"I'll be the ground..."

I sat down in front of my computer hoping to write something to break my dry spell. I sat with nothing. So, I plugged in, and asked P.O.S. to inspire me via my iPhone's iPod.

And, within seconds, he told me: "Don't let them choose for you." And I thought: "I hate how everyone is trying to tell me what I should and should not eat for iftar. It's my siyam and my choice--not theirs."

"Goodbye" repeated and my thoughts continued to flow:

"If I want za3tar and 7ummos and khubiz u bes, and don't want salmon and pasta, that's my PREROGATIVE..."

"And if I don't want to go to 3azayim during Ramadan because I think they encourage gorge-fests and bother me and cause stress and take the focus away from spirituality and religion and Allah, that's my choice. Don't get offended. It has nothing to do with you or your house or the quality of your food. It's just my choice."

"And if I want to travel from VA to Jerusalem to pray in the 7aram, and buy makhloota from As-Samman, and then catch the 18 to go to Ramallah to eat Baladna Booza and visit Rajai at Venus, and then pass through Qalandiya, ride the bus passed Beit 7anina back to the bus stop behind the vendors' shops to catch the 75 to go back to Siti's house in At Tour--that's my choice, not theirs...IT'S NOT THEIRS; THEY WILL NOT CHOOSE FOR ME!"

And then the drumroll quiets into a monitoring beat which paces a mellow cadence...and it brings my pressure back down and it sucks the flush into my veins away from the surface of my cheeks and I feel my eyes blink a little slower. I rub my temples with the pads of my index finger and thumb...

Reality settles within me like a spirit from the second life renting my body to communicate a message to the living. It just needs a mouth piece and limbs to gesture with--and I'm just the vessel for this temporary employment.

The message is for me: "Reem, sometimes, the choices have already been made. Try to defy them, and your 'free will' will likely be tied with handcuffs and denied entry. What then?"

How do I choose between defiance and acquiescence when my first choice is that neither would exist? How do I choose when neither yields freedom as an option? How can I choose for myself when I am not free to be myself?

And then P.O.S. dedicates to the brave and the snake, and "to the sweat in the face of a man misplaced who finds his own lane."

A drop follows his lyric from my brow to the edge of my desk, and I see my choice swimming in the salty bead. To be without fear is to be with freedom. I will not be paranoid; I will not care about them. My lane will wind under MY stomping when and where I CHOOSE to place my footsteps.

"Never fill in the blanks/Let 'em hang in the ranks...I'll be the ground/Nobody gets me down."

And I choose to be grounded there again with a "free-range" visa. I'll be leaning against the Qudsy railing, jingling my six shekels, waiting to step on the first step of the 18...again soon. 7ur ana...that's my choice.

Red

"My red comes from my Palestinian side."

I've had to explain that more times than I can remember. I am always more than ready to explain it again--to pronounce with pride, "PALESTINIAN." Many think my red was passed to me by my Hungarian grandmother, but it was not. In my appearance, I am 100% Palestinian.

Sidi Yousef (Allah yir7amo) was my ancestral red head. Because of him, I have freckles. Like him, I have red hair. For dar El-Khatib, I am a token red-head, who stands out in the family photo--almost every Palestinian family has at least one of us. My family has several.

We--I was chosen to carry Sidi Yousef's red forward. And I carry it on my head and in my heart.

My blood is red like his was. He poured it out of himself, and siphoned it into his children, who filtered it into their children--and then flooded it into me. His red pumps the lines that bulge through the thin skin around my wrists and hands. His red pulses through that snake that climbs from my left leg's ankle, twists to my hamstring, and, trapped under a thinner layer of dermis, slivers slowly up my knee and thigh. I watch the red turn the thick, blue tunnel green as my Palestinian adrenaline gushes it through.

His red makes my heart boil and flushes my cheeks. I squeeze my hand so tightly that my nails dig into my own flesh, and my red--his red--drips down my wrist as my knuckles turn green, then black, then white.

Today, that red is stiffening a fist, and right before it meets your blue and white face, his red--my red--pulses aloud, "WATON."

Today, you see our red drowning you from inside. It bursts your vessels and chokes your throat. It streams from your nostrils, now shaded in green with a broken bridge. It crusts a deeper red over the cuts and digs now contouring your cheeks. Our red stains the white teeth left hanging in your mouth, and splatters under the formerly white teeth that were knocked out. Our red dries black onto your skull's skin--around the crack, punctured by the rock the knock out landed you on.

And as you attempt to squint up at me behind your throbbing, bleeding pupils, you see the red on my head, and I tell you, "The red comes from my Palestinian side."