Knowing the Earth

People say that in life, the closer you get to something the more you understand it. Whereas modernity has created a gap between that which helps people to mature well and with wisdom. It has dragged them into a quagmire of illusion. It has broken relations and called them by new individualistic names to make you forget the meaning and power of ahel (people in community). 

What’s happening now in the Gaza Strip is nothing more than the seeding of corruption to destroy the people, to kill them using all and any available means in front of the entire world, and to break them so that they never rise again, because rising will cost them more hate and murder. 

After we moved from the home to the tent, after we were displaced under threat of arms and bombardment from the north to the south, we spent a period at the hospital, and then a period in the camps, where we still are at present. During my time in the tent, I got to know the earth better. She introduced herself to me and gave me knowledge everytime my plans failed while doing something. When I was in Asdaa’ city, it was our first experience building a toilet well.  We didn’t dig the hole in the suitable manner for the sandy area. Its sands are called “Safia”, which needs other tools that help prevent the sand from falling in on itself, resulting in the loss of the hole and the toilet. This experience with the earth and working with it taught me that, and that it isn’t suitable soil for farming, but it is quite easy to dig holes in. Whereas, after we were displaced yet again to a new place, the soil changed, and the experience changed as well, teaching us new lessons that the earth provides. Clay earth is much more difficult to dig in, and is easier for plants to grow, meaning that the soil is full of tree roots, making it harder to dig, but the well doesn’t fall in on itself at all. It stays held together. However, the earth doesn’t drink the water easily nor quickly, so you need to make another well the longer you remain displaced there. 

Changing my place of sleep from a wooden bed raised off the ground to a mattress close to the ground made me get closer to the earth. It has also significantly lessened my fear of beings that crawl on the earth. Previously, I used to deal with insects, worms, roaches, and beetles through the medium of a shoe in order to hit them. Today I find them wading across my body, and there is no time to get rid of them except with my hand. My hands have become accustomed to its mud and its insects more than I could have imagined. I have lost the fear that was grown in me, that distance from the earth and modernization are progress. Whereas I have learned better that the nature of the earth is strength and wellbeing. She gifted me her knowledge each time she would present me with a new lesson. I always used to think about the people who lived in the Arabian Peninsula, and how they lived their lives with the earth and its hardships. But they were born only knowing the earth, whereas we are adapting and reacquainting ourselves better again after having become so distanced from her. Because the occupation has been pumping us full of myths about her, while he steals from her the most precious fruits. My reveries of the Arabian Peninsula eases the intensity of what I’m living, allowing me to learn from what I am in. And that we can transfer knowledge without the need for curriculums that kill the spirit of learning within us. We are now entering closer to a year without schooling, and what has happened to us without it? Nothing. We have not died, but our minds have returned to us. The main meaning that I have been able to make throughout this time is, “The closer you get to the earth, the more value of what you possess; the further you get from her, you lose it.”