On The Ability To Catch One's Breath..

This life is weird..

The demolition of Gaza has taken a “pause”. Whatever that word means to politicians. I know in its context of war, it is one of the most confusing words ever to hear someone mention.

I went on a run earlier this week, and it coincided with the first day of that pause. I felt like a huge weight was off my chest. In my head, I was also thinking of what that pause meant to the people in Gaza. And the more I thought about it, the more I became cognizant of the privilege, and the more I felt the gratitude towards the life I’m living. As the days went by, the images started appearing about what this pause meant for the Gazans.

The thought of providing some dignity to the dead, and to bury the loved ones. I’ve seen videos of people showing gratitude that they were able to bury family members after some time of them passing. In the Muslim faith it is important that you don’t delay the burial of your deceased, so people being able to do so was “something to be grateful for” according to the unbelievable people of Gaza.

My first thought that comes after seeing this is: “What kind of inhumanity exists in a system of oppression makes burying the dead something to show gratitude for?”

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Gratitude.

I (like many people in the world) was taken aback by how the people of Gaza were able to display gratitude given the situation they were in. And like all of us who were witnessing this from a far, we are in disbelief that this level of faith exists (you can call it mindset if you don’t belong to a theological system of belief). It made us feel guilty, and it made us reconsider a lot of our lives.

This level of conviction gave us a jolt back into the reality of things, and made us recalibrate our lives, or at least how we think of them.

- My brother and teacher

Abdul-Malik Merchant

talked about it from his scholarly religious and social lens, in his conversation with his mother.

- I read glimpses of this through

Antonia Malchik

wonderful writing and her experience of ‘abundance’.

-

Samantha Rose McRae

mentioned this in her personal questions about the privilege of gratitude.

I am grateful to the Palestinian people. I genuinely feel indebted to them, because they teach me a lot. They taught me in the past, and I became friends and family with many of them, and I learn from them as strangers about myself, my community, my moral compass, and the world at large. They have unwillingly compelled me to read more, and learn about their history, their society, and their cause from different angles.

I am grateful to them, because in my position of privilege and security, I am blessed to have met new friends that share this connection towards supporting them.

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Guilt.

As Samantha mentions in her essay:

“Making a practice of gratitude makes me feel silly when others are facing the unimaginable.”

The whole notion of being able to write about this experience from a far, is in itself a privileged action. Having the space and time to think of these ideas is an act worthy of gratitude. Electricity, coffee, money, tables, food, sight, hands to type, clarity of mind; all these are privileges worthy of showing gratitude for. But these notions also seep us into the guilt of being unworthy, or lucky to an unfair extent. And I’m learning to applying the framework of trusting The Divine, in that Justice, will be served, and that my “unfair advantage” in this regard is a sort of test of character to show that I am able to support uphold Justice, even by using my voice at least.

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A post shared by @ilmfeed

Watching this man outside his bombed house, when the other man filming asked him about his family, he responds in a way the subtitles doesn’t catch accurately. He says: “We’re in gratitude of a 1000 blessings, thank God”. This example (and many others), make me think: “How does this man think that he’s able to see the blessings that I will absolutely fail to see where I am now?”

I was contemplating this mixed feeling, coming to learn about ‘Survivor’s Guilt’.¹ Part of the thinking of guilt comes from the notion that suffering has always existed in the world, Why was I feeling this one specifically? I was pondering this question as someone who was always in contact with the Palestinian struggle and well informed on the situation. I was asking myself this as I was watching carnage unfold, while being VERY AWARE of the plate of food in front of me.

Having these questions while attempting to have a sense of normalcy of life was a conundrum that left me paralyzed, unproductive, and really stressed. On the other hand, it definitely compelled me to action: talking to people, participating in protests, and in some instances educating others.

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Respite

I heard this word in some news report and I was thinking about the use of the word. According to Merriam-Webster:

Respite is first known to have been used at the turn of the 14th century to refer to a delay or extension asked for or granted for a specific reason—to give someone time to deliberate on a proposal, for example. Such a respite offered an opportunity for the kind of consideration inherent in the word's etymology. Respite traces from the Latin term respectus (also the source of English's respect), which comes from respicere, a verb with both concrete and abstract meanings: "to turn around to look at" or "to regard." Within a few decades of its earliest known use, English speakers had granted respite the sense we use most often today—"a welcome break."

One of its definitions in the Cambridge Dictionary explicitly states: “a useful delay before something unpleasant happens.”

I’m writing this on the 7th day of ‘truce’, anxiously waiting on the news that might come on ‘extended truce’ or God forbid, the resumption of bombing of Gaza, the displacement of Palestinians, and the stealing of children & women’s lives in front of our eyes. At the current moment, 60% of homes are damaged in Gaza, leaving more than 1 million people, in a smaller enclave, with less resources, to be fetch for survival. The inhumanity is unprecedented.

The ‘respite’ that comes from freeing hostages, and releasing women and children held without charges for years, definitely is asymmetrical if we know that the zionist army that released around 300 women and children from the prisons in these exchanges of hostages, went on to arrest close to another 3,400 Palestinians in this month and half alone. That’s close to arresting a 100 people a day. It feels like they’re compensating every prisoner they release with more than 10 others. This impending punishment is unbearable to even read about.

It indeed feels like “before something unpleasant happens”.

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So, Catch your breath,

If you can.. Because if you can, then this is a blessing that requires gratitude..

I asked a friend in my newly formed running group how are you? Her response was: “What does that even mean? It feels weird to say I’m OK, but yeah..? ok?” but running is my way to catch a breath.

Malaka Gharib

wrote on NPR about how to protect your mental health. I take two important aspects:

• Keep things in perspective: be it religious, spiritual, intellectual, or otherwise. I know my faith plays an important role in making sense of this senseless situation. I know the Palestinian faith in Gaza is helping millions (and maybe billions) around the world and supporting them. This not only hits multiple points for me, but the belief that comes from ‘Undeniable Justice’ of The Divine, brings with it a sense of perspective that this suffering will not go unnoticed.

• Focus on routine: While this was really hard for me, I managed to maintain a semblance of one. Part of the routine is talking about it too.

I know I don’t want to go back to a situation, where I’m glued to a screen, anticipating by the hour the new numbers of lives lost, due to an unrelenting desire & thirst for a revenge even death cannot quench..

This life is indeed weird..

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Other things:

Part of the privilege that I live in, is the ability to stop and think of other things that don’t involve the question of death raining from the sky.

I saw this, and I stopped to take a photo.

1. If you want to dig deeper, Omar Suleiman, a prominent muslim scholar in the US, talks about this. It might get ‘too muslim’ at points, but I guess the lessons are universal. At the 16th minute is a good point to start.