You can't go home again.

When your whole life is a repetition of the same goddamn feeling, again and again.

My dearest comrades,

It’s rare I feel like I don’t have words, but the last week and a half I haven’t had words: at least, not articulate ones.

Or maybe it’s just that I have so many words, just dozens and dozens of pages caught up in me, swirling around my head, and they storm around me, just out of reach. Maybe it’s that I can’t find the thread within them to pull on and start unspooling the rest.

So instead I’ve spent a lot of time on Instagram amassing resources and trying to amplify the voices of the Palestinians who are begging and pleading for us to not look away (I’ve also amassed a bit of resources list at the bottom of this email, to stand in for my own voice because I can’t seem to find it). I am trying, in my own small way, to make just a few more people not look away. I am trying to make birthworkers understand that reproductive justice extends to Palestine, that there is no birth liberation in a world where genocide is allowed to proceed unchecked. I am trying, or I feel obliged to try — as someone who went to my first Palestinian solidarity event when I was 16 years old, as someone who wrote a whole ass dissertation on Black and “Arab” solidarity — to share some of what I know with people who, bewilderingly, seem to have no more understanding of 76 years of colonization and apartheid than my classmates in middle school did in 1993. I am transported to that 8th grade classroom, again and again these days, to the same goddamn orientalist headlines we were given to read as “objective reporting,” and the same “why don’t the terrorists just want peace?” essays we were groomed to write, to the same flush rising up my cheeks and pit in my stomach. Then, at 13, I didn’t have the words or a depth of knowledge to disagree with people. Then, I only had what little I’d heard my Pakistani fathers and uncles talking about, the people that my classmates teased me were “terrorists” on the playground and the people my Zionist teacher would deem too “biased” a source compared to the NY Post headlines she brought in. Then, I had fear and shame.

Now, I don’t have fear and shame. Now, I have a depth of knowledge and confidence in that knowledge, and decades of being othered has left me proud more than anything else. Who wouldn’t want to be other to a sick society? But that flush is still here, and I feel it creep up my face while the pit in my stomach grows deeper, because my whole body has been knit together with those flushes. I became who I am with the scald of growing up inherently suspect. I became who I am with the burn of knowing, deep down, that many of the people around me would easily dehumanize me and others like me if they felt their supremacy threatened for even a moment.

These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about a piece I wrote in July of 2010, when I was just thirty years old and two months postpartum with Ilan, my second child. I wrote it in the wake of a suicide bombing that struck my ancestral masjid in Lahore, Pakistan that month. I want to be clear here: my relationship to Pakistan, my fatherland, is nothing like the narrative of many dispossessed Palestinians. I can go home again, in a way many Palestinians can not. But as a Muslim growing up in the United States, and as someone whose tax dollars fund so. much. suffering everywhere I look, the feelings I felt when I wrote this piece have returned to me, suffocating me again and again and again over the years in an endless loop. I wish I had new words. I wish I didn’t feel these same goddman feelings, as fresh and as raw as I did when I first wrote these words, year after year. I wish these words could have evolved into something better, something more hopeful.

I wish.

And I wish you to know, that if you are stuck in your own version of these words, if you can feel same feelings in your belly and in your chest, that I see you, and that we are together, that we are not alone, even when we most feel like it. And I wish you to know that I will not stop hoping, ever, that we will prevail.

A free Palestine in our lifetime.

With love and solidarity,

Robina

This 1979 piece by Helmi Eltouni reads (right to left, top to bottom, frame-by-frame): “She / She is as proud as the mountain / She is as deep as the ocean / She is as vigilant as the moon / She is as warm as the sun / She is as generous as the clouds / She is as fertile as the earth/ She loves all that grows / And I am a tender plant / She is my mother / She is my homeland... / Palestine.”

---

July 2nd, 2010

What do you do when you find out that the neighborhood you spent a good portion of your childhood in has been attacked by a suicide bomber? Specifically, the mosque that is the center, the heart, of that neighborhood. More specifically, the mosque your family has been the caretakers for the last, oh, few centuries (at least, until the government took over official caretaking duties); the one where your great-great-great (x28 generations back) grandfather is buried? Even more specifically, the mosque where many impoverished, unhoused people more or less live because there is 24-7 charity going on there, people spooning up dal from enormous dekhs, folding it into roti. What do you do?

You wait for your son to wake up from his nap so you can nurse him. You thoughtlessly eat a protein bar. You do what you'd do anyway, what you might do on any given day, but this time listless, wandering to your computer, googling "Data Darbar" and "Bomb" over and over until finally the BBC comes up with a four-line breaking new story. You keep googling, over and over again, until something with one more sentence comes up, on Associated Press. You look, numb, when an NPR story about it pops up on the lower right of your computer screen, courtesy of twitter. You read the comments, all of which say stuff like, "It is getting to the point that I don't care anymore. I just see it as terrorists blowing up other terrorists. As long as there is Islam, there will be terrorists." and "Religion of Peace strikes again."

You don't point out to the people leaving these comments that most of the people at that mosque were there because they didn't have anyplace else to go, or because they were trying to do a good deed, or because they wanted to send their prayers out into the universe, or simply because they were taking a walk, feeling the cool marble on their feet after a scorching day. You don't point out that this is not the kind of Islam most of those people believe in. You don't point out that most of those people are no more political than the average American, which is to say not at all; that most of them are just doing the best they can to eat and live and love their families; that most of them hate and do not understand this needless violence any more than we do; that most of them live their lives wanting to be left alone, to not be bothered by such things. That they would rather, instead, savor their cold bottle of Coca Cola, be warmed by the way their kid's nose crinkles up when he smiles, laugh over a bad movie with a friend. You don't point this out because you know it's pointless: the people in that mosque have become too unreal, too inhuman to be grieved. You don't point out that the three outliers of the scene, the three people who aren't just like everyone else, are people these privileged internet commenters have essentially funded, for all the gas they pump into their SUVs; that it's their money that goes to supporting the building of madrassas that exploit poor families who can't afford good schools. That it's those madrassas that indoctrinate children and spread hate. You don't say this. There is no point in thinking about SUVs. It will only make you crazy and half the people who own SUVs are good people anyway, people who are doing the best they can to eat and live and enjoy their kid's crinkly nose and a bad movie too.

Your son wakes up. You nurse him. You go for a run. You run and run, as fast as you can, turning up the music as loudly as it will go, hurting your ears, as though it will stop you from thinking. As though if the music is loud enough it will down out that shrill voice, that one caught just under your throat and over your heart, the one that sings out with despair that you will never see your home again, that your children will never see it, that there is no way out of this quicksand and that your fatherland will never be safe in your lifetime. You run faster, hoping that if you just run fast enough maybe you will pass out, not have to think about it. Maybe you will run so hard you will catapult yourself into an unconscious heap. At the same time, you know that, later, your hips, still soft, still over-flexible from the loosening your body did to push out your baby exactly two months ago, will be complaining, that they will ache and feel restless in a way that will keep you from falling asleep easily, and you think: Good.

You run home. You run past the 2 million dollar houses. You bite your lip, hold your breath, so as not to cry. You refuse to look people in the eye as you pass them, or smile, like you usually do, because you know you might break down, looking at these strangers who make more in a day than most of the world makes in a year, in a lifetime. You don't hate them, but at this moment you hate yourself, and you know that if you look at them you will have to admit it.

Because you let yourself forget, even for a moment. You let yourself forget that when you were watching "True Blood" on your XBOX 360, enjoying your quiet house while your kids slept in air conditioning, that there were people with no homes and no food sleeping on that marble where you also padded around as a child, with your dad; where you sat and handed out food with your bewildered, overwhelmed, hugely tall and white husband, as an adult. You let yourself forget that it was quite possible that while you were enjoying your daughter's smiles at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, people were getting blown up. You forgot when you were spending beautiful summer afternoons enjoying the raspberries in your yard with friends, that people in Haiti were drinking dirty water from the street, and you forgot that when you sang your daughter to sleep a Congolese soldier was raping a child. You forgot when you were giving birth at home that you'd be more likely to die in childbirth, even in the United States, if you were a Black woman. You forget that you literally pay for all this suffering, no matter how hard you try not to, because you live where you do.

You know you can't be blamed from not focusing on this on every minute of every day. You know that is no way to live a life. Because that would leave you hyperventilating, suffocating, feeling as though the weight of those giant brownstones and XBOX 360s and raspberries were crushing you, literally impeding your lungs from breathing. It would leave you a sad, empty shell of a person with no ability to do the one thing that does feel productive - to love other people. You know you do the best you can. You also know that the best you can do is not enough.

You walk and you follow the trail of money, follow the bricks that build the system, not just in Pakistan but every where. You are in an endless loop. You cannot find a way out. You get that feeling again, the suffocated one right below your throat and right above your heart. You shift gears. You have the same conversation you have with yourself every other day: There is no way out of the system, but what can you do to make it better? Do you stay where you are, continue doing the work you do, the demoralizing work of educating public college students, hoping one will leave your classroom caring about more than affording the newest iPhone? Do you move to Pakistan, do the work there? What is the most meaningful work? Where is the least evil place to live? doyoudoyoudoyoudoyoudoyou....

You hate that so many of your joys are bought by other's suffering. You come home and you smell your infant's head, and watch your toddler giggle. You cling to those joys, because you know that they are everywhere, that because they are intangible, others have them. The sweetness, the unsullied love you feel when he looks up, mid-nursing, and smiles. The surprised giggles that erupts out of your mouth when your daughter points to a bug on a raspberry leaf and says, “hose bugs are trying to eat all our raspberries” and then seriously continues, “but I don't think they are trying to kill us." You drink these things up, you soak them in, you feel them with all your might. You wish all of your joy could be so pure.

---

This 1980 image, and the one above, courtesy of the Palestinian Posters Project Archive, an incredible resource.

Here are some resources I’ve found helpful or moving, in the past as well as recently. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I’m rejecting the White Supremacy characteristic of perfectionism (and a need to prove authority) and just putting this little smattering of liberatory thought out there. I hope you find it useful or inspiring, and I’d love if, in comments you’d build this list further.

Joe Sacco’s Palestine: I taught this book in many a college classroom. It’s a graphic novel written by an American and is an exceptionally accessible primer to questioning the narrative we’ve been taught about Israel / Palestine as people who live in the imperialist West.

One Palestine, Complete: this is a dense history but it will absolutely radicalize you. I’m not seeing it on many reading lists these days, probably because it’s old, but it’s definitely worth a read if you want to understand how British colonialism is literally the greatest evil to ever scourge our planet. Segev is Israeli, and says point blank: “Once the Zionist Movement came to Palestine with the intention of creating an independent state with a Jewish majority, war (that is, between Jews and Arabs) was inevitable.”

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement: it’s Angela Davis. Enough said.

The Question of Palestine: A classic. I’m basically a Said fangirl.

Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945: if you want to understand how media has framed our understanding of Muslim/Arab communities and done the work of manufacturing our consent for Western imperialism, pick up this book. It’s brilliant, even as it talks about very old movies!

Here is a reading list of pro-Palestinian liberation speeches, letters, and poems written by the Black female authors you know and love — Lorde, Morrison, Davis, June Jordan, and more.

Let this Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care is a gorgeous, brilliant book that isn’t exactly about Palestine but isn’t not about Palestine (and how we survive in this garbage fire of a world) either. In this article, Mariame Kamba quotes herself so you can get a taste.

Ijeouma Oluo’s substack piece A Letter to the Friendships I’ve Lost and Will Lose resonated deeply and might provide you with some good talking points in response to vapid, both sides rhetoric (or active Zionist arguments that Hamas is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinian people).

Fariha Roisin was able to what I haven’t been able to do, which is sit down and write an excellent summation of what she’s learned in decades of Palestinian Liberation Activism. This is a great article with lots of links offered if you want to go deeper.

This piece by Shaira Chaer is one of the few meaningful things I have read, other than my own ramblings on Instagram stories (which are dubiously meaningful perhaps), about the intersections of reproductive justice and Palestine.

My husband is a big fan of the Chapo Traphouse podcast, and this episode left him and our son Illy feeling some sliver of hope among all the despair. As I listen to it (in fits and starts, first as I make dinner and now as I make breakfast) it’s doing the same for me.

👊🏽A last note: right now it’s become apparent to me that midwives who understand the political nature and context of birthwork are needed more than ever. If you’re a student midwife or a midwife seeking a community committed to decolonial, anti-oppressive lenses and practice, please sign up for the waitlist for Tideshifts: A Midwifery Mentorship Collective. Applications open later this month and the program runs for a full year, beginning with an introductory intention setting on the winter solstice. I’m super excited to cultivate this community and hope you’ll consider joining me!👊🏽