March 10, 2016
WHAT MAKES
US FAMILY?
WHAT MAKES
US BELONG
TO EACH OTHER?
Acceptance Speech:
The Mahmoud Darwish Award
For Literature: March 10, 2016
©2016 by Alice Walker
It is a distinct honor to receive this award that is named for the brave and brilliant Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Mahmoud Darwish wrote from the very heart of dispossession, cruelty, oppression and terror. That his own heart eventually gave out, and that he died at a relatively young age, is testament to his sufferings as a highly conscious, well educated and well traveled Palestinian. When I think of him I am reminded of how many of us, especially in these dark times, live mainly by the will of our deep love of our peoples, our cultures, our memories, ourselves – as the expression of thousands of years, and more, of existence on this extraordinary planet.
I believe the issue of Palestine and its liberation to be the defining Movement for Freedom and Autonomy of our time. It is often possible to tell almost everything one needs to know about a person by how they perceive what is happening to the Palestinian people. Though many still claim ignorance of Palestine’s history of dispossession under Zionist Israeli rule, more and more of the world has committed to study the real history, as opposed to the contrived, and can see clearly what has been, and is still, being done: The bombing of cities, the stealing of land, houses and businesses, the unconscionable battering, incarceration and murder of Palestinians of any age or sex, but especially the hunting down and killing of children. Every day in my Inbox I am informed of these child murders, which, as a mother, but really as a human being, I find almost unbearable.
How can a world prosper, in any respect, from the barbarity we are witnessing against a people whose “crime” is that they exist in their own land? And who can consider themselves safe in a world where atrocities without end are now commonplace?
What is to be done? The BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement has given the awakened world a tool with which to resist what is happening. Though it is a non-violent, selective protest against the actual violence of Israeli/American assault that includes use of white phosphorus bombs, it is under attack. Still, it is, at this point, our most potent option of resistance. We must do our best to defend it.
We must also insist that our entertainers and politicians visit Gaza and the West Bank before they sign up to embarrass us in Tel Aviv.
Making the world a better place begins with each of us: we have a duty, as human beings, to look on our brothers and sisters in other lands as our Other Selves. In every horrid situation or condition we witness, anywhere on the earth, we must imagine our own selves, our children, our parents, our grandparents and our friends, there as well. This is the beginning of compassion. Love of the whole of humanity, the whole of the planet, not just the part you feel belongs to you, or the part you feel you will always enjoy in comfort or safety.
Standing with the Palestinian people in their time of need, witnessing their courage, creativity, humor and generosity of all kinds, has been the most challenging work of my life, perhaps equal only to my years of helping to end segregation and its violence in Mississippi in the 1960s.
Just as I discovered the black people of Mississippi to be my own kin, in culture, persistence, humor, and determination, I find “family” among the Palestinian people.
Because, after all, what makes us belong to each other? It is our willingness to stand beside and with those who need us. As we need them to show us who we truly can be or already are.
I thank you, people of Palestine, as I perpetually thank the black people of Mississippi, for showing me who I am, and who I might continue to be, or might still become. This is a teaching, a gift, beyond price. There is no end to its usefulness.
Three deep bows.
Alice Walker
From: A Lover From Palestine, by Mahmoud Darwish
In the briar-covered mountains I saw you,
A shepherdess without sheep,
Pursued among the ruins.
You were my garden, and I a stranger,
Knocking at the door, my heart,
For upon my heart stand firm
The door and windows, the cement and stones.
I have seen you in casks of water, in granaries,
Broken, I have seen you a maid in night clubs,
I have seen you in the gleam of tears and in wounds.
You are the other lung in my chest;
You are the sound on my lips;
You are water; you are fire.
I saw you at the mouth of the cave, at the cavern,
Hanging your orphans’ rags on the wash line.
In the stoves, in the streets I have seen you.
In the barns and in the sun’s blood.
In the songs of the orphaned and the wretched I have seen you.
I have seen you in the salt of the sea and in the sand.
Yours was the beauty of the earth, of children and of Arabian jasmine.
And I have vowed
To fashion from my eyelashes a kerchief,
And upon it to embroider verses for your eyes,
And a name, when watered by a heart that dissolves in chanting,
Will make the sylvan arbours grow.
I shall write a phrase more precious than honey and kisses:
‘Palestinian she was and still is’.