we are not numbers

emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights

Stateless

Do I have the right to call you my land? They have taken you, added “less” and labeled me “stateless."
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Gaza is accessible only via tightly controlled, impersnal military checkpoints.

Do I have the right to call you my land?
My love under the Zionist’s’ thumb:

All I want is to touch your hand.
I am running to you but they’ve weakened my knees.
My sweet dream, why have they dressed you like a nightmare?
They have taken you, added “less” and labeled me “stateless,"
a man with no land,
no name for me on the world’s map.
At a checkpoint, I am invisible to them.
They don’t understand.
They don’t hear my grandma’s stories.
They don’t know the olive trees, their smell on my granddad’s hands.

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