From a Palestinian Girl to an American Girl

And while you were celebrating the feast of peace, singing hymns,
we here were celebrating the funerals of the victims among our dead.

My friend,

I was accustomed to writing to you at night, in its calm and stillness, in its magic and splendor... That was so, and the days passed, and your news ceased to reach me, until today there came from you something that stirred my feelings and roused them... And here I am at night, withdrawing alone to answer your letter. So accept me as bold, bear with me as frank, and call me truthful, "Margarita"...

My words to you tonight are inspired by the night... They come from the wellspring of the heart and the voice of conscience... The night is not calm as it used to be, for the whine of bullets rises in a mournful, sorrowful air... The pen trembles in my fingers this very moment, and the sound of guns near the shore warns of danger, grave danger... No stillness and no rest... no day and no night... no sleep and no quiet... Our life is an island of pains and fears.

You ask me about my feelings toward America after partition was declared, and you fear that I will break off my relationship with you because you are American, and you want me to be frank in answering. So listen, Margarita:

America issued its verdict, and it was unjust — and no wonder, for conscience fell silent within her, and she was nothing but a plaything in the hands of interest... As for those peoples who supported partition, they were nothing but prey to the senses of sight and hearing... The ring of the dollar put out their eyes, and they wandered in the darknesses of greed and selfishness... The ring of the dollar rose loud in their ears and silenced within them the call of conscience...

You say that America is in a merry bustle celebrating Christmas... that the little ones are singing hymns of peace... and the holiday trees glitter under the light of the candles, and you want me to describe to you our state here in Jaffa during the holiday... For God's sake, what am I to tell you? And if I spoke, would speaking do any good???

The holiday came and the holiday passed as if it were a phantom hurrying by, and we never felt its coming at all...

This is the bitter truth... And while you were celebrating, singing hymns of peace, we were celebrating the funerals of the victims of American greed... And while the trees glittered under the light of the candles, the fragments of innocent, pure bodies glittered under the light of the lamps searching for what remained of those bodies... And while your voices rose in laughter and song, our voices rose in weeping and wailing... And while you went to the shops to buy holiday gifts, we went to the hospitals to bind up wounds and to relieve the distressed and the wretched... And while you counted the glasses, drunk on the rapture of wine, we counted the corpses of martyrs, drunk on the rapture of blood — and what a distance between the drunkenness of wine and of blood...

And so, Margarita, you were in one valley and we were still in another. As for your question about my feelings toward you yourself, and your fear that I will break off my relationship with you because you are American, hear me answer you...

I befriended you the day I knew you to love truthfulness, to hold right sacred, and to seek justice. I befriended you, and after I had tested you, and bade you farewell on 7/31/1947, the day the Oslo conference ended, and after I had pledged you fidelity, I shall remain faithful to my pledge with you — and keeping pledges is among the traits of the Arabs...

Now that I have said much, I must stop at this point, hoping to hear an answer from you as soon as possible. And I shall await your answers to my questions, which will have reached you by now. And be, as you have always been, frank and truthful...

I may have wearied you with my boldness, but I have known you to favor frankness, and so I have come to you truthful, and I have uttered nothing but what thousands of Arab women in my city of Jaffa utter...