Invitation: Tell Me How You Are

and other Gazan transformations of the heart

People are laying out children’s shoes in public squares around the world to protest the murder of 15,000 children in Gaza

The guy who pumps gas at the station where I fill up has a thing for my car. He’s from the Yucatan in Mexico and is in his 50s. His English is so-so.

He always beams at me when I pull up to the pump and remarks “new car?” or “nice car! Then he pats the rear flank of my Kia as if it were a horse or a prized cow. Sometimes he steps back for a moment to take in the scene, smile at me, and nod approvingly.

I feel connected to him. He has a low-paying job, but he’s constitutionally cheerful, as I am. And despite whatever he’s been through or has to put up with, it’s evident that he enjoys being of service.

The last time he pumped my gas, I felt a strong urge to ask him about his family and if everyone was okay. When he handed me back my credit card, I had to stop myself from squeezing his hand. A feeling welled up of both heartbreak and the longing to offer a deeper connection. This is because of Gaza.

Added dimensions

I’ve always been gregarious and interested in other people’s lives. But lately, other people seem to have more dimension, a more magnetizing presence.

It’s hard to describe, but even the physicality of others, their shapes, colors, and textures, seem to pop more.

And I find myself wanting to take more time. Listen more deeply. Reach out to touch.

I know this is due to having spent the past eight months watching a live-streamed genocide.

But mostly it’s a result of having witnessed Palestinian people experiencing the genocide.

Seeing . . .

how tenderly the people of Gaza care for their children and the children of strangers,

the profound respect with which they handle the bodies, and even the shredded remains of their dead,

how they tend to others while themselves in extremities of pain, grief, hunger, and thirst,

how under constant siege, they pick up the bombed scraps of their lives to construct makeshift kitchens, generators, gardens, tea parties, and kites,

the changing textures of their exhaustion and rage and grief, devotion and persistence, hopelessness and hope,

and their acts of resistance embodied in art, music, dance, cooking, swimming, prayer, and play.

Heart and bones

Beyond my capacity to describe, I am feeling in my heart and bones the global impact of the courage and vulnerability with which the people of Gaza are addressing us.

If you follow events on the ground in Gaza and in the diaspora, you know that Palestinians have been intentionally and intelligently educating the rest of us, connecting with us, and asking for help, minute-by-minute, in real time.

The Palestinian resistance has always been an ally and an educator to other resistance movements around the world. But in the midst of this phase of the occupation, we are being spoken to and responded to by Palestinian activists, doctors, lawyers, artists, poets, historians, displaced and injured children, parents, teachers, shopkeepers, farmers, journalists, scholars, ambulance drivers, and more.

Astoundingly, the growing, global liberation movement is in constant conversation with a wide spectrum of Palestinian people, people who, after nearly a hundred years of experiencing tyranny and resisting tyranny, are lighting the way for us all.

Invitation

Whether you’ve been engaged and witnessing this genocide or not, it is changing each of us. Palestine has become a mirror of how we actually are and who we want and do not want to be.

Palestine has become the beating heart of the desire to end the current world order: to stop the human destruction of people, animals, cultures, and our planet and to usher in an era ruled by compassion and mutual care, by creativity, collaboration, and equality.

So I invite you to share in the comments what you have learned and how you have changed and how you are. Listening. . .

with infinite love,
Shambhavi

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