Dual Devastation & Eid 2025
Salaam & hello sis,
I hope you’ve been well - Eid Mubarak if you were celebrating! I hope you had a blessed time with your family, friends and loved ones. It was a hard one though, wasn’t it? This was the second Ramadan that Israel continued to bomb fasting, praying, worshipping Palestinians as they slept, starving because Israel has continuously prevented aid from getting into Gaza, the prison which has just become a shooting range.
Yes. This is where I am at. Heart-broken and angry just like so many of us. I cry, like many of you, almost every single night.
I’ve been away from this space for quite a while. I will call it the Dual Devastation that wrecked me for a while. Dual Devasation refers to the personal and public tragedies I have been struggling with over the last few years that I only now have the courage to address and write about.
The first of the devastations was having my best friend in the whole world, my beloved husband, fall very, very ill during COVID and almost die - twice. As if that wasn’t enough of a test for us at a time that he was hospital-bed bound and every visit was a battle with nurses and doctors trying to establish strict protocols due to the Pandemic, we found that the man who returned home from hospital after almost 3 months of dealing with death was not the man who had left home to go to the hospital. In essence, my husband never came home. Instead, a man who felt the marriage was no longer a fit for him came home and we tried for 3 years to make it work. We failed. No wait—I failed. Despite loving him more than life, I was unable to show up for him in ways that he needed and I feel deep regret and remorse even now. It’s been a journey, folks! Hang in there, I will write more about that.
I did say ‘dual’ so here’s the second half of all that pain: while dealing with sudden separation and divorce in 2023, still reeling from becoming single after 10 years of loving someone so much I forgot myself, Israel decided that it would punish all Palestinians for having the audacity to want freedom and for challenging their imprisonment, the disappearances of their men, the torture of their loved ones, the rape of those in jails, the murder of their children in the streets of Gaza, their unlawful treatment in West Bank and the UNRELENTING APARTHEID that Israel has subjected Palestinians to for 76 years. No one is thrilled about the attacks on Israel, but hey, who started it?? Let’s keep in mind that if you try to steal the land from underneath folks, they might want to let you know how they feel about it and THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW!
Now, 18 months into Israel’s brutality, we can all see where unrighteous rage, unchecked racism and white supremacy can lead. We can now all see how what goes around, well, eventually it comes around.
For some odd reason, a lot of folks felt that it was okay for Palestinians to undergo such a savage genocide - almost like a kind concession to Israel - can you see the horrific and macabre thinking behind letting Israelis slaughter Palestinians wholesale “so they can have a home”? You literally would be rationalizing GENOCIDE and ETHNIC CLEANSING. I think for a lot of silent people, reflecting on any of this feels deeply unsettling because it means confronting the deeply held biases against Arabs, Muslims and BIPOC folk in general.
Don’t get too comfortable in your bubbles, folks. This suffering is not just “written for Palestinians” - maybe a taste of something like religious epiphany is on its way for all of us: atheist, agnostic, devotee and dunce!
So here I am. Showing up here with all of this on my heart and mind. I’ll keep sharing. And I’m letting you know I can’t be all sweet and kind these days because little ones (not one, not two, THOUSANDS) are being slaughtered in their beds in Palestine by IOF cowards, are being killed in Congo’s mines by Rwandan thugs paid for by Israel and USA and being starved and bombed by the USA in Yemen.
There’s no time to waste, dear sis. These are the days. These are the days that define us and we can’t let evil frighten us from speaking. I may finally put up some videos addressing some of the pain I am feeling.
I wish you a heart capable of holding the hurt and still finding ways to offer love to the world - I’m working on it too - keeping something soft even as the world keeps hardening my edges— so keep me in your prayers, and I will keep you in mine.
Peace/Salaam
Your sister ATS