Living in Burin
What can it be like
To see your newly washed, neatly striped daughter off to school
and know that yesterday one of her friends found a cold brassy cylinder of a bullet
in the playground
To be woken by the smell of smoke smouldering in your nostrils
and guess, correctly, that twelve more of your almond trees
have been torched in the night
To watch your all-knowing, all-powerful father stop work and pay attention
to six very young men, armed, uniformed, speaking with foreign accents,
who don’t greet him
or ask after the family
but stand too close and bark too many questions,
To look up,
on your way to an early morning coffee, and see a prefab,
newly thrown up along the ridge,
another link in the chain of settlements that promises to choke you
Out in the fields, a family harvest picnic,
to have to hush your daughter, carried away in happy, noisy games,
for fear of provoking those above
To walk your own darkened streets at night,
the only lights glowing out through neighbours doors,
look up to the orange sulphurous glow that fills the skies above the hill-top, alien, townships
To plan a football field, begin to lay it out along the valley floor
have the diggers spotted, settler surveillance,
have it stopped, World Cup dreams stillborn
To carry fodder to the 4 or 5 sheep penned in your yard,
the remnant of the herd you’d shepherded freely round the hills,
before the settlers came
To bury the donkey, shot dead on your way home
by a couple of marauding youth from above
To wonder how, next harvest, donkeyless, you’ll get your olives down in time,
down before a settler family decide to heave a sack, product of your mornings work,
into their boot and burn off up the hillside
To jolt to work in nearby Nablus and see young settlers,
white shirts, dark trousers, ringlets dangling, hitching casually at roundabouts,
for all they claim they need full time protection from you and your town
To come back along the highway, see signs to brash new settlements, Bracha, Yitzar,
but no road signs to your ancient, grown-from-the-hillsides, town
To long to stride away for just a moment, along the rock tumbled valley
that leads up to the hills where you used to roam your troubles out,
and know that up there, alone, you’d be a walking target,
unlikely to return whole
To stretch your back and wander,
while your lad boils up a pot of hot sweet tea on olive twigs,
to gaze along the terrace edge that last year was a grove of graceful, fruitful, olive trees,
your family’s heritage, your income
that now is scorched grey earth,
the line of charcoaled grisly stumps, settler torched
To be arrested, in your own olive grove,
by a foreign army on the word of a foreign coloniser
and when questioned, slapped on the face, twice
for saying you’re from Burin, twice.
No such place, no such person
To sweat alone in the sun, out there on the edge of village land,
slowly filling a sack with olives, ready to shoulder it home,
and be told by a troop of soldiers,
they never travel singly,
that there’s not enough of you, the land isn’t being fully used,
there’ll be no permit for you picking here next year
To pick olives, fast as you can, against the ticking of the two-day permit,
while two friends who came to help you,
sit nearby, blindfold, handcuffed, guarded, for the morning
for some perceived affront:
all you can do is take them water, hold it to their lips
To find tomorrow, different soldiers on your land,
who, at a whim, decide today you need protection,
watch your backs, escort you down
leave you sort of triumphant, but no more secure
To celebrate a triumph in the courts,
the right to farm your outlying land,
to march there, with friends and neighbours, singing,
to be chased back by settlers, soldiers,
end the day staunching the torrent pouring through your house
from roof top water tanks, punctured by their pot shots
To coax your daughters and sons through school, to university,
to lovingly support their dreams of opportunity, of freedom in a foreign land
- while dreading the sapping of Burin’s staying power that each departure means
To hear the high sweet call to prayer, reassuring you that god is great,
while knowing there is no-one, no-one,
who’ll protect your rights, who’ll come to your defence
To watch the cheerful, rosy volunteers who for two autumnal weeks
have helped you strip the trees, added person power, deterrence to the wreckers up above,
pick up their rucksacks, leave
knowing that they’ve really no idea
what it can be like, living in Burin
