Moving Toward Being

Every time I enter my classroom in Palestine and ask my student Anis how he is, he always gives the same reply with a huge, enthusiastic smile: "Seeming but not being." The first time he said it, I was amused; by the third or fourth time, I knew he was trying to communicate something about himself. "Seeming but not being" was even how he introduced himself on the phone when he called in the second week of class to admit he'd lost the reading packet for my poetry course. There is identity wrapped up in his words, a sort of nonexistence he can express in no other way. He smiles throughout class, quick to note (and occasionally fabricate) references to Greek mythology and classical literature, quick to interpret and sometimes assume. When I asked my students when they wrote, most said at night or only when inspired, but not Anis. "Always," was his response, and he proved it by reading the lines he'd just penned during our discussion.

Perhaps there is something in poetry and other artistic expression that can move us past seeming and into being, and as I reach the halfway point in my course at An-Najah, I am beginning to understand what writing means to these young people. Poetry is therapy, a self expression so priceless that they share their work more often and more openly than my students ever have in America. When I ask how much an audience matters, they widen their eyes and seem surprised by the question. Even Majida, one of the most timid about her work, insists that poetry is written to be read, to be heard and understood by another. And when my colleague Michael says the difference between a journal poem and and a public poem is the presence of an audience, they all agree vehemently that there IS a huge difference when one has an audience. My students seem to have great urgency behind their work, and as Majida recites a three-page poem in Arabic entirely from memory, her eyes half shut and staring into the middle distance, I am humbled and awed, watching her come to life before an audience even when I know it scares her half to death.

Falastine, who just graduated from An-Najah, writes her work entirely in English; Mark once called it her "message in a bottle to the world." Falastines writes in her non-native language because she knows who she wants her audience to be, just like Majida confronts the terror of reading her work because it matters to be heard. I meet Falastine first by phone, and am drawn in by the poetry of her words and the timbre and resonance of her voice. My students in America, I tell her, are in love with her writing, have read and reread her poems and even written poetry in response. There is a short silence on the other end of the line. "So we aren't working in isolation, then," she says finally. Falastine lives in Nablus, the only city in Palestine entirely sealed off by Israeli checkpoints, which means that isolation is more than just an emotional concept for anyone growingup here. Those Nablusi with permits to enter Israel can do so with great difficulty,waiting in lines for hours and enduring harassment and questioning from the IDF; those without permits can never leave at all. So having an audience breaks through those roadblocks and barriers, bringing Falastine from seeming into being, from seeming heard to really being heard.

Mohammad Faraj, a photographic journalism student, has provided the photography for a wide range of RJI projects, and he was staggered to hear how fully his work was being understood and appreciated by students in the U.S. The first time we met, I told him I'd been waiting two years to meet him, and he seemed skeptical and asked why. I told him that his photos were changing my students' lives, and just like Falastine it took him a moment to respond. The tough guy facade disappeared and his eyes looked damp; all he said was "So maybe I HAVE done something important with my life, then." Later, I show Mohammad my Independent School article filled with his photos, and we peruse the Poetry of Witness project in which my students wrote poems from his photos. He doesn't seem to know what to say, just repeating "Wow" and "I am so moved" again and again. He shows me around Balata refugee camp, his home, and he points out the kids my students have seen in photos, the graffiti-covered walls they've written about. When we pass the field I wrote a poem about he says nothing, smiling warmly when I recognize it on my own. For him it's not about words, but photos are his words; having an audience to view and absorb them creates meaning not just for him, but for the smiling children who run up to us constantly to shout "Welcome." Mohammad hasn't left Nablus in seven years, so knowing that his photos are out there speaking for him and his neighbors is like having a passport, if not quite so actually liberating.

Margaret Atwood refers to Turkish author and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk as "...narrating his country into being," and perhaps my students and Mohammad are doing the same--for both their country and themselves. My friend Michael complains about programs that just put a disposable camera into kids' hands, expecting self expression to change their lives, and he's right that this alone is not enough. Self expression can't change the realities of incursions, curfews, isolation and violence these kids are growing up surrounded by. "Seeming but not being" is where they live and who they are. But seeming like they have an audience and actually being heard are two different things, and at least I can ensure the latter is actually the case. Without words myself, my poetry stagnates as theirs comes to life; only Falastine can express what it means to live this way:

Nomads we will always be
Living in words
With nothing living inside of us
Nothing within
And our search will go on
Find your words and swords
And I'll be looking for my home
A margin, where words can grow.