Tariq Alarabi's "Carob Tree" (translated by Fady Joudah)

Thoughts on patience.

Carob Tree

I want to talk with you. It’s been a while
since anyone’s talked with me, no one around
says to me the things I say to you
when I’m sleepwalking.
For example, yesterday at 3AM the soldiers rained
tear gas bombs on us, ten workers
who crammed in a walk-in refrigerator for produce.
And the gas, like crude oil
that spilled into sea,
a forest fire that occupied all the air.

The carob tree was uprooted.
I still don’t know what you’re like
when you catch the flu.
Tomatoes are cheap this season
and the farmers are sad.
I’ve saved the best tomatoes for you.
As for the first thing I do when I wake up
I check the weather.
Weather enthusiasts in Palestine, like followers
of skincare products on Instagram,
are many.

And one more thing, since you’re not here:
do you like eggplant?


first published in The Baffler (June, 2021)

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This poem today is one of my favorite poems that was published in The Baffler a few years ago amidst a whole suite of poems featuring Palestinian poets.

Reading today’s poem again, I am struck by these seemingly-ordinary lines at the heart of it:

I still don’t know what you’re like
when you catch the flu.
Tomatoes are cheap this season
and the farmers are sad.

Ostensibly, this is a poem that speaks toward the hole made out of loss, toward the memory of someone once here, and now no longer. It begins simply enough:

I want to talk with you.

I think I love that. I think I love the simplicity of this poem’s beginning, and the ordinariness of this poem’s heart. I think I love that this poem is a poem made out of the ordinariness that exists within the extraordinary difficulty of war, of conflict, of struggle that perhaps feels never-ending, and certainly feels unjust. I think I love the fact that, when this poem reaches to offer something to that hole that loss makes out of life, it offers tomatoes, eggplants, the daily talk of weather. I don’t think I love these things; I know I do.

I have been thinking, too, of Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s poetry, which I wrote about over eight months ago. In that post, I mentioned this poem, “Daily I Imagine Them,” which reads, in full:

Those who die in wars that don't concern them,
they were driving through shortcuts
or smoking their cigarettes on the roof,
watching a romantic comedy
or a cooking show,
they were passing through the wrong war
to become numbers and martyrs.

I imagine their sorrow as I cross a checkpoint,
wait for my kids after school,
peel garlic and smell my fingers,
or peek out the window to shoo pigeons away.
And at night in bed
I dream of a war
that's got no war in it.

I’ve thought of this poem more than a few times in the past weeks; I’ve thought of it often. I’ve thought of those final lines: I dream of a war / that’s got no war in it, especially as war, conflict, and genocide continue in Gaza, and how, instead of a ceasefire, there are these little four hour pauses, small moments built into the day to allow people to leave before the bombing resumes. Four hours of simulated safety amidst a day of violence. And I think that’s why I’m thinking, too, of Alarabi and Al-Hayyat’s work. I am thinking of the little details, the ordinary things they capture — what is lost when war is so much of what makes up a life:

driving through shortcuts

smoking their cigarettes on the roof

watching a romantic comedy
or a cooking show

peel garlic and smell my fingers,
or peek out the window to shoo pigeons away.

Al-Hayyat’s poem above is a poem, I know, of ordinary moments. Ordinary moments save for the extraordinary fact of what they exist within — war.

Here, too, is another of Al-Hayyat’s poems, “Daydream.”

I’ll write about a joy that invades Jenin from six directions,
about children running while holding balloons in Am’ari Camp,
about a fullness that quiets breastfeeding babies all night in Askar,
about a little sea we can stroll up and down in Tulkarem,
about eyes that stare in people’s faces in Balata,
about a woman dancing
for people in line at the checkpoint in Qalandia,
about stitches in the sides of laughing men in Azzoun,
about you and me
stuffing our pockets with seashells and madness
and building a city.

There is a litany of ordinariness here, too, isn’t there? The ordinary joy of children running while holding balloons. The ordinary humor of the stitches in the sides of laughing men. The ordinariness of a day spent stuffing our pockets with seashells. These are beautiful things because they exist.

Last week, walking with my wife down 2nd Avenue, I saw two children, each holding balloons. They were walking the other way, dawdling behind their parents. My wife and I passed them, and then, just a second later, I heard one of them scream. I turned around and saw the two children, but I only saw one balloon. One child was still holding their balloon. The other had their hands over their mouth, their wide eyes looking up. Their balloon was floating into the sky. Awfully sad, I know. But terribly adorable. I couldn’t help but smile.

When I went back outside about an hour later to lug laundry to the laundromat, I saw the same family again. This time there were no balloons, and the two children were smiling, playing with each other, hopping up to the curb from the street, zigging and zagging along the sidewalk. I imagined the other child letting their balloon go into the sky not long after their sibling’s balloon had been lost to the air. Or I imagined them trying to share their single balloon, and then losing it in all the fun. Or I imagined an angry, short-lived fight, the sibling who had lost their balloon reaching for the remaining balloon, causing a hand to let go, the balloon to drift off into the afternoon. Whatever the case, I marveled at the simplicity of their joy, the steadfast long-lasting-ness of their sibling-solidarity, the playfulness at the heart of their simply being alive.

I guess I am talking about this because one of the few things I have learned in the short time I have been alive is the reliability of patience. I was not surprised to see the two children balloon-less and smiling, because I have come to realize that joy comes back around. Teaching reminds me of this constantly. I have leaned away from the rapid and urgent desire to fix or remedy what seems wrong in the moment, and I have leaned instead into trust and patience — trust that whatever good intentions I have for a given lesson will eventually, if such intentions are authentic, come through, and patience in the slowness of that process amidst whatever complications arise.

But the sorrow, for me, at the heart of Alarabi and Al-Hayyat’s work is that patience must be one of the first kindnesses that is decimated by the ongoing violence of war. The patience I make a conscious effort to harbor in my life each day is a patience that gives birth to hope. I place my hope, I should say, in my patience. The parents watching the running children in Al-Hayyat’s “Daydream” must find joy in that single and ordinary moment because violence devours hope, the devouring of which devours patience, too. Joy does not necessarily come back around. It is not promised.

In Alarabi’s poem, I think of these lines:

For example, yesterday at 3AM the soldiers rained
tear gas bombs on us, ten workers
who crammed in a walk-in refrigerator for produce.

I don’t need to explain the deep, painful sorrow of transforming a refrigerator used for produce into a makeshift shelter. I am struck, though, by a line that comes later:

I’ve saved the best tomatoes for you.

I don’t know if this is patience or hope or the complex and wildly human desire to simply continue on, to endure, in the face of unrelenting difficulty. But it is beautiful. And so, so sad. One consequence of ongoing violence must be what it does to something like a promise, something like saving something for someone else for a future time, which is the stuff of hope, which is the stuff of patience. It renders — violence does — life more conditional than it already is. It ruins the daily promise of a heartbeat; the little gestures that make up the ordinary. It ruins what a life is built on.

Thinking of that word — patience — I thought that maybe it shared a root with peace. I thought that maybe both words carried that same root: pax, which means peace. It would have done well, I thought, for what I have been trying to get at above. That patience comes with peace. That we are allowed patience because of peace. But I was wrong. Patience comes from the Latin patientum, which simply means suffering. It means endurance, continuing on in the face and difficulty of something larger.

When we look, then, from a place of relative privilege to a place where such privilege is not guaranteed; when we look to a place like Gaza, where conflict is unjustly part of the fabric of the everyday, what we are really looking at, then, is patience in its truest form, which is a kind of endurance. I am carrying that framework with me today, because, as someone who prides myself on my own patience, I know I must extend my solidarity to a place and a people who model that patience ten-thousandfold. I extend my solidarity because, too, of what this newsletter is named: Ordinary Plots. Even in this country, where privilege or safety are not inherently guaranteed, there is, I imagine, a more widespread experience of the ordinary. The children playing with balloons. The garlic peeled. The cigarettes smoked. The hot coffee on a chilly autumn morning. Laughter, yes. And someone picked up and held after skinning their knee.

When I say I have patience, then, I think I am saying I have hope, because I have near endless models of little moments of joy. I witness them every day. I witness them while doing laundry and while walking to the train and while sipping coffee on the walk to school and while standing in a classroom. Yes — joy is what each day, for me, is built upon. And so I know I must extend my solidarity to a place where such joy is not guaranteed, and yet still is sought. A place where the tomatoes are saved, and the dreams are dreamed, and the balloons are held as the children run.

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Some Notes:

1. The inimitable poet and writer Anne Boyer resigned from her position as the Poetry Editor of New York Times Magazine last week. Her short post about it is worth reading. “If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry,” she writes, “then that is the true shape of the present.” I want to say, briefly, that I admire the courage, resolve, and principle of her decision. In a world where positions of prestige in poetry are few and far between, it takes such a remarkable sense of commitment to one’s values to rescind such a position, especially if one occupies one of those privileged positions. I am a high school teacher who writes a Substack about poetry for a few thousand people each week. I left my adjunct, untenured position in academia years ago, and, in the years since, as I have taken on more and more labor as a result of my day job, I have published fewer and fewer poems each year. If I did not continue writing this newsletter, I don’t know what contact I would have with the world of writing. I truly don’t. I guess what I am saying is that it is a difficult thing to maintain one’s recognition in (and connection to) the world of poetry. You have to try to do it, with an almost incessant kind of labor that sometimes can feel egotistical and sometimes can feel wildly unseen. I cannot imagine what it would be like, after years of such labor, to hold an editorial position for one of the most reputable, well-known magazines in the world. And I cannot imagine the resolve required to leave such a position because of how one’s values do not align with those of one’s employer. I can only know that it must take real commitment and care, and I applaud that care.

2. As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, the ad hoc coalition Writers Against the War on Gaza has been a powerful resource that has, in these days, reminded me of all the various potentials for solidarity in this moment. You can follow them on Instagram here.

3. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.