Mind Reflections

They Called me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi

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To read Ahed Tamimi’s words is to feel her bravery, her resilience. The resilience, strength, and livelihood of Palestinians.

This is not a review of a book, this is a gained understanding and a call to action by the Palestinian people, people under occupation. My people. This is a personal account of the way Palestinians have had to live, the way Israel treats people, and the power that the Palestinian people hold within themselves.

This was a hard read, as ive been learning (it’s been more like bombarding myself, as i have not turned a blind eye in 200+ days), like many others are doing, with whats happening to and in Palestine today. The apartheid and genocide of Palestine that the world is opening its eyes to, the actions that are happening now, have happened before, ahed tamimi speaks about the injustices that her people in nabi saleh and in all of Palestine go through.

The history of Nabi Saleh, where Ahed Tamimi is from, is the history of a village doesn’t only symbolize themselves, it is the fight of all Palestinians. It is the fight of people living under occupation, in a land that has been stripped from them since 1917 because of the Zionist agenda.

This is happening in the West Bank, this is happening in Gaza, this is happening to Palestinians living in Palestine under military occupation.

I dont think anyone should need an explanation to read this book, i think it’s important for everyone to have real accounts of what is happening. This happened in 2017, this happened in 1948, in 1967, in 2009, these things have been happening to people for a much longer time than people are coming to realize (or should be), these things are a daily occurrence for Palestinians living in the OCCUPIED West Bank, and in other villages where Israeli settlers have unjustly and violently forced themselves into.

People should know this did not start in October of last year.

It’s senseless to say you just dont know enough on this topic anymore. Google is an option, books are written to tell you their histories, food is made to nurture and sustain a culture that has been around for over a thousand years, songs are made about their resilience There is nothing to justify inaction and inability to understand.

I have learned so much from a young girls experience, from the traumas that her family and her village and Palestine have gone through. A country i am deeply connected to by blood, an ancestry that i didnt know of until a few years ago when i started piecing information together. The timing of my personal life coinciding with the world around me, continues to leave me a bit speechless.

Ahed talks a lot about family, it is what gave her the most strength while under such brutal conditions by Israel, from what i could get a sense of. The people in her village are related and so deeply connected to each other, there was a beautiful understanding that i maybe lacked knowledge of. It gave me strength. And a foresight into what life i am connected to. What beauty my people have, and what beauty has been so wrongfully taken from them. I am the granddaughter of a man from Bethlehem. My mother is half Palestinian. Their blood runs through our veins, their struggle is ours.

My mother fled the Salvadoran civil war, armed and trained by Israel! (83 percent of El Salvador’s military imports came from Israel)…

(ANSESAL the national security agency was trained by Israel, which turned out to be the secret security that created the death squads) the death squads had my mom as a target for being openly for the mf people. She was 15 when she fled, alone.

This is an issue that connects a lot of people, i encourage us all to learn, to see how Israel has played a role in not just the erasure of Palestine but how close these people in power are working, to continue their positions of power while others become martyred, displaced, and oppressed.

Ahed was made a symbol for Palestine when she was 17, they called her a lioness. She didnt choose this but her actions sparked international coverage. International coverage that is once again sparking actions across the world. You cannot turn around and ignore this. Your lack of awareness speaks to the lack of action, maybe even laziness. To pretend that what is happening to the people of Palestine, to the people of congo, to the people of sudan, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, is TOO FAR to understand? Once you start unlearning and teaching yourself, it becomes a lie to yourself to be so unaware of the world.

I am encouraging anyone who has read this far to pick up this book, to read the words of the actions and power that lies within the Palestinian fight.

I took it upon myself to add all of the article links that came with the book into a word doc. You can see for yourself that this has been an ongoing issue, that this has been forced on the Palestinian people, and how closely related everything is. It’s our responsibility as people living to learn from them. There will be a separate post with the link, you can download it, dedicate some time to reading and have these links saved for future learning.

To ensure that Palestine will not be forgotten, it will one day be free, learning from their experiences puts us just a little closer to feeling humanity (No?)

Day feels: … my heart crushing

in

I am tired but my exhaustion feels minuscule compared to how people in Palestine have felt for a long time. I am thinking of my own grandfather in these moments.

I have cried and mourned for Palestine for 150 days, i feel foolish by the lack of knowledge ive had till then, the lack of true history that our schools teach, and really the fact that i live in this fucked up country that continues to help fuel this.

I haven’t been able to feel much so ive been trying to put my energy into learning. My mother was born in El Salvador, half of her dna is levant, her father is Palestinian. My grandfather and his family whom she never got to meet, were displaced during the first nakba. Unfortunately, a lot of my ancestry has been based on word of mouth basically my whole life. Some things ive had to decipher on my own through historical timelines and research. It has taken me a long time to figure out these portions of who i am. Through this i grow and learn what my identity in this world is. Thinking of the impact of struggles that both my parents faced, makes it even harder to fully understand where and who i come from.

It is hard to piece together an identity that relies solely on yourself to gather. But if not I, then who, for my own sake and my future families sake. It’s important to keep our histories alive, to help teach myself, because learning about Palestine is also learning of my own identity. Our lineage will not be forgotten, and we will share the stories until and after we see a free Palestine.

My disconnect comes from not knowing names and faces of my lineage.

My connect comes from everything else, they are still my family whether i know their names or not, my extended family is everyone that originates from the lands i do. I have been learning more about my Palestinian heritage and in efforts to continue my own identity research i continue to learn and grow from my people.

I have made a few Palestinian dishes so far, like Musahkan, hummus, babaghanoush, Mutabbel, and ingredients like sumac onions that remain a staple in my home. I started compiling/reading books by more Palestinian and Arab authors, like “They Called me a Lioness” by Ahed Tamimi, “100 years war on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi, and “Freedom is a Constant Struggle- Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations for a movement” by Angela Davis, although not Palestinian, Angela Davis talks about the intersectionality of issues in the world and how closely relative everything is to each other.

I’m grateful for everyday that i get to learn more through food, music, writing, and documentation. But still, this is happening in live time, our histories are being unfolded right before our very eyes. The things WE are able to learn are not easily accessible to them.

The last 150 days have been infuriating to watch, and im angered more by the dehumanization of just watching. Truthfully, no one should need to see these images and these cries for help in order to show the world their suffering and to prove to anyone that they are humans under an unjustified bombardment. This is genocide, and it NEEDS TO END. What in this universe can justify this? Nothing should. As history is beginning to unveil itself and the reasons why these things are actually happening, i feel the world needs to be just as awake to see it change.

I have woken up everyday to check people ive found, journalists socials, to see if they are still alive. I don’t know why we live in a world that publicizes someone’s death without empathy. The people living in Palestine, in Gaza, are showing us and pleading for help. But why does this feel to others like it is beyond them or their understanding? There was a point that i thought it was beyond my understanding because that is what they teach you to think here in school. Ive lost count of how many times ive heard or even been taught to say “this conflict is just too complicated” or “im not educated enough on the subject”, by the school systems. The knowledge we all think we can’t obtain. This way they keep everyone blind here in America, but there is something heartless about thinking that you could never understand this pain.

What ive become aware of now is that, that information is not beyond our reach, there are people telling their stories to you. Through films, through poetry, literature, music, news…

My issue with these things becoming so accessible to us is the lack of empathy it can come with. Social media bombards you with things, so its easy to post a body of a child or a crying father who went out to find food for his family and has just come home to them under rubble, and then go on with your day, posting the sun or the expensive food you’re eating. The accessibility to posting the reality of someone else’s life and also your personal life that isn’t affected by it feels like a distant strange— apocalyptic, cursory space some of us are living in. ALL I SEE IS THAT DISCONNECT AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM. And so, i refrain from posting anything on that platform as ive done for a while now, for the preservation of my own mental clarity. I myself dont see an appropriate balance. I am only grateful for who it allows me to find. And so i write and with this being a space i am trying to create for myself, i share my words.

In November i wrote in my journal

this genocide has gone on for over a month, i feel as though my family, family I don’t know is being stripped away from me. I feel selfish to think of my own struggles with identity and family when people are going and living though this.

I am disgusted to continue to write the same things months later.

Every day i write, the writing feels the same, i am filled with agonizing sadness.

But in moments of this feeling of never ending grief, allowing yourself the room to grow and help in whatever ways are accessible to you in boycotting this genocide and refusing to be complicit.

Below are some lists i’ve written down for myself, if you are reading this maybe they can benefit you as well.

Reading:

  • They Called Me a Lioness by Ahed Tamimi (current read)

  • Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela davis

  • The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A history of settler colonialism and resistance 1917-2017 By Rashid Khalidi

  • 19 varieties of gazelle: poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye

  • Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Cooking:

Made-

  • Musakhan

  • Salata falahiyeh

  • Hummus

  • Shawarma

  • Baba ghanoush

  • Mutabbel

Want to make:

  • foul Mudammas

  • Jerusalem sesame bread (Ka’ak al Quds)

  • Taboon flatbread

  • Maqlubeh

  • Qidreh

  • Rumanniyya

Listen to:

  • elyanna

  • Lana lubany

  • Nehmasis

  • Saint levant

Palestinian makers:

Canaan Palestine- harvests olive oil from 3000+ year old trees, Canaan works with over 1,000 artisan family farms spanned across 43 different villages. Harvesting olive oil from your land is an act of resistance. It is centuries old traditions that cannot be taken from the Palestinian people.

Nol Collective- handmade garments produced by family owned businesses, artisans, and woman’s coops from Jerusalem to Gaza, Ramallah, and Bethlehem.

Rose Los Angeles for Olive Odyssey- thankfully, my partner snagged a chocolate bar, 100% of the purchase goes to Olive Odyssey to distribute directly and support farmers in Palestine.

Inaash Tatreez Association- they work with woman in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon (Not so fun fact but important to know: Currently Lebanon hosts close to 450,000 Palestinian refugees in 12 camps.)

January R.E.P.O.R.T

in

Two weeks into February but this is another way to keep myself just a bit more organized, so my brain doesn’t feel so cluttered. I thought this little concept ive been seeing online was nice, i decided to take the general concept of it and personalize it.

Important: I recommend reading up on the “conflict” how it started, who started it, Palestinians deserve land back and an end to this occupation.

Ahed Tamimi is a great place to start to find insight on the occupation from a 17 year old and her families personal history.

June & July Journal

in

June & July

I finished A Very Easy Death by Simon De Beuvoir. Its a fast read that took me a long time to want to pick up. I have grown up taught to except death as it comes. Within my family there are health conditions that have seen better days in the recent years and its not an easy thing to experience. So you could imagine picking up a book about the last few days of the authors mothers life was something I was a bit uncertain I could handle. But I got through it and it was a beautiful telling of pain and comfort in family that spoke directly to me.

For my birthday I got myself Ed Templeton’s 87 Portraits, from the Arcana bookstore. I missed the day he had a book signing but luckily they had some more shipped in.

My sweet sweet Sol sent me a card game for my birthday, I haven’t played it with friends yet but it looks exciting!

Plants pictured: A pothos plant I grew from just the nodes of my moms 40 year old pothos! A pink syngonium, and a new Pothos N’ joy I got from leimert park.

Many many beach days, as many beach days as I can get in a week! This is something very very new to me and I plan on writing a bit more about it but being at the beach in a bathing suit, just loving myself and not hating my existence in this vessel is something i’ve never experienced until this year. Ive struggled with body dymporphia my entire life, from outside perceptions of me that have distorted how I see my body. Its a beautiful thing to feel more comfortable than I ever have.

I had a glaze day at the studio, got some pieces out of the final kiln and built this nomster planter!

and last but certainly not least, I rode a bike for the very first time in my adult life, invigorating to say the least. Also, terrifying but I felt like my childhood traumas were healing.

call me Leeza

in

Cue Diana Ross- Im Coming Out

Hi my name is Leeza, Im 25 years old. Ive never come out or felt like I had to about my sexuality or gender, I am ever evolving and never felt like it required an explanation (quite frankly I still don't) I am free, I am agender... Ive been labeling myself under non binary for the last 4 years I think to make it easier on myself to deal with it and others but the truth is I've never felt like the gender binary existed in me. I am pansexual, I am sexually attracted to whoever the fuck I want that reciprocates what I do. I find love in everything and everyone that gives me time to get to know them and vice versa. I don’t care about your perception of me, my self is fluid. Call me Leeza, azeel, king, sir, sis, queen, they, them. It is as fluid to me as everything else. We are all our own balance of our feminine and masculine energies. Respect how people identify themselves, respect everyone, and firstly respect yourself..

I have felt like my gender expression has always evolved, but my identity has never revolved around my gender. I have always felt the need to express myself through whatever I had access to. My identity has always been about my expression and my experience, not forced societal concepts on what and who I should be.

We aren't meant to fit into labels and boxes made up of others perceptions. The only perception of you that matters is your own.

My sexuality is fluid, my gender is unimportant to me and therefore should be to you as well. Do not sexualize me, only I can do that. It really doesn’t make sense to judge… just cause I got big titties doesn’t mean anything other than it is a fact I got big titties inherited from the moms and that’s that ok just cause I wear a tank with no bra doesn’t mean I want to be perceived for your own twisted version of me.. y’all try wearing a bra for no reason but to make others more comfortable!

Basically, let’s just stop perceiving okay? don’t perceive me. I and you and we do not exist and yet we are all here together, let’s not perceive each other but love instead xx been missing so much love and lovers in my life but I have been filling it with my own and finding new and beautiful things to learn from and love. Watching my plants grow, vacuuming every corner of my room daily, remembering to write down my thoughts, reminding myself that it is okay to be where I am and who I am at this present time.. It is okay to love yourself at every stage in your life.