The Tiny Journalist Read online

  THE

  Tiny Journalist

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  THE

  Tiny Journalist

  POEMS

  American Poets Continuum Series, No. 170

  BOA Editions, Ltd. Rochester, NY 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Shihab Nye

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition

  19 20 21 22 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail [email protected].

  Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 124 for special individual acknowledgments.

  Cover Design: Sandy Knight

  Cover Art: “House with Two Gardens” by Christina Brinkman

  Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

  BOA Logo: Mirko

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Nye, Naomi Shihab, author.

  Title: The tiny journalist : poems / Naomi Shihab Nye.

  Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., [2019] | Series: American poets continuum series, ; no. 170 | Includes index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018050933 (print) | LCCN 2018055328 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683841 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683728 (hardcover : alk. paper) |

  ISBN 9781942683735 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—Women authors—21st century.

  Classification: LCC PS3564.Y44 (ebook) | LCC PS3564.Y44 A6 2019 (print) | DDC 811/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018050933

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  A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

  In memory

  May Mansoor Munn

  author of Where Do Dreams and Dreaming Go?

  A Palestinian Quaker in America

  And in honor of Janna Jihad Ayyad

  and her cousin Ahed Tamimi—

  all young people devoted to justice

  and sharing their voices.

  “We will never give up in the peace place,

  in the Holy Land, we’ll see the peace one day.”

  —Janna Jihad Ayyad

  “… I am particularly inspired by the people of Gaza

  who put all of us to shame with their resilience and steadfastness.”

  —Sani Meo, Publisher, This Week in Palestine

  “From presidents Truman to Trump, US administrations have never

  actually been ‘an honest broker’ of peace between Palestinians and

  Israelis, regardless of all the rhetoric and official positions.”

  —Mohamed Mohamed, Palestine Center Brief No. 320

  “Revived bitterness

  is unnecessary unless

  One is ignorant.”

  —Marianne Moore, American poet

  “Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.

  Apartheid means … separate, segregated roads and highways for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.

  Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.

  Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.”

  —Bradley Burston, Haaretz, 2015

  Author’s Note:

  My father’s Palestinian family, refugees from their Jerusalem home after 1948, lived in a village not far from Nabi Saleh village, where Janna Jihad Ayyad and her family live. I lived between Jerusalem and Ramallah as a teenager and witnessed many of the struggles firsthand, which have unfortunately only heightened and intensified in the succeeding years. It is important to clarify that these poems or sections thereof are not Janna’s actual words. They are “my” words, imagining Janna’s circumstances via her Facebook postings and my own personal and collective knowledge of the situation she was born into and lives with on a daily basis. So the texts presented here are a blending of stories—my father’s, Janna’s, my ongoing research, and my own personal experience living there and on many subsequent journeys. In the way of all poetry, hopefully it gets something true or right.

  Also:

  Since Palestinians are also Semites, being pro-justice

  for Palestinians is never an anti-Semitic position, no matter what anybody says.

  Contents

  I.

  Morning Song

  Moon over Gaza

  Exotic Animals, Book for Children

  Janna

  Separation Wall

  Dareen Said Resist

  In Northern Ireland They Called It “The Troubles”

  How Long?

  For Palestine

  Small People

  Women in Black

  And That Mysterious Word Holy

  Netanyahu

  Studying English

  Losing as Its Own Flower

  Pink

  Mothers Waiting for Their Sons

  “ISRAELIS LET BULLDOZERS GRIND TO HALT”

  Harvest

  Shadow

  Dead Sea

  Tattoo

  Sometimes There Is a Day

  Advice

  America Gives Israel Ten Million Dollars a Day

  Gratitude List

  It Was or It Wasn’t

  Gaza Is Not Far Away

  My Wisdom

  Each Day We Are Given So Many Gifts

  Jerusalem

  Missing It

  A Person in Northern Ireland

  38 Billion

  Better Vision

  The Space We’re In

  No Explosions

  II.

  Facebook Notes

  Mediterranean Blue

  To Netanyahu

  Pharmacy

  My Father, on Dialysis

  Blood on All Your Shirts

  My Immigrant Dad, On Voting

  You Are Your Own State Department

  Elementary

  On the Old Back Canal Road by the International Hotel, Guangzhou

  Gray Road North from Shenzhen

  Stun

  All I Can Do

  In Some Countries

  Seeing His Face

  Wales

  Peace Talks

  Freedom of Speech (What the head-of-school told me)

  Jerusalem’s Smile

  On the Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King

  False Alarm Hawai‘i

  A Palestinian Might Say

  Alien Rescue

  The Sweeper

  Arab Festival T-shirt

  One Small Sack in Syria

  Positivism

 
Regret

  Salvation

  The Old Journalist Talks to Janna

  Grandfathers Say

  The Old Journalist Writes …

  Friend

  Happy Birthday

  Stay Afloat

  To Sam Maloof’s Armchair

  Unforgettable

  Rumor Mill

  Patience Conversations

  Living

  Tiny Journalist Blues

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Colophon

  I.

  Morning Song

  For Janna

  The tiny journalist

  will tell us what she sees.

  Document the moves, the dust,

  soldiers blocking the road.

  Yes, she knows how to take a picture

  with her phone. Holds it high

  like a balloon. Yes, she would

  prefer to dance and play,

  would prefer the world

  to be pink. It is her job to say

  what she sees, what is happening.

  From her vantage point everything

  is huge—but don’t look down on her.

  She’s bigger than you are.

  If you stomp her garden

  each leaf expands its view.

  Don’t hide what you do.

  She sees you at 2 a.m. adjusting your

  impenetrable vest.

  What could she have

  that you want? Her treasures,

  the shiny buttons her grandmother loved.

  Her cousin, her uncle.

  There might have been a shirt …

  The tiny journalist notices

  action on far away roads

  farther even than the next village.

  She takes counsel from bugs so

  puffs of dust find her first.

  Could that be a friend?

  They pretended not to see us.

  They came at night with weapons.

  What was our crime? That we liked

  respect as they do? That we have pride?

  She stares through a hole in the fence,

  barricade of words and wire,

  feels the rising fire

  before anyone strikes a match.

  She has a better idea.

  Moon over Gaza

  I am lonely

  for my friends.

  They liked me,

  trusted my coming.

  I think they looked up at me

  more than other people do.

  I who have been staring down so long

  see no reason for the sorrows humans make.

  I dislike the scuffle of bombs blasting

  very much. It blocks my view.

  A landscape of grieving

  feels different afterwards.

  Different sheen from a simple desert,

  rubble of walls, silent children who once said

  my name like a prayer.

  Sometimes I am bigger than

  a golden plate,

  a giant coin,

  and everyone gasps.

  Maybe it is wrong

  that I am so calm.

  Exotic Animals, Book for Children

  Armadillo means

  “little armored one.”

  Some of us become this to survive

  in our own countries.

  I would like to see an armadillo

  crossing the road.

  Our armor is invisible,

  it polishes itself.

  We might have preferred to be

  a softer animal, wouldn’t you?

  With fur and delicate paws,

  like an African Striped Grass Mouse,

  also known as Zebra Mouse.

  Janna

  At 7, making videos.

  At 10, raising the truth flag.

  At 11, raising it higher,

  traveling to South Africa,

  keffiyah knotted on shoulders,

  interviews in airports.

  Please, could you tell us …

  You know gazing into a camera

  can be a bridge, so you stare

  without blinking.

  People drift to the sides of the film,

  don’t want to be noticed,

  put on the spot.

  You know the spot is the only thing

  that matters.

  What else? Long days,

  tired trousers pinned

  on roof lines,

  nothing good expected.

  It’s right in front of me,

  I didn’t go looking for it.

  We’re living in the middle of trouble.

  No reason not to say it straight.

  They do not consider us equal.

  They blame us for everything,

  forgetting what they took,

  how they took it.

  We are made of bone and flesh and story

  but they poke their big guns

  into our faces

  and our front doors

  and our living rooms

  as if we are vapor.

  Why can’t they see

  how beautiful we are?

  The saddest part?

  We all could have had

  twice as many friends.

  Separation Wall

  When the milk is sour,

  it separates.

  The next time you stop speaking,

  ask yourself why you were born.

  They say they are scared of us.

  The nuclear bomb is scared of the cucumber.

  When my mother asks me to slice cucumbers,

  I feel like a normal person with fantastic dilemmas:

  Do I make rounds or sticks? Shall I trim the seeds?

  I ask my grandmother if there was ever a time

  she felt like a normal person every day,

  not in danger, and she thinks for as long

  as it takes a sun to set and says, Yes.

  I always feel like a normal person.

  They just don’t see me as one.

  We would like the babies not to find out about

  the failures waiting for them. I would like

  them to believe on the other side of the wall

  is a circus that just hasn’t opened yet. Our friends,

  learning how to juggle, to walk on tall poles.

  Dareen Said Resist

  And went to jail.

  We were asking, What?

  You beat us with butts of guns

  for years,

  tear-gas our grandmas,

  and you can’t take

  Resist?

  In Northern Ireland They Called It “The Troubles”

  What do we call it?

  The very endless nightmare?

  The toothache of tragedy?

  I call it the life no one would choose.

  To be always on guard,

  never secure,

  jumping when a skillet drops.

  I watch the babies finger their

  cups and spoons and think

  they don’t know yet.

  They don’t know how empty

  the cup of hope can feel.

  Here in the land of tea and coffee

  offered on round trays a million times

  a day, still a thirst so great

  you could die every night, longing

  for a better life.

  How Long?

  The tiny journalist

  is growing taller very quickly.

  She’s adding breadth, depth,

  to every conversation,

  asking different questions, not just

  Who What When Where Why?

  but How long? How can it be?

  What makes this seem right to you?

  Even when she isn’t present,

  she might be taping from the trees.

  What happened to you in the twentieth century?

  Remember? We never forgot about it. You did.

  Rounded up at gunpoint,
our people

  brutally beaten, pummeled in prisons,

  massacred for a rumor of stones.

  Once there was a stuffed squash

  who didn’t wish to be eaten.

  Kousa habibti, pine nuts for eyes.

  I dreamed about her when I was five.

  She helped me start my mission.

  For Palestine

  In memory, Fr. Gerry Reynolds of Belfast, “Let us pray for Palestine”

  How lonely the word PEACE is becoming.

  Missing her small house under the olive trees.

  The grandmothers carried her in a bucket when

  they did their watering.

  She waited for them in the sunrise,

  then fell back into reach. Whole lives unfolded.

  The uncles tucked her into suit coat pockets

  after buttoning white shirts for another day.

  Fathers, mothers, babies

  heard her whispering in clouds over Palestine,

  mingling softly, making a promise,

  sending her message to the ground.

  It wasn’t a secret.

  Things will calm down soon, she said.

  Hold your head up. Don’t forget.

  When Ahed went to prison, we shook

  our tired hands in the air and wept.

  Young girl dreaming of a better world!

  Don’t shoot her cousins, my cousins, our cousins.

  Wouldn’t you slap for that?

  It was only a slap.

  The word Peace a ticket elsewhere for some.

  People dreamed night and day of calmer lives.

  Maybe Peace would be their ticket back too.

  They never threw away that hope. Karmic wheel,

  great myth of fairness kept spinning …

  I dreamed of Ahed’s hair.

  When I was born, they say

  a peaceful breeze lilted the branches—

  my first lullaby. The temperature dropped.

  A voice pressed me forward,

  told me to speak.

  Being raised in a house of stories with garlic

  gave me courage.

  Everything began, Far, far away. Long, long ago.

  And everything held us close.

  Is this your story, or mine?

  Olive oil lives in a dented can with a long spout.

  What happens to Peace when people fight?

  (She hides her face.)

  What does she dream of?

  (Better people.)

  Does she ever give up?