Palestinian Prisoners Week
Good Morning,
Allow me to break through the spatial dimensions. I send you this letter from my cramped compartment, laced with the breath of those who are experiencing the hardship of real struggle. It has taken me a month to send this letter to you and mail it through the Red Cross, for we do not have the luxury of sending messages via e-mail or Facebook.
I’ve become three months older in this place, and have been trained to swallow my pride almost daily and force my imagination to shake off and forget the smell and scents of lands that for me do not exist. I can see you now, sitting comfortably on your sofa, next to you a fresh cup of Arabica coffee, prepared and served with love. Your children wake up with a yawn, fighting the need to prepare for school, college, and life. You may feel bored with this letter, standing next to the open window as the breeze blows in, remembering that you haven’t yet spoken with your mother, and so you grab the phone and say with a loud voice, “Hello, mother”.
You will finish reading this letter as I lay alone in my cramped cell, without a mother, a lover, children, or even a window from which I can raise my phone to hear the voice of those I miss. I have no couch, except for the window of my prison cell, from which the Zionist jailer on call looks every time he feels bored.
I write to you from a place where Palestinians fighters meet, get sick, grow old and die, giving up their souls to a higher purpose, reminding us to keep on and persevere.
I write to you as I think of my companion Khaled, who has suffered for two years from an undiagnosed disease; he is one of 1,200 sick prisoners who continue to rot away on daily basis with no hope for deliverance.
I write to you as I remember Misara, who spent ten years in prison before being cast into oblivion, with the final development of his disease making him the 203rd martyr to have died within these prison walls.
I write to you as 13 Palestinian women sit within these walls, rooted within them the true feminism and the scents of beauty, love and patience. They embrace the whole world from within their cramped quarters in Israeli prisons.
The occupation prefers to refer to me as “nonexistent”. They can manacle my body and my movements, but they can never contain my freedom. From this place I write to you, for you are free this morning.
Look for stories on captives in the Occupation’s prisons
With my love,
A Palestinian prisoner in the heart of the Eshel Prison system
