November 3rd, 2024 and onwards
i.
Shame is a cloak that claims there is no room for you, anywhere—it’s a bottomless thing. I was given a gift made for countering this: it was a text in my pocket—from a friend. Fina. It buzzed my hip like a bee. She said the cure for shame was to connect. To her. To the small weed that shouldn’t get pulled or thrown aside. It has medicinal uses: pour hot water onto its dry form, and it will soothe you, and your kidneys. A weed doesn’t know you think of it as an interruption. A seagull flies above, landing on a street sign, and I want to tell her something I remember about the coast. It’s a love story, but I don’t have the words for her to make it sound real, and I know onlookers would understand even less. I can’t smell the ocean from here. I smell gasoline. And trees. Guilt reminds us of something we can do differently. 改善 kaizen is the continuation of improvements. Somehow, this improvement is connected to our mistake. If the mistake was an egg. That broke. I do not speak of production, we were not made to produce. The word, productive, surely should retire—to use his own word. Let him rest. He was tricked too. But he has done damage, damage we may not come close to understanding. If you are a word, you’ve been inside many mouths. And so you have changed, maybe, and so your construction has changed, I mean. A word is created so we can hope to hold meaning on our tongues, and pass it onto other parts of the body so it can say yes, or no, or kind of. I have a friend who worked in a factory, she donned a hairnet so she could understand her clenched fists. What are we made for? I imagine that we are made to tend. I stand on my grandfather’s office chair to water the plant that sits near the ceiling. I cannot stand what I have not done. 改善 kaizen. Said as if twice removed from its business context origin, evolving and shedding its parts. A friend calls it 練習 renshuu, instead. Practice. Love is plastered over the wound that love left. We cringe at anything that gets caught on the wheel alongside us, until, until, until.
ii.
In a basement bar, my friend speaks into a microphone about false gods. Loving is a way of seeing, and every god they loved fell once they let them fall. I want to be worthy of their love. They return to their seat, next to me in the back row. We’re silently laughing during each applause because we are in a false god scene. Sweaty hands touch, and eyes ask if it’s a date. We are in a private language. Somebody touches my back. It’s my turn next, and I’m not ready. I am in the back row, listening. And I don’t remember my own name.
iii.
“I can’t cry here, not in public,” my friend said, when they returned to the country three years ago. できない。1 cannot / [I] cannot [do it]. We are the safest place! it says in many pamphlets. But the novel and the poem say otherwise. The truth is apparent and so it is smothered. “Peaceful” is exemplified, and its lie erodes the calmest of hands. Imagination draws a larger room. In which we may be tasked to remember, even if whatever or whoever you’re remembering is not here or now. Imagination is not an escape. We eventually come to know that it is a harbor; a meeting place made of waves that are ever-arriving. I think of all the time a body holds. The last face I held in my hands. Maybe he’ll be more honest, maybe I’ll be more honest, after having met. There are those who are un-writing our future. Whose? Ours. Spider webs are woven inside the house. Leaves fall, and it sounds like running water. Ours. I shake when the doctor tells me what could happen. I am inside the body it might happen to. The piece I was given. Another phone call nearby the stairs. Constancy will betray you, so you must find another god. The mint must be harvested soon, or left alone, the parsley must come indoors. Cold has no author. There’s rosemary in the cupboard, dried and pressed, from the garden. I practice care when I can’t receive it. There are people on the other end of the line, voices in phones, reading from scripts. Sometimes they break it. They break away from their lines, and their voices are halting because they are trying something new. For a moment, I am human again because they have chosen something else; just as unknown movement on the body requires mistakes, they have allowed themselves to go into a more immediate, less-written now.
iv.
v.
Parables and creation myths \ (shortened version)
Memories that aren’t my own; as described in my grandfather’s letters from Lebanon; as retold through family members; through letters written with blue ink from my great-grandfather's cousin, Mary, written first in French, later in English, and memories that are my own, how granddad spoke and moved slowly in his old age, in English, in Arabic, make it personal. They are intimate even as they are made to widen and crack. We see, with startling clarity, where the fracture swells—where it has grown with us, guided us into being or not-being. And from there, we reorient towards our new-old bodies, riddled with memory we neither remember nor forget. I don’t yet fully grasp that proximity is only disrupted by distortion; that every face is a mountain, that how we look to the mountain from the precipice of our faces is what evolves. If photographed or x-rayed in some way, when Said Out Loud—perhaps so that something may be heard, asked, or understood— within this act there is, insofar, a splintering of selves and perceptions. It plays out like this, doesn’t it. Not unfamiliar. After a birthday song, in the pause: a reverent silence for blowing out candles, one can see the way smoke curls on its own and can’t be kept. You, too, cannot reach for yourself, and you, too, are a continuing curl. The clapping resumes with an unyielding warmth. The hands that clap are the hands that made dinner, that washed the table. At first glance, I was exactly what the others had wanted me to become. At first glance, I was everything that was wrong with becoming, forgetting the name of a tree. The loss that is present here, has been here all this time, though it is an impact that wished to render itself invisible and separate. A dangerous iteration. It almost succeeded, the severing, and it might have been possible if it were not for the impossibility of anything to become complete. But I have learned, maybe, that it’s true, even if just for a few precious moments, that we are less brittle, more useful, and somehow more whole in each other’s company, dear reader. Warm, angry, afraid, implicated, hopeful and striving. When I pull my hands from my pockets to show you, fragments of broken shells lay in my palm; some sharp and pointed, others have been ground slowly, over time, into a sparkling and soft kind of dust.
vi.
Five of Salama’s Instagram stories [dated from the end of November 2024, to the end of January 2025]
November 29th, 2024
…Tonight is an unbearable night in northern Gaza. The relentless and intense shelling from artillery and airstrikes continues with unprecedented ferocity. The skies are filled with the deafening sounds of explosions, and the ground trembles beneath us.
This night is truly terrifying. My dear friends, forgive me if these words become my last. I do not know if I will survive or if I will join the countless others who have been martyred.
May peace find its way to us someday. 11:02 pm.
December 17th, 2024
Today, I took Imran, my nephew who [is autistic], with me to the market. As we walked through the empty stalls, he spoke so innocently and excitedly about what he wanted: “I want bananas, I want fruits and vegetables.”
But we found nothing. There were only a few potatoes left, sold at an outrageously high price. We could barely afford to buy just two.
Seeing the disappointment on Imran’s face, knowing he dreams of such simple things that we cannot give him, was heartbreaking. Here in Gaza, even the most basic needs for children have become an impossible dream.
We were able to buy two potatoes worth $18.
January 12th, 2025
Mom. How I wish I could come back for just one moment. To hug you with the longing that tears my heart. Just one hug would restore my strength and extinguish the fires of longing inside me. Your departure left an irreplaceable void. But you are always in my heart. A light that fades and love never ends.
January 19th, 2025
10:13 a.m.
471 days of war, and we do not believe we survived.
January 31st, 2025
I am extremely exhausted, but we keep pushing forward because the need is urgent. Right now, we are building a new shelter for another family that has lost their home. We already have three displaced families living with us after their homes were completely destroyed.
We are working on constructing a room, a bathroom, and an additional space, using tarps and nylon for some parts due to limited resources. This simple shelter will provide them with some protection from the cold and harsh conditions, but we still need support to complete it.
Would you consider helping us build this shelter? Any contribution, no matter how small, will make a huge difference. Please donate or share as much as you can—your support means giving a family a safe place to stay.
If you are able to contribute up to 5,000 yen (or, $40 U.S. dollars) towards Salama’s urgent relief fund, fill out this order request form to request an art print (There are two you may chose from, both of which were recently published in the Tokyo Poetry Journal). I want to reciprocate your engagement by offering these works.
After you fill out an order request, I will contact you to go over details and availability before an order is completed. Please note that additional shipping and handling fees may apply, depending on our geographic locations.
vii.
Normal[e] may eat you. With wounded curtain. Out of boredom. Out of fear. Frail was to be honored in us. Somewhere, someone is being strong. Do you think of this sometimes? Their strong, strong, permeable, broken heart as soft as egg yolk. They look at what is what is what is and they see themselves. Someone I admire burns their ballot. Ash is a pen. What will you write in, after? The sentence that comes after a violent day. Centuries of days. The Great Lie. Mechanism was invented, it is many choices. Another leaf falls onto my chest. Unwavering. Another book is contested. If I am inside the book, I am contested. Roman Temples aren’t safe in Baalbek. Nor is a baby, or a cat. A word. There isn’t safety in the citadel. God of Wine. We were driving through mountains when he asked me to marry him. A marriage that wouldn’t belong anywhere. This was something we knew, صح ؟ Not even our closest friends could hold it, save one. You told me he said he’d never seen a love like ours. For a brief moment, we were known. Now that the sun is with me, in morning, it’s as if she has brought the end of your day with her. Your real wedding, your real life, she shows me every detail, the hundreds of men that hold it. This was no betrayal, though it began as several, and made of wool, found its footnote. Every word must be inside me before the test, where I can finally let them out. Discomfort! is etched into my desk at school. To run from it would be a mistake. There’s a tree we mumble to at recess, a stump that we jump from, pretending to fly. Detention, so we will learn to obey. A human breaks. The human is made of flesh, of soft. Sacred is the choice to swallow every fragment, at once, かく言う2、whole. Harsh winds come. A newly made grandfather greets his grandchild for the first time. A blue hat sits on his head. The same color he paints his pottery, calls it ocean. He shows the child his persimmon tree. The child frowns with what could be discernment resting on their brow. In Japanese, these fruits are called kaki. A neighbor once left a bag of them on my doorstep. Of an orange color. I was hungry and she might have known. They need to be soft before they are eaten. They are high in anti-oxidants.
Urgent relief for Salama Al Ladaa and his family of 13, & extended family of 55. Salama’s website is here. You can follow him on instagram here. His new PayPal is linked here. (PayPal is faster). Contributing to Salama, his family, & community in northern Gaza helps provide them with food and resources that they desperately need.
Where to donate for Lebanon? (Comprehensive Document)
Mutual aid for displaced families in Lebanon
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できない dekinai : cannot / [I] cannot [do it]
かく言う かくいう kakuiu : in this way