“All Activists on the Freedom Flotilla have been Abducted by Israel”

There is a crow at the beach. A murder on the shore. The cry is sudden, jarring, making my entire body jump. It doesn’t belong amidst the woosh of waves caressing the surf, the wind whispering between the palm fronds, the funky music playing on a never-ending loop from speakers somewhere behind us. Fresh juice, ice dripping inside, condensation falling on my knees, cheers and seashells littering the ground before me, 

and there is a crow at the beach, 

and Freedom has been captured. 

There is a crow at the beach. It is such an ominous sight. Beauty in the destruction; Death under the sun. There are no words to write, no poetry to symbolize.  You see it. You understand. I am sitting at the beach, there is a crow, and Freedom has been captured.

People who look like me, their features  shaded just a little differently— 

people who sound like me, their voices tuned just a little differently— 

people who pray like me, their verses held in palms, just a little differently— 

are starving. 

Its beak opens, and in its cry, I hear a question, “Where are you?” Since it knows I am at the beach, I accept that it means something else. My mouth trips over itself with excuses of privileged passports, people who won’t actually be detained for life, or killed as they fight for the lives of those who will always be closer to me than them. My tongue shackles itself with the fear of my actions leading to  permanent imprisonment, a government created for and by the oppressor, that will condemn me in a heartbeat to save face, neck, and dime. My teeth bear witness to my shame as the crow cocks its head at the dying and the mutilated and the grieving and I hold fast to my guilt and my sand and my ice-cold beverage. 

The truth is I have no excuse. 

I am at the beach, and there is a crow, and Freedom has been captured. 

Guilt is a hollow thing. Whether it is consuming me from outside in or inside out is a mystery. Just as the crow’s feathers mirror a space where all color is absorbed, my compassion  begins to mirror  a black hole. When they bombard my kin and my eyes with death and devastation, my body cannot help but grow accustomed to that which should never be familiar. And I hate it being familiar. 

So, guilt is a hollow thing, and the crow continues to stare at nails dug into my thighs and teeth clenched inside my jaw. Day in, day out, life marches on. We wake up and go to sleep, our days both numbered in this arbitrary race and blended together into a sludge of a lifetime. I get up and have breakfast —should I eat? should I vomit?— I watch TV, I sing in the car, I visit my family, I attend birthdays and weddings. I lie down and I pray —should I atone? should I be stoned?— I put my head to the ground, I recite verses for the fallen and the risen. And I woke up today to the news that Freedom has been captured, 

and there is a crow gracing us at the beach. 

The crow, vulture that it is, picks at the bones of joy and holidays, beak finding cigarette butts and soda-can tops in the sand. We are celebrating Eid, a divinely ordained joy —should we celebrate? should we rot?— but the crow’s caw is a necessary, unwelcome, irrefutable, inescapable fact. I cannot begrudge them their happiness, but none of them seem to realize that it is on borrowed time

And it is not even our time that we borrowed. 

The crow, vulture that it is, circles us all, waiting for  death inside to catch up with our skin and flesh, so it can feast on the remains. There is food on our plates and spilling over  trash bags instead of in the stomachs of our brothers and sisters. Our tongues are chilled to the touch with ice and sugar and fruit and tea and laughter. The crow cannot wait to taste that laughter in the face of the dry tongues and empty stomachs we have abandoned.

The crow, vulture that it is, flies up ahead, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before the lame and the sickly and the injured fall, even if they think they have a few more moments on their feet. We look around, confused at what the crow is doing here.

“We are not the ones who are dying. They are.” We point, our accusatory fingers quick to find, to blame, to inflict on others. We are so stupid. This crow knows. It was there when brother killed brother. It is here still. History repeats itself. This time the murderer will be the one buried in the sand, a crow picking at the remains of the criminal instead of the innocent. 

Because Freedom has been captured, 

and I am sitting on a beach,

and a crow caws and circles overhead. 

In a sea not too far from where I sit, separated by nothing but a man-made slither, on a boat full of life facing the devil, no crows fly. Because Freedom may have been captured, but it is not dead. On roads heading my way, there are thousands in a convoy desperate to reach the unreachable, and not a single crow blemishes the sky. Because there is a force within humanity that surpasses death. Across a peninsula, so close I can practically see the silhouette of the mountains as I sit here, there are no crows over starving bodies, crumbling bodies, dying bodies. Because vultures do not feed on that which will never die. 

But there’s a crow perched behind my chair, its eye like a shadow attached at the seams of my body. It is waiting for my death, which is coming all too soon 

Because Freedom has been captured,

and across this sea, people are starving,

and I am sitting with a crow at the beach.