Volume 13
Support the family of Tyre Nichols, Proactive Grief: Palestinian Reflections on Death by Eman Ghanayem, Golden monkeys hugging
ACTION ITEMS
TYRE NICHOLS
On January 7, 2023 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten by the police in Memphis, TN only a few blocks from his mother’s home. He died three days later. Tyre was the father of a 4-year-old son and a devoted son in his own right. We are collectively mourning this loss and enraged by the continued disregard for Black life at the hands of the police. There is not much to say that hasn’t already been said, so we want to use this space to highlight Tyre and his beautiful soul. According to his mothers gofundme: “Tyre Nichols was loved by his community and was known to be gentle, kind, and joyful. He loved skating and was originally from the Bay Area in California. He was known as someone “you know when he comes through the door he wants to give you a hug” and that “he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He had never been in trouble with the law, not even a parking ticket. He was an honest man, a wonderful son, and kind to everyone. He was quirky and true to himself, and his loss will be felt nationally.”
SUPPORT TYRE NICHOLS FAMILY HERE
We also love this footage of him skateboarding uploaded by his friend Austin Robert over a decade ago.
"Nearly every day for eight years, he and Robert would meet up with their group of friends and practice skateboard tricks until it got dark. Thursday's were known as "Thursdays with Tyre," said Robert. If the two of them were not at a park, they were at McDonalds choosing from the Dollar Menu.
What he remembers most vividly about Nichols was his positivity and "infectious" laughter.
"He always tried to bring everybody together and put a smile on anybody else's face before his own," Robert said."(source)
FUNDS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT FROM PREVIOUS VOLUMES:
KINGSTON SANCHEZ’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
AVA LUSSIER’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
NICOLAS DAVIS’ FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
TIABI RAUF’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
BRANDON’S MOTHER IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
LINDY CHRISTOPHER’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
ELESBAN “MUNCHIES” SANTIBAÑEZ’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
HARPREET SINGH’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
RIAZ AHMED’S FAMILY IS STILL SEEKING SUPPORT
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Falasteen Focus features a handful of offerings on Palestinian death, grief, life, love, and culture, gathered by Sameerah, a Palestinian and Irish American death worker based out of Chicago.
She can be reached at witchykhalto@gmail.com
In Volume 11 of the Digest, we featured our first ever Falasteen Focus curated by Sameerah. In it she introduced us to the work of Eman Ghanayem. Eman Ghanayem is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. Her research examines Palestinian and American Indian literatures, and the larger context of Indigenous and refugee narratives, through a framework of interconnected settler colonialisms and comparative Indigeneities. “Proactive Grief: Palestinian Reflections on Death”, is Ghanayem’s essay which was cited in Volume 11. “Part memoir, part theoretical reflection, this essay offers one answer to the question “How do Palestinians grieve?” In this narration of the author’s mother’s relationship to death, her multiple displacements, and her plan for her life, the term proactive grief is used to theorize how and why her mother’s life trajectory was shaped by her strife to have a dignified death, in other words, to be able to die in Palestine.”
We received permission to share some of the article with our readers. The essay in full is a stunning piece of work. We are grateful for the ability to offer a glimpse here.
An excerpt from Ghanayem’s essay, “Proactive Grief: Palestinian Reflections on Death”:
In its quintessence, proactive grief is a form of proactive living. In an existence defined by its boundaries, by constant threats of destabilization, roadblocks, enclosures, and expulsions, my mother’s plan for her death affirms a complex map of what lies ahead: every possible step, every possible place, every possible turn, and the ultimate destination. It is a map of life that is not about certainty, or about defying death, but about hope and the constant strife to do good and be at peace. Her death philosophy comes from a place-oriented culture that primes one’s origin as the catalyst for one’s life struggle and pursuit of happiness, or as my mother would put it, el-ridha wa hadat el-bal, contentment and peace of mind. For Palestinians who exist under the cyclical and hard reality of settler colonial dispossession, that origin is and remains to be Palestine—whether in the sense of it being one’s actual birthplace or when made through the power of familial memory into a real, felt homeland. Understanding how this point of origination functions in my mother’s death plan greatly factors in evaluating the immense significance of her strategy and the overall value of proactive grieving. In my mother’s story, her birthplace and her death place are intended to be the same. Such intention defines the aspirational trajectory of everything she does and hopes to achieve. It also plays a great role in how she has structured our family and planned our lives (because, as mentioned previously, she wants us to die a good death too). This becomes most evident in my current diasporic circumstance and the strain it continues to have on my family. Every year I spend in the United States, my family’s rarely uttered fear that I may never come back becomes harder to hide. While growing up, my mother often shared her death plan with me because she needed a witness and a listener, but she also used it to prepare me for what later became my own trajectory for life: I, too, want to die in Palestine. Whenever my family’s fear of losing me surfaces, I remind them that my plan never strayed from theirs.
I am not saying that my mother’s idea of death is shared by every Palestinian mother, woman, or person. But her approach, which was her mother’s and now is mine, reflects a recurrent life pattern relevant to her and her family’s type of Palestinian displacement among the many that define our collective colonization. My mother’s experience with multiple dispersions instilled in her an ethical approach to life that motivated her good actions and her movements. There is much to say about the religious foundation that influenced my mother’s outlook, particularly in aspects of “contentment and internal peace.” The emotional comfort of prayer, the meditative serenity of ritual, and her unbroken conviction that strife is a pathway to better things—all constitute the contours of her death philosophy. But alongside her Muslim faith, my mother’s definition of strife always mingled with her unbroken bond with Palestine that continues to overcome all obstacles. My mother, in her fifties, once walked through sewage pipes just to visit Jerusalem. When I was in my twenties, she used to have me dress like a minor so I could walk through the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem to avoid getting carded.1 She always insisted “we find a way” to visit all possible places in Palestine, whether they are in the West Bank or the parts of Palestine we are colonially denied. That strife matters. “A form of getting closer to Allah,” she sometimes called it. “Our way of earning life,” she would add.
I end this section with strife because practicing proactive grief is about understanding the journey to death as demanding ethical and political decisions that prime loyalty to home, family, and people. Return, or al- awda, as a concept that motivates Palestinians, their writings, and their political movements not only connotes a desire to return to one’s home- land, but it also predetermines the whole trajectory of Palestinian life.2 Everything my mother did and continues to do pursues Palestine and the preservation of her family’s right to live and die there. The grieving process that underlies this mission contends with colonialism and its strong hold of Palestinian lives that often leaves us ambivalent and with minimal con-trol. Like cyclical violence, my mother’s strife renews in the presence of new and open-ended displacements, responds to this endless violence, and finds refuge in the certainty of death. Rather than escape the truth of mortality, my mother created a smart death plan that could counteract Israeli settler colonialism and its intention to make Palestinians live and die horribly, unexpectedly, and in degrading form.3 My mother, in all places and all times, chose dignity instead.
SIMPLE PLEASURES
How different generations show up at your house
skateboarders practice being courageous
Takuya Nakamura’s live trumpet over DnB
Dancer defies the laws of gravity
Ghanayem’s endnote: Palestinians from the West Bank have a green identity card that limits their access and movement. Unlike Jerusalemites and Israeli citizens, they are required to prove that they have a reason to enter Jerusalem, apply for a permit in advance, and show these documents before entering the city. Minors and seniors are often exempted from this process.
Ghanayem’s endnote: Return constitutes a major preoccupation for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and in the diaspora. It is a primary cultural consciousness and the driver of the Palestinian Cause (here, the term is often phrased as “the right of return,” or haq al-awda).
Ghanayem’s endnote: Karameh or dignity is deeply cultural to the Palestinian People. Randa May Wahbe (2020) offers insight into the humiliation Palestinians are forced to undergo in their experience with targeted life-threatening violence. “The politics of Karameh,” as she frames it, become the means to respond to real and potential humiliation in death.