After Seeing Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children, A Play For Gaza
by Rafiq Kathwari
Tell her the proper name of things
This is barbed wire
This is a watch-tower (so unlike the one in Brooklyn)
These are thermal imaging video cameras
These are 25-foot-high concrete slabs
Don’t tell her this is a fence
Tell her it is a wall
Teach her to spell a p a r t h e i d
Tell her about the 200 nukes in the Negev
Tell her how freedom-loving Yanks are aiding
History’s most persecuted minority
The specious democracy in the Middle East
The colonial-settler state embracing Biblical pretensions
To systematically exterminate
The world’s most dispossessed tribe
Tell her the truth so she grows up to speak its name
Rafiq Kathwari is a Kashmiri-American poet. Follow him on twitter @brownpundit