blood of children
doesn’t
nourish the branch
of even one olive tree.
of even one olive tree.
