Last Secret of the Temple Book

جاءت قراءتي لها في وقت مناسب .. وقت العدوان على غزة
لا سلام مع هؤلاء القوم لا سلام لا سلام

Allow me to speak my Arab tongue

before they occupy my language as well

Allow me to speak my mother tongue

before they colonize her memory as well

I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger


All my grandfather ever wanted to do

was wake up at dawn and watch my grandmother kneel and pray

in a village hidden between Jaffa and Haifa

my mother was born under an olive tree

on a soil they say is no longer mine

but I will cross their barriers, their check points

their damn apartheid walls and return to my homeland

I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger


And did you hear my sister screaming yesterday

as she gave birth at a check point

with Israeli soldiers looking between her legs

for their next demographic threat

called her baby girl "Janeen".

And did you hear Amni Mona screaming

behind their prison bars as they teargased her cell

"We're returning to Palestine!"

I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger


But you tell me, this womb inside of me

will only bring you your next terrorist

beard wearing, gun waving, towelhead, sand nigger

You tell me, I send my children out to die

but those are your copters, your F16's in our sky

And let's talk about this terrorism business for a second

Wasn't it the CIA that killed Allende and Lumumba

and who trained Osama in the first place

My grandparents didn't run around like clowns

with the white capes and the white hoods on their heads lynching black people

I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger


"So who is that brown woman screaming in the demonstration?"

Sorry, should I not scream?

I forgot to be your every orientalist dream

Jinnee in a bottle, belly dancer, harem girl, soft spoken Arab woman

Yes master, no master

Thank you for the peanut butter sandwiches

raining down on us from your F16's master

Yes my liberators are here to kill my children and call them "collateral damage"

I am an Arab woman of color and we come in all shades of anger

So let me just tell you this womb inside of me

will only bring you your next rebel

She will have a rock in one hand and a Palestinian flag in the other

I am an Arab woman of color Beware … Beware my anger !

by : Rafeef Ziadah