“… I found
The failing olive and the cajoling flute,
Where I knelt down, as if in prayer,
And sucked a moist pit
From the marl
Of the earth in a sacred cove.
Edward Hirsch, A Greek Island
He who steals the land does not surprise us by stealing a library.
He who kills innocent civilians does not surprise us by killing paintings.
He who destroyed a whole homeland does not surprise us when he destroys a wall on which we hung our paintings.
The enemy of the Palestinan tree,
the enemy of the Palestinian painting,
the enemy of the Palestinian poem is,
first and foremost,
the enemy of the Palestinan homeland.
-Mahmoud Darwish in ??????????? ???????? (Kassem Hawal, 1984) via bidoun
