Dear Alice

I write to you because you know words, and because today, it is only through written words that I am capable of expressing my state of being. I have in the past year come to the realization that life is easy to waste, and that our economic systems have made it easy for us to lose touch with life, leading us to a make believe gratification that both Munir Fasheh and Fadi Ghandour so eloquently spoke about at TEDxRamallah. I write these words from Beirut, as if completing a cycle from the day I started deeply delving into TEDxRamallah, into the possibility of a Palestinian story coming to surface. Today, I find that any return to a seeming normality – a job, a salary, a weekend – would but be a ripping off of the roots that are now too tangled in the essence of humanity that grew from my first encounter with Steve Sosebee about three years ago, from my first exposure to Palestinian children at Burj El Barajne refugee camp in 2003, of my first and only encounter with Khalil, who had come to Dubai through the PCRF to get prosthetics for both legs – knees down – that he’d lost in an Israeli raid on Gaza early 2009, to the knowledge of Palestine, of a house whose front patio, kitchen and living space had been occupied by young Israelis taking turn in ‘occupying the space’ to make sure it is not left empty, guarding it from the possibility of losing it back to its rightful owners who continued their semi life in their shrunken space.

I write to you Alice because you are of a different people, of a different generation, and still you take it upon yourself to step on that Freedom Flotilla, just like many have done before you and many will this time and times to come till freedom is attained. You, Adam Shapiro, Huwaida Arraf, Amal Shahabi and others have shaken me to the roots, and Mark Gonzales speaks of something way up there. I have learned countless things from TEDxRamallah, from growing into that 16 April memorable day, and I continue to learn, and continue to touch, if only from far, what restlessness may mean, but more than that, I long for rootedness, something I had come to know through the Lebanese, and found even more profound in Palestinians. I am neither this nor that and I have grown to be both. I would like to believe, that the humor that Suad Amiry so convincingly projected to the world, can infiltrate into my soul, and that I will, with my knowledge of all that ‘makes no sense’ in this world, still be able to find peace in my heart, while continuing to touch humanity from a close distance.

I write these words after having read your article “Joining the Freedom Flotilla II To Gaza, Aboard The Audacity of Hope” and I wish you a safe trip, and that those of us who are still weighed down by fear be freed so that we may stand by our beliefs not only in thought, but also in action.

I thank you for standing by your deeply rooted beliefs of humanity, ‘keeping the candle lit’ as Laila Atshan would see fit to describe what you are set to take part in. And to Gaza, please deliver a salam (peace).