We didn't let the earth crack

Words by Yasmeen Mjalli ( first published in AZEEMA - The Rituals Issue 2021 )

There is a painting by Suleiman Mansour: two figures, a man and woman, the outlines of their figures imprinted onto parched, cracked earth created through the mingling of mud and acrylic. A living history: the line between Palestinian life and its union with the earth cannot be clearly drawn. As a child, I spent simmering summer afternoons hunting for chunks of dry earth to crush in my hand so I could watch the fine soil slip through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. The hunt was more difficult on the days my Sido (grandfather) watered the plants and trees in the garden wrapping itself around our home. On these days, the soil turned into mud, resulting in a path of russet footprints tracing my movement as I played, weaving in and out of the dense fruit and olive trees. This was the ritual between my Sido and the earth, his earth, our earth, Mother Earth. 

Sido didn’t let the earth crack. He rose with the sun as it kissed the hills, interlacing his fingers at the small of his back and starting his walk around the house’s perimeter. Once more, twice more, on his daily pilgrimage through the garden, encircling our home as the rest of us slept on. Turning on the watering system threaded from the base of one tree to the next, he moved through the intricate system to inspect the pooling of water at each tree, because he knew what it was to thirst. He also knew what it was to be nourished, plucking plums the colors of pansies, tucking them into the fold of his abaya, and nestling them against his belly to give to his grandchildren later on. 

In Palestine, living a living history does not mean that you know what the next day will bring. Each breath you inhale is a word printed in real time on the pages of a text book or news article you are not even writing for yourself; the rare exhales are ends to one chapter and the start of the next. The rituals formed with the land are guarantees of balance, of keeping yourself grounded. You know that each autumn, the pomegranates grow so plentiful that the branches bend until the ruby fruits are nestled in the soil beneath the trees. The grape leaves form a canopy underneath which you rest on hot days, watching the women in the family pluck enough of the leaves to roll into your favorite dish; rolled by your mother, aunties, and grandmother, all seated in a circle, gossiping, story telling, and singing. On sweltering summer nights, the scent of mint mingles with that of jasmine and wafts into your room, luring you into the garden to enjoy a hot cup of red tea with your family. 

Rituals with the land extend beyond the family, seamlessly permeating imaginary boundaries, cross into the rest of the villages and towns, into entire communities, and into the memory of generations past. The skies even join in, adding their own touch to this intricate network of rituals and gifting us with the first rain shower, marking the slow and lazy transition from summer to autumn. Fat drops fall heavy onto the trees, signifying that the time to gather and harvest the olives has come. Freshly washed and cleaned of the thick layers of dust which had settled on the olives and their trees throughout the summer. 

You’re in the living room with Sido and he’s silent but this silence is different. Something has spilled forth. You’re sad and your grandfather is silent. You want to hold his hand but you feel scared that the touch will be a laughable attempt of comfort in the face of such pain. Your heart thumps even more quickly in the presence of a man whose pain is unfamiliar to you; your protector, always laughing even when you don’t know why. Our eyes are fixed onto the television screen, onto the orange and grey skies above the flaming hills of Jerusalem. The trees, foreign born and imported from Europe, are spreading flames as quickly as the waves lap the rocky shores of Jaffa in the midst of an angry winter storm. Something has spilled forth and we can’t pour it back into its vessel. We’ve kept on, planting on, harvesting on, laughing on, even when the land doesn’t look like it once did, even when the hilltops were invaded by settlers, even when the farmland was replaced with highways we can’t use. When your Sido is sad, there’s no escaping the living history. You listen for the sharp inhales of each person in your family, the words typed in real time onto the pages of our collective memory, and wait for the exhale. 

A few days later, your Sido is seated in the same armchair in front of the television. Your eyes follow his to the screen and you see something you’ve never seen before. Around the evacuated settlements perched atop the hills, the earth has revealed herself to the world once again; skeletons of the labor and love of the previous stewards of the land have made their way to the surface of stolen hills. Skeletons of olive terraces carved into the rolling hills of Jerusalem, dating back some hundreds of years, blackened with ash and soot, have replaced the foreign born and imported trees from Europe. Our Mother Earth is here to say she has not forgotten us. She is here to say that she has not opened her heart to the settlers. She is here to say that our rituals have not been forgotten.

There is a painting by Suleiman Mansour: two figures, a man and woman, the outlines of their figures imprinted onto parched, cracked earth created through the mingling of mud and acrylic. The bottom third of the painting, from the figures’ knees down, isn’t created in mud, but rather colorful and expressive acrylic brush strokes. You’ve inherited this tension between the traumatized earth and the vitality of life as manifested through these rituals, through the inspection of pooling water over tree roots, through the harvest of rain-washed olives, through the songs of mothers. You’re aware that the tension has been inherited in the same way you inherited your grandfather's nose and your grandmother’s eyes. You’re also aware that you’ve inherited a reverence, a maternal love from the earth for whom you care and who cares for you. So, you carry on, plant on, harvest on, sing on, grounded in these rituals.

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(This article has been re-published from AZEEMA - The Rituals Issue 2021 )