Our roots in this land will bring them back

"Our names don’t identify us entirely. We slip between the words of guests. We have much to tell about the land to the stranger as she sews her scarf feather by feather from the space of our returning birds!”

. . . from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Innocent Villagers.” Darwish’s portrait is painted here by our team member Susan, on a remaining wall of the half-demolished home of the Rajibi family in the neighborhood of Ayin a-Loza in Silwan. These Palestinian homes exist just on the outskirts of the Old City of Jerusalem, but no one sees them – or rather, no one wants to see them. The regime attempts to hide them from view – to push them out and raze the evidence, blowing them away like smoke. And then it brings strangers to these ancient places, showing them a lie, claiming something new as old. But such a facade cannot erase a people so resilient, who retaliates with bright color amid the rubble saying, ‘We’re here and we’re still growing here. You may attempt to throw our seedlings away from here and across the world but we maintain our ancestral knowledge – our roots in this land will bring them back.’