My Mother Once Said

I will recognize you by your voice,

by your prayers

for me and for the martyrs.

I will not lose my way in the darkness,

for the fires of their hatred

have lit up the sky.

Oh, mother,

You lied, mother,

You lied for me and to yourself,

And for a homeland you loved.

But no one loved us,

Oh, mother,

No one loved us,

Except God.

~Nour Khalil AbuShammala, June 2024

Nour is the daughter of Khalil, one of three central figures in No Way But Forward by Brian Barber, a story of 3 Palestinian men and their families in Gaza over a 45-year period. (https://bkbarber.com/books/)  

•  As Iqraa 21 highlighted, through its focus on Brian’s book, education is central to Palestinian identity. Nour’s writing—essays and poetry—reflect this.

Education is both a central part of the Palestinian dream and a cherished and hard-earned resource of the Palestinian people. The wealth of Palestinian human capital—derived from education–is the foundation of Palestine’s eventual liberation.

• As Nour said (The Electronic Intifada (TEI), 21 February 2024), “I studied law for four years and trained for two years…A week before this genocide started, I passed the bar exam. I was hoping to pursue a master’s degree in international humanitarian law before the occupation destroyed my life, dreams and hopes…Despite all our blood, wounds, pain, all I want is my homeland and my home.”

Nour’s young life reflects her love for education; she has been able to make her voice heard in the West largely because of it. She earned a law degree from Al Azhar University in Gaza university in 2021 and has worked for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, which monitors and documents the practices of Israeli military forces in Gaza and the West Bank, according to its website. In addition, Nour has published poems and essays in a variety of Western media, e.g. Nour in LA Times.

As Nour says (TEI), “Stop this war before you kill our hope. Stop it and return us to our homes, because we deserve a decent life. Or, return us to our homes and kill us there, as I don’t want to die in a tent.”

Both poems in this Iqraa message appeared in No Way But Forward, and were made available to Brian by Nour’s proud father, Khalil.

The Land Fights, Too

The earth yields its fruits,

Defying siege and hunger,

Defying the occupation.

Tomatoes sprout,

Peppers and eggplants,

Despite cut-off water,

Despite forbidden shells.

Mint and basil’s fragrance wafts,

The scent of homeland

In The land of peace.

Despite the tents’ heat,

Children’s displacement,

The loss of dreams,

The earth yields its fruits,

Feeding its children,

North and south,

Refusing starvation.

The earth brings forth vegetables,

And fruits,

Watered by martyrs’ blood.

It fights with its soil,

Holding warriors’ remnants,

Steadfast in death,

Defying forces,

Defying weapons.

Our people plant,

And eat from our land’s soil.

The earth fights side by side,

With its sea, with its brave resisters.

It grows patience,

Quelling children’s hunger,

Silencing mothers’ tears,

Easing men’s burdens.

Only in Gaza,

The earth fights with its people.

~Nour Khalil AbuShammala, July 2024

They will recognize us by our voice. 

First, thanks again to Bill for hosting last Saturday, and with a nice variety of savory and sweet.

• Iqraa hosted 8 runs this year, plus an aid station at the MCC 20-mile training run. All possible, thanks to the generosity of Basel, Basma, Bill, Cathy, Shobi, Siva, and me!

And now it’s MCM week: challenge accepted by Cathy, Bill, and Reza!

• This is a week to rest and prepare for Sunday. This MCC article will help: https://mc-coop.org/stp/weekly-training-articles/racing-well-is-equal-parts-mental-and-physical/
• ·        Also, please see Nick’s email today about MCC services such as bib pickup and the location of our home base (Camp Rosslyn) where you can rest while your family relaxes with you after the marathon. 

And some MCM day thoughts from a bird’s eye:

• Gratitude. We’re blessed in so many ways to enjoy the physical and emotional freedom to run. Most people for a variety of reasons can’t dream of what you’ll do this weekend.
• ·        Enjoyment. If you’re looking for a PR, go for it! But don’t let that stand in the way of taking in the experience and enjoying the return on your investment in the training program.  
• ·        Goodness. Use your run for good. Running for a brighter Palestine makes the miles meaningful. Palestinians need our support more than ever.

Friends, the training year is ending. We hope you’ll stay for the Winter Runs—let me know to sign you up. It’s a more informal program: free miles, no frills.  

•  In December we’ll have an Iqraa dinner at Mama Ayesha’s; keep an eye out for the date.

Even so, we keep Palestine in mind and in our prayers.

•   Don’t ever feel discouraged. If you take action, you’re making a difference.  

There’s much you can do to help. The links below are just a small part of what you can do:

•  The Arab American Institute organizes Arab-Americans into an effective constituency for all aspects of civil life. Arab American Institute (aaiusa.org)
• ·        The Council on American Islamic Relations, founded to advance Muslim civil rights in America. https://www.cair.com/
• ·        Churches for Middle East Peace is a collective of more than 30 national-level churches that promotes conflict resolution, especially on Israel-Palestine. https://cmep.org/
• ·        Jewish Voice for Peace, the world’s largest Jewish organization supporting Palestine (with all their hearts, I’d add). https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
• ·        Providing resources to the US-based Palestine solidarity movement, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. https://uscpr.org/
• ·        Palestine Legal protects the civil and constitutional rights of those supporting Palestinian rights. https://palestinelegal.org/
• ·        United Palestinian Appeal empowers Palestinians in health, education, community, and socioeconomic development. https://upaconnect.org/
• ·        Iqraa, Running for a brighter Palestine since 2008 (share with friends). https://iqraadc.org/
  • We’ve raised more than $28,000 and need your contribution to surpass $30,000—30 scholarships: UPA Team Iqraa 2025

Last week/this week. Last Saturday at Candy Cane City, Bill, Cathy, Peter, Reza, Basel, and I ran or walked 8 miles. This Saturday at Camp Rosslyn, we’ll do our last organized run together in 2025.

My greatest wish for this group is to see you all again regularly, running for a brighter Palestine!

First, let’s thank Basel for hosting last Saturday’s run. Nick called it one of the best training-run brunches he’s had. Alf shukr wa shukr! (1001 thanks!)

Appreciation also for those who’ve created your fundraising pages. And I know several of you are drafting your letters too. Here’s the link for those who need to make a page and those who want to contribute:

Listen, I know that fundraising isn’t anyone’s favorite activity, and I understand that some feel there’s an ‘ayb (shame) in asking anyone for anything.

But let’s take a look around… there’s a genocide in Gaza that includes the destruction of virtually all educational infrastructure. Here in America, there’s suppression against those who speak out for Palestinian equality.  

These injustices cannot stand! …But injustice won’t just collapse and go away. Only action will bring change. “If not us, who? If not now, when?” (Rabbi Hillel; born in Babylonia, now Iraq, 1st century BCE)

Remember this, friends: we’re not asking anyone to help US.

We’re asking people to help provide Palestinians with an education because in doing so we’re asserting the equal right of Palestinians to be educated.  And we’re not going to stop. Education toward liberation!

Here’s the potential—and the power when we act—of our outreach:

• Americans—our potential sponsors—need to know what’s happening in Palestine
• Americans—our potential helpers—need to know what they can do
• Palestine is not going to brighten itself: we’re running for a brighter Palestine. That’s an active verb, a transitive action
• Education isn’t free but we can help provide it to those who might never afford it through our fundraising efforts
• Palestinians are alone unless we help them. I know you all want to help. Don’t let yourself be restrained by inhibition about asking.

Last week/this week. Last Saturday at Columbia Island, Basel hosted and Cathy, Reza, and Imad (not pictured) ran while I walked. This Saturday, we’re running in Reston; 12 miles for marathoners and 8 miles for half-marathoners.

Running toward a future bright with a liberated Palestine and a truly equal America.

I often look for fresh insights to the importance of education and ways to highlight to fellow Americans the equal humanity of Palestinians. Fortunately, Brian Barber’s book, No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip (2025) provides both.

• A theme throughout, and reflective of Palestinian culture, is that education is as at least as important in Gaza as any place in the world you might imagine. In comparison to more privileged communities, education is recognized from an early age as a foundation for the future and an opportunity provider.

Before we go to the biographical summaries (picture attached), here’s a link for those who want to see the author’s website and/or order No Way But Forward: https://bkbarber.com/books/

Hammam Faqawi. We first meet Hammam–who goes on to becomes a teacher like his father, Fuad, and then a headmaster, earning a Master’s degree at Al-Azhar University in Gaza—when he’s 5 years-old (1980). His mom—Fatima—readies him for the first day of kindergarten:

• a crucial day, as it was for every Palestinian child. In a culture that regards education as vital, it was ‘the first step of the ladder of the life,’ as the saying goes.”

Two weeks after October 7, 2023, Hammam chances upon his student, Mahmoud, displaced from Gaza City and living in a school.

• The young student says: “You will come to teach us again. There are many students from our school in Gaza [City] but we lost the books. We came from Gaza with only our clothes on…many of the students of our school said their homes were bombed…and some were pulled out in pieces from under the rubble.”
• Mahmoud’s little brother also recognizes Hammam: “you are the teacher who teaches Mahmoud…Come on, come to the school. We now live there. Come and teach us there.” Hammam cried, understanding that the “child wants to learn even in these very, very difficult circumstances. This child conveyed to me, with the innocence of childhood, that knowledge is a message and there is a future.”
•  April 2024, Hammam texted Brian: “Now a new suffering has begun…I want to provide an opportunity for education for children…Everything is destroyed…There is no education. No universities, and no future for the children. For the first time in my life, I feel helpless. I want to change my children’s lives. I want them to learn.”
• July 2024: “My kids are asking me questions I can’t answer. They are asking about their future. They’ve lost one year of learning, and the second will start soon.”  
• December 2024. Hammam’s brother Hani is severely injured but survives an Israeli missile strike while driving his Save the Children car.   

Khalil Abu Shammala. Khalil and his siblings received an education in morality and community at their mother—a refugee from Barbara in present-day Israel—Tammam’s knee, in addition to their formal schooling. Khalil went on to become the Exec. Dir. of the Gaza-based Al-Dameer human rights organization from 1998 to 2014.

• The impact of education on Khalil, including “the Academy of the Palestinians” (prison) was lifechanging:
  • “If the naivete Khalil had always felt had been transformed through his intifada [1987-1993] experiences—his initial detention and subsequent imprisonment—his years as a student political leader while earning his bachelor’s degree in English literature catapulted him into a self-assured young man of twenty-six (1996).
• Post-October 2023, Khalil’s kids, Nour and Mohammed, graduated from Al-Azhar before October 7, but his daughter Nesma’s computer engineering studies at the same university—she was to have been hired by Google as a web developer upon graduation–were interrupted by Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
• September 2024. Nour is accepted into a master’s program at the University of Jordan, to study remotely. “She is so happy.” She takes the risk of daily travel to find an internet connection.

Hussam Abushawish. Hussam is 13 when we meet him (1986) and grappling with the dissonance between his grandmother’s assertion that his people were the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel–hailing from Barqa, a few dozen kilometers from Nuseirat in Gaza, where they now lived—and his undeniable reality that Israeli soldiers controlled their lives.

• Hussam resolves this cognitive dissonance with several months of research, after which he creates a poster board describing the history of Palestine that he places in his classroom. The headmaster quickly makes him remove it, fearful of the consequences should Israeli soldiers discover it, as schools were forbidden from teaching Palestinian history.
• Two years into the 1^st Intifada, when Hussam was 16 (1989), his dad, Fares, gave moral guidance for the future with primacy to education: “…like your mother and I have said before, you must not let your political activity interfere with your studies. Above all else, your education will equip you to serve your people, your cause, our cause. Our struggle will likely go on for a long time in the future, so you need to strengthen yourself with the knowledge and skills that education will provide.”
• Post-October 2023, Hussam’s brother Omar was killed while returning home from a daily jog on Oct 7. In Hussam’s words, “That missile was the very one that didn’t grant him the  opportunity to continue his pursuit of knowledge, work, and poetry. It robbed him of the chance to embrace fatherhood to a three-year-old daughter named Elena.”
• May 2024. Hussam’s wife loses a second brother, in addition to two nieces and a nephew during the first 7 months of Israeli airstrikes.

The book’s narrative ends on October 7, 2024, with an epilogue last December 20.  

• Each family relocated multiple times, returning to the remains of their homes when possible.
• Their search for food and struggle against disease is constant. The situation now is immeasurably worse. As one of the men says, “there is no bottom in Gaza.”
• None of them would voluntarily leave Gaza. But they want their children to have a better life.

Last week/this week. Last Saturday at Carderock, Basel and Reza ran 20 miles, as did Cathy in Minnesota, while Basma ran 10, and Mazen and Jorge walked 8 and ran 6, respectively. This Saturday, we’re running at Columbia Island Marina—everyone is running 12 miles. 

And shout out to Basel for stepping up to host!

No way but forward to a brighter Palestine.