For Edward Said by Mojahid Mark David

Oh, Palestine how you weep for your native son. He left you before your trees could bear fruit, the olive groves slowly dying from their unpicked harvest. He waited and waited to grow old with you so that someday he could sit atop your shepherd fields with his friends and neighbors busily gathering their magnificent bounty

Many knew that the weight atop his shoulders might be too great of a burden to bear, his body weary and broken from the treacherous lonely journey. His enemies too numerous to count, serpents patiently waiting to grind him down gallantly resisting their insatiable diabolical greed.

Palestine, your Native son, left no town, no city, no village untouched by his unbounded genius. Often it seemed as if he had created a new form of expression speaking in a lexicon that availed itself only to him. Orientalism, the prism through which the downtrodden and forgotten would be advocated for was just that powerful new expression. It’s literary paradigm redefined the dispossessed from bondage by their masters, ivory tower slave owners whose cocktail party elegance hid their unearthly ravenous pursuit.

This masterful linguistic command unlocked the secrets of the human condition opening doors that had been sealed from time immemorial. Even as this radiant luminary began to weaken, his unbridled passion for resurrecting the dispossessed never waned even as it became too heavy of a price to pay. The serpents following slowly on his heels waiting for him to trip so that they could trounce on his already weary body.

Oh, Palestine how you ache. You have lost too many of your sons and daughters, and now you must face the night without a son whose star illuminated the desert Arabian night. All you wanted was a final quiet journey from Jerusalem to the sea to show him the beauty of your bounty. You knew of his desperation to return to Al Quds, to see the quiet fisherman of Galilee, watching the sunset in Acre as Lebanon readied itself for the night, drinking wine from the grape harvest in Haifa, unending laughing in the sands of Gaza. Dancing at the wedding of Isaacs, daughter in Tel Aviv. Was that too much to ask!!!

Oh, Palestine like your deceased son you are now scarred and brittle. Your children have sacrificed so much so that you may regain life. They cannot give too much more. The breaking point is near.