WesterlyMagazine

‘It Could Easily Have Been You…’ by Hannah Magar

On 1 March 2024, PEN Perth held a ‘Spotlight on Palestine’ event at Centre for Stories. Facilitated by Dr Rashida Murphy, the evening featured readings from two Palestinian poets and two Muslim poets from our local community: John N’aem Snobar, Zaid Snobar, Hannah Magar and Marziya Mohammedali. Westerly is proud to publish the original works of these poets here on the Editor’s Desk.

Hannah Magar, an Egyptian Australian and proud member of Friends of Palestine WA, has been a longstanding advocate for the Palestinian cause, actively participating and speaking out at rallies since the age of thirteen. Hannah is a devoted mother and teacher and began reciting spoken word poetry at rallies for Palestine in 2021.

It Could Easily Have Been You…

I want to talk about a country
A country I have never been to
And a place I am not from
But humanity can’t help but make me think of us as one.

You see, the people from this country, they have long been oppressed,
Seventy-five years we go back, apartheid at its best.
Can you imagine a knock at your door, telling you, you need to leave?
No common humanity, they feel nothing as you plead.
They say, ‘If not me, someone else will come and take your house’.
Illegal settlements continue, the US veto bails them out.
Can you imagine a number on your arm for easy identification?
As if you were an animal, and not from the human nation.
Routine interrogations by police twice every single year,
Their number one priority to force you to live in fear.

I want to talk about this country.
I want you to scream its name.
See, their problems are our problems,
We all cry and bleed the same.
Call it what it is, not a war between equal sides.
It’s occupation, ethnic cleansing, massacres, and genocide.
Ironically inflicted by those who experienced this very crime.

I know you know this country.
You can hear it in your head.
But before we say its name out loud, I want you to remember all its dead.
Remember Yazin Al-Masri, two years old and in his bed.
He hadn’t the slightest clue a rubber bullet would puncture wound his head.
And then there’s Reem, the soul of Khalid’s soul.
All he had left was her little baby doll.
And six-year-old Hind left for days in a car with her dead family,
Twin infants Wissam and Naeem,
Gone, too, after their mother took ten years to conceive.
And don’t forget Zaid Al-Tabani, so young at the age of seven.
Along with siblings Ameer and Adam, Muhammad and Ismaeel,
Whoever thought the killing of children so mercilessly could ever become so real.
I could go on and on, but no one should ever have to.
How can I write out thousands of children’s names?
These kids are younger than you all, and you were once their age.

I don’t just tell you this to prompt you all to care.
I tell you because I want you to imagine your lives as theirs.
Instead of waking up to an alarm clock or to cartoons on television,
You’d wake up to warplane sounds and military divisions.
Instead of playing in a playground way back when you were little,
You’d be stuck in a battlefield, bombs going off with you caught right in the middle.
Instead of complaining about simply receiving a bad test mark,
You’d complain they turned the electricity off, and you’ve spent twenty hours in the dark.
Instead of having Mama wish well as you leave for school,
She’d tell you, ‘Ya Ibni, come back home to me safely, make sure you are careful.’

Every child deserves a childhood, but these children are traumatised.
Call it a direct result of being bombed and colonised.
Made to live in one of the world’s largest prison camps.
Refugees in their own country, a prisoner in their land.
And yet, still, day in and day out, with only stones to throw,
They face armed soldiers with endless tanks and guns to blow.
This is their reality, these atrocities all true.
And had you been born in Falasteen,
It could easily have been you.

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