CPTnet
October 23, 2004

HEBRON DISTRICT POEM: Drinking tea on an ordinary day

by Maia Williams

When there was a full moon, the white light entered the open door of our
small house, illuminating the stone surfaces like a late Georgia O'Keefe
painting.

During the new moon, after the village generator would go off, the village
became dark with only gas lamps shining in a couple of windows; the stars
would pierce the darkness.

In the mornings, we would awake to the grey dawn, walk toward the the sun
rising from the edge of the earth, toward the small village of Tuba to meet
the children and bring them to school.

I try to describe the truth of living in At-Tuwani, but I can only
circumscribe it.

The wind pulled itself over me like a thin cotton sheet the day after
settlers attacked my friends and the children of Tuba. The little hand of
one girl, Miriam, trembled with trust inside mine as we walked across the
stark mountains to her school in At Tuwani. She walked surefooted over the
rocks on which I stumbled. Her nightmares lived in a dense forest which
divided her home from her school.

During the crescent moons, I watched the summer become fall in the desert
mountains and the sand flies linger in the house past dark. The nights
looked like a tea glass, steam misting the sky.

I have drunk tea in ancient stone houses, concrete houses, tents, caves, on
dirt roads, on mountains, in valleys, with sheepherders, with farmers, with
women rocking babies, with old women weaving on wooden looms. I have drunk
tea with little girls imitating their mothers. I have drunk tea while being
taught Arabic, while teaching people English, while swatting flies, while
sharing cigarettes, while eating taboon bread, while singing, while
listening, while watching television at night and not understanding a word
of the dialogue. I have sat underneath olive groves, drinking tea, and
laughing while villagers shared stories about their mothers, their children
being attacked by settlers.

  Every house in this village had a demolition order and every day the men
continued to construct new homes and drink hot zatar tea. Every year the
women continued to give birth to children, bake fresh bread, and organize
themselves in order that their daughters were safe and educated.

At-Tuwani was not a place to be imagined or described, it was a place to
enter, to sit down, to drink coffee and tea, to learn to talk about the
horrors of life and the joys of living in the same breath.

This was not an ideal, perfect village. It was a raw paradise. Beauty and
violence spiraled around each other like waft and weave, like moths circling
a light bulb.

Beyond ideals, there is ordinary life. On the edge of the world courage
lays in surviving, because living is the most challenging act one can do in
the face of childhood nightmares and annihilation.