This week—after a reminder about our museum field trip—we’re featuring messages from two Iqraa veterans: a public service announcement and a poem.

  • Field trip to Museum of the Palestinian People: Aug 23 at 1:30 pm. Note the slight time change because there’s a guided tour at 2 pm. Earlybirds can check out the Middle East Bookstore.  
    • Museum address: 1900 18th St NW, Washington DC 20009 (next door to bookstore)  

Our PSA is from Lena (Iqraa, 2008). Lena was an OG Iqraa vet and her entire family supported Iqraa, with her mom (Maha) and brother (Sami) also runners/volunteers, and Lena’s dad, Osama, was our long-time volunteer coordinator (Lena: front row, 3rd from left; all four pictured). Lena’s looking for support for this bike ride/fundraiser (poster attached)

And Samar shares her poem, Like and Share. Samar’s a longtime Iqraa runner who joined us in 2009 and took over from Osama as volunteer coordinator (pictured with her sister, Dina).

Like and Share

I don’t want to look

I can’t in earnest like

the reels roll of a 21st century genocide

A shop of horrors livestreamed from left to right

That shadow me from morning to night

Screens that scream from the afterlife

Beg you to look at them one last time

Watch the last tear… the last words, the last breaths

A barefoot girl runs through the flames of death

A man carries the butcher’s bag of limbs

And delivers them for burial

in the depths

Of your mind

Go on

Touch that heart button

Pray it will pulse.

I don’t want to post and repost…to trick those mathematical algorithms

Into becoming emotional receptacles

to send me the weeping mother mourning over a brittle corpse

A shot to the head and another to the heart

Post and repost

So the face of an innocent is not lost

In the Instagram maze of memories

I don’t want to look and swipe

I prefer to hide in illusions of safety

Laugh at the mundane in the archive

And hold steadfast to the power of hope, that foolish thought

All will be well, that human nature is innocent at birth

What a noble thought, what a noble thought

that my likes and posts and shares

Won’t softly land in the lap of boredom

And forget those to whom it should matter most

I don’t want to look and share

I don’t want to urge, I don’t want to tell

A boy searching for flour in the sand

While fireworks of independence fog up the sky

I don’t want to look and share

A gloating soldier standing over our bones

leaving their filth in our homes

waving their flags at our funerals

I don’t want to wake the sleeping

To watch the dead and dying

As they bow before apathy inside the theatres of hell

I don’t want to look and I don’t want to share

but I must.

Because it must mean something if a genocide

Was televised and all we had was the power to watch

And yet we chose not to look

Not to share

Not to swipe

Not to care

Not to bare

The murder of innocents

The struggle for rights

Dignity and land

I don’t want to post and repost but I must

Because the open book of genocide by billions known and read

Has exposed a humanity depraved of its essence, in the end.

Last week/this week. Last Saturday at Reston, Cathy, Basel, Imad, Mazen, Reza, and me ran or walked and this Saturday we’re at Carderock, where marathoners will run 12 miles while half-marathoners run 10.   

Hope to see each of you this weekend: running, biking, and learning… for a brighter Palestine!