My mother is three years younger than Nakba. But she doesn’t believe in great powers. Twice a day she brings God down from his throne then reconciles with him through the mediation of the best recorded Quranic recitations. And she can’t bear meek women. She never once mentioned Nakba. Had Nakba been her neighbor, my mom would’ve shamelessly chided her: “I’m sick of the clothes on my back.” And had Nakba been her older sister, she would’ve courted her with a dish of khubaizeh, but if her sister whined too much, my mom would tell her: “Enough. You’re boring holes in my brain. Maybe we shouldn’t visit for a while?” And had Nakba been an old friend, my mom would tolerate her idiocy until she died, then imprison her in a young picture up on the wall of the departed, a kind of cleansing ritual before she’d sit to watch dubbed Turkish soap operas. And had Nakba been an elderly Jewish woman that my mom had to care for on Sabbath, my mom would teasingly tell her in cute Hebrew: “You hussy, you still got a feel for it, don’t you?” And had Nakba been younger than my mom, she’d spit in her face and say: “Rein in your kids, get’em inside, you drifter.”

—Haifa

source: https://internationaleonline.org/ca/contributions/we-have-been-here-forever-palestinian-poets-write-back/ tr.: Fady Joudah

biobibliographical note: Hlewa is an award winning writer living in Haifa, and little known outside of Palestine. This is often the fate of Palestinian writers writing in Arabic and living within the 1948 borders of the settler state. Like my experience with my own family, the Arab literary scene has been historically cut off from Palestinians who never left the homeland. I first encountered this poem through the translation here by award winning Palestinian-American poet, translator, and medical doctor Fady Joudah. In addition to being a most sensitive Palestinian poet writing in English, Joudah is a committed curator and translator of Palestinian and Syrian poets, and his work has introduced me to many writers that I would consequently begin to read and to follow.