For those who are not meant to survive, how do you imagine happiness? For those condemned to the terrifying rhythms of imminent death, how do you cheat the fate of a tragic end? When living is impossible, how do you smuggle life back in? For decades, Palestinians have rehearsed a form of suspended living haunted by the menace of death, grief, and erasure. For months now, we have been intimate, and now fatigued, witnesses to the brutal flows of what life under genocide looks like. What else is there to know? What part of your body has not shuddered yet? What part of your soul is not dead yet? How many more standing ovations to war criminals will you tolerate before you realize that in this age prophets of peace are arsonists in fire brigades.
I recently wrote about the and issued a narrative to denounce our collective debility to save Gaza. But today, I wish not to write about Palestinian sorrow or grief, however rightful these emotions can be for a people abandoned to the evil calculus of empire and the callousness of a post-factual age of endless information and no spine. Instead, I wish to insist on Palestinian happiness as radical protest.
When you are not supposed to exist, to be who you are, to live in your own land, to be with your own people, to name your villages and towns, and to roam freely without the humiliation of checkpoints and curfews, imagining happiness becomes an act of radical rebellion, a transgressive practice of stubborn freedom. What does a happy endin.