While our collaboration with Sameerah is ongoing and this volume in particular has been in the works for a few months, we could not foresee the events of this week and how timely this volume would be. We are proud to share these offerings in support of Palestinian liberation. Please read Sameerah’s previous Falasteen Focus contributions in Volume 11 and Volume 20.
ACTION ITEM
🚨 URGENT CALL TO ACTION: FUNDRAISER FOR GAZA’S CHILDREN 🚨
The Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) stands with our people in Palestine and seeks to support their steadfastness. In partnering with Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), the PFC upholds our collective and communal responsibility to sustain the basic survival and sumoud, courage, creativity, hope, love, selflessness, and determination necessary to realize liberation.
Join us for the PFC x MECA Uplifting Community: Fundraising Call which will support families directly displaced as a result of this assault on Gaza. We are raising funds for food, medicine, and women’s hygiene products. Donate here: bit.ly/PFCxMECA and please help spread the word!
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.
*This volume’s graphic includes a photograph of a female Palestine sunbird (Cinnyris osea) during the olive harvest by Rana Hajawi, Palestine, October 2020.
I want to explicitly state that I support the Palestinian resistance to the 75-year brutal Zionist occupation. In “The Pitfalls of Liberalism” by Kwame Ture, he writes, “…the oppressor makes his violence a part of the functioning society. But the violence of the oppressed becomes disruptive… And because it is disruptive it is therefore very easy to recognize, and therefore it becomes the target of all those who in fact do not want to change the society.”
The Field Museum in Chicago created a traveling exhibition called Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery in which participants are challenged to “Consider your own “big questions” about death as you explore natural and cultural responses to life’s inevitable conclusion.” The exhibition includes two displays about Palestinian death and grief practices.
One display is titled "Muslims have practiced green burial for centuries" and features a painting by Dearborn-based Palestinian artist Jenin Yaseen, commissioned especially for the Death exhibition, as well as a green burial crosshatch drawing by Landis Blair that was featured in Caitlin Doughty's From Here to Eternity.
Green burial is often presented as a new, environmentally friendly trend, but Palestinian families like my own have practiced natural burial for generations. Muslims ritually wash the body with water, simple cloth is used as a shroud, and burial occurs as soon as possible. In many countries, including the U.S., Muslims have had to negotiate with cemetery owners to bury family members according to our traditions. For example, in 2013 Ireland finally overturned a 125 year old burial regulation requiring coffin burials. A spokesperson for the Irish Department of the Environment explained “The change to the rule follows concerns recently expressed by members of the Muslim community regarding their traditional burial rituals.”
The text at the bottom of the painting is from Surah Ta-Ha in the Quran. It can be translated as “From this very earth We created you and to the same earth We shall cause you to return, and from it We shall bring you forth to life again.” (Quran 20:55)
Muslim families may grow plants atop a grave, tending to them with love and care. The painting includes orange marigolds, white petunias, yellow birdsfoot trefoil, and red geraniums. I saw these flowers planted atop graves when I visited the cemetery in Indiana where some of my family members, Allah yerhamhom, are buried.
My father, sister, and I went to speak with a funerary administrator, who provided insight about the cemetery's Islamic section. Most modern cemeteries in the U.S. place major emphasis on landscaping. For example, bodies, coffins, or caskets are often placed into concrete boxes in the ground, to create uniform and smooth lawn-like settings, avoiding the uneven terrain of old cemeteries. This also makes it possible for workers to use riding lawn mowers. To accommodate Muslims at this particular cemetery, the bottom of the concrete box is removed and holes are drilled into the remaining concrete so that dirt may fall through – symbolically allowing for a natural burial, which is part of Islamic practice.
The funerary administrator we met encouraged us to spread the word in our community that self-landscaping, including placing stones or planting flowers atop graves, is not allowed. These practices make it difficult for the workers to use riding lawn mowers. When you visit the Muslim section, the uniform aesthetic of the cemetery disappears, as family members have taken the opportunity to care for the graves of their deceased loved ones in meaningful ways. Our family has not taken up the suggestion to spread the word.
The second Palestinian display in the Death exhibition is titled "In Palestinian Muslim communities, grieving families serve and are served" and focuses on the beit azza tradition. After the janazah (prayer service) and dafan (burial), the immediate family opens their home for three days. During this beit azza (house of condolences) guests are served qahwa saada (black coffee with cardamom) and dates. The display features household items from the families of Dina Omar and Malak Kanan, along with a moving story from Dina’s personal experience hosting a beit azza.
Next to the household items sits a tray with my father's cooking tools and spices. Chef Hosam works at Aladdin Pita restaurant in Indiana. One Friday at 6:35 AM he received a call that a young man from his village (Turmusayya) had died, and would be buried that same day in accordance with Islamic tradition. By 5 PM, he prepared eleven large platters of roasted lamb with kabseh rice, to be served at a community center in Chicago. This is when I realized Baba is a death worker, too. Over the years he has been on call to serve dozens of funerals and, no matter the time or day, he will pour his heart and soul into his cooking in honor of the community member who died as well as their grieving family.
You can experience Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum from October 28, 2023 to April 7, 2024. The exhibition will then travel to other museums over the next few years.
The following poem, Martyr, by Fadlurrahman was contributed to The Palestine Chronicle and translated by Muhammad Nihad.
Martyr
Do you remember the day I was killed?
And my poetry drenched in blood?
When I fought hunger with letters,
The strong ones tore my tongue.
The black sky above was as dark
As the black ribbon on your chest
And the black flag was hoisted
for my “Republic”.
The fragrance of burned incenses
Remembered the good old spring.
Wind mocked a smile on its lips
Kissing the nostalgic aroma.
A flea after a long search,
Reached my scared face
to cover it with the tiny wings.
My people walked carrying me
Their holy chants hit my keen ears
Like slogans, I couldn’t raise
And my funeral became
A march I couldn’t join.
My helpless dead heart trembled in anger
Moving the butterfly bullet it bore.
The blood spilt in motion
Tinged my white shroud with red.
Six feet deep was the womb
of the holy land
Ready to bear its son
to be born into eternity.
“What shall we plant on the martyr’s grave?”
Shouted an old man.
“A henna” came the reply.
“Upon the martyr of love,
Let it bloom, and colour
His pale hands red like blood”.
“No, a jasmine,” said a voice
“They resemble his teeth,
And on amorous nights
May his beloved’s hair
Untie its scent.
“Let’s plant both,” said someone
Putting an end to says.
Both bloomed together!
Beside the martyr lies
The grave of his beloved
Hennaed to beauty
with branches spreading to Quds.
And there stood jasmine
The headstone of their love
Perfumed by freedom
with flowers adorning Gaza.
#ReturnOurChildren #بدنا_ولادنا
I shared information about the Zionist occupation’s unacceptable and illegal theft of Palestinian corpses in volumes 11 and 20 of this deathcare digest. To this day Israel refuses to release the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians, currently detained in “cemeteries of numbers” and occupation freezers, so that grieving families may lay them to rest.
Earlier in this volume I referenced Jenin Yaseen’s painting in the Death exhibition. I want to highlight one section of the painting that both hauntingly and hopefully touches on the issue of the deceased Palestinians who have yet to be buried properly.
The artist explains, “It was really important for me to convey that Palestinian Muslims don’t always have the privilege of practicing our death rituals. Using sacred Palestinian embroidery, tatreez, I stitched the traditional motif for graves on the canvas, then painted a Palestinian body being pulled out from the grave motif by soldiers. The red poppy culturally symbolizes Palestinian martyrs. This was all meant to portray how Palestinians are not free, even after death. Our martyrs are held as prisoners under occupation which is a horrific and unjust reality for the Palestinian people.”
As a viewer of the painting, it feels as if the scene — including the colorful tatreez of the grave motif, the love and care with which Jenin Yaseen painted the martyr and poppy, and the soldiers blending into the background — provides an intention that the martyrs will be buried by their families. It’s as if the artist, with each stitch and brush stroke, is helping to sew and paint a future in which our martyrs will return home. Inshallah.
The people of Gaza are on my mind, in my heart, and the reason I’m marching in Chicago this week. As a death worker I often sit with death and grief and mourning, and yet right now is hard. So much gratitude to this Deathcare Digest, to you for reading this far, and for the resistance back home. Palestine will be free.
-STAY SAFE
-WHERE?
Malak Mattar is a Palestinian painter from Gaza. The post description reads, “Originally shared in May, 2021. Endless reality and it only gets worse and more brutal
Enough is enough”
The Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) created the 2023 Palestinian Feminist Futures Calendar as part of “an embodied feminist grammar and poetics of land, life, love, and liberation.” This month the PFC honors land and the Palestinian olive harvest.
“Land is a source of inspiration and a spiritual, moral, and political compass that guides our movement.
It is a provider of life, renewal, and sustenance, a site of belonging and gathering, and the place to which we will Return. The olive, long a symbol of land and life, mediates our rootedness in Palestine. Land and people are inextricably linked through a symbiotic relationship embedded in ancestry, love, and reciprocity. Wherever we are, memories of our land and the practices of the Palestinian stewards who steadfastly remain there, teach us interdependence, humility, and responsibility to all forms of life, both human and non-human. We seek to sustain and flourish our land and earth, and defend it from settler-colonial theft, capitalist extraction, and ecological violence.”
The calendar’s art for October 2023, shown above, is a mixed media piece by Dana Barqawi, a multidisciplinary artist and urban planner, based in Amman, Jordan. Beating Down Olives portrays Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season. During the olive harvest, Palestinian farmers face brutal and systematic attacks by Israeli settlers. Attacks include physical assault and beatings with stones, damage of property including homes, schools and cars, and theft and destruction of crops and fields. The olive harvest season is a time of celebration for the Palestinians. Mixed media: Acrylic, Thread, Goldleaf on cotton paper.
You can stay up to date with the PFC by following @palestinianfeministcollective