A personal essay by Jess Semaan
The wee hours of the morning. Another morning, another sunrise, where my father would find me crouched on the balcony, shivering in a mix of terror and curiosity. I was 10 and 11 and 12. Dealing with regular early teenage matters like two new chestnuts on my chest, and a school unrequited crush. And what I thought was also a regular teenage matter: tracing the Israeli fighter jets to find out where they will bomb next. I would track their altitude, their direction, their numbers, by the intensity of the sound. On those nights and early mornings, going to sleep was useless, for the jets would come in my dreams too.
The wee hours of the morning. My father would light up a Marlboro cigarette in one hand with a Turkish coffee in another, and turn up the akhbar (the news). The akhbar are a staple in our part of the world. Always in the background, on at all times like the white noise machine in a therapist’s office. I like to claim that us Arabs invented the 24 hour news cycle.
The sound of the Israeili jets haven’t left me. They still intercept my days. Sometimes disguised as fleet week in San Francisco, others as mere SFPD helicopters roaming the skies looking for a thief, they tell me.
That early spring morning my father took me in his arms and asked:
Dad:
“Are you afraid?”
Me:
“I just want to know if they will bomb our neighborhood.”
We lived nearby the electricity plant.
Those late Israeli teens loved to press eject from thousand of miles above. And blow up our electricity. Sometimes our lonesome airport. Sometimes the water facility. And “by mistake” and in between, our children. And women. And men.
I watch Israelis online arguing about the right to defend their “country”. How this is their land, because a holy book said so. Arguing while simultaneously children an hour drive from them, are being killed by a mere precision bomb, made in the USA. As a trauma psychotherapist, I know very well that it takes a highly traumatized person, disconnected from themselves to sustain consistent levels of dehumanization of others, and rationally debate the right use of a word, while they kill them en masse.
Spending time on the balcony tracing military jets, seemed like a normal activity, that begets curiosity. It is also how I internalized that justice, safety and peace are not made for me. These concepts do not even enter the realm of possibility.
Why is it always about their rights? We get to have wrongs. We get to have bombs. They get to have fancy passports.We get to have pieces of paper that won’t get us anywhere. They get to have shelters. Aid. Sympathy. A lot of sympathy. And billions to shop for weapons. We get to have terrorism. Anti-semitism. Victim blaming. We are dumb. We are weak. We chose this. Did we? You wonder? They do not like that you wondered.
That morning, when my dad found me on the balcony, I was 11. I was 11 when the massacre of Qana took place.
Correction 1: When the Israeli military bombed a UN school located in the town of Qana, in the south of Lebanon, that was housing hundreds of children.
Correction 2: When the Israeli army, knowingly bombed a UN school located in the town of Qana, in the south of Lebanon, that was housing hundreds of children who were sleeping.
Qana, it is said in the Bible, is the place where Jesus turned water into wine. That year, the IDF turned the burgeoning spring grapes into blood.
A Stanford classmate back in 2010, hosted a lunchtime talk, on what he learned about business principles of leadership being a sniper in the IDF. I walked by and at the time felt nothing. Then went to my dorm room and threw up.
The gaslighting works like that. It makes you forget your history, leave your body permanently, and start hating yourself. Gaslighting doesn’t ask, how does extremism emerge. How come there are so many Palestinian refugees. How does unhealed trauma manifest. The reverse gaslighting works like that. A ton of support from our people. We need our people to come home to. To cry to. And most urgently, sharing out stories, with the hope that more victims of propaganda to wake up and join us. It starts with one. One is plenty. A wandering one. Let us wonder together.
They do not like that we wonder.