How I Stopped Paying for Genocide, Part I
A gift for my cousin sits heavy in the corner, meant for the baby he’d never meet, Israel murdered his pregnant wife and unborn child in cold blood, their tiny clothes now lying like the bones of a story violently ended.
I carry Gaza in every fiber of me, in my heart, in my eyes, in every piece of gear I touch. That weight moves with me wherever I go. Now I am packing again: blankets folded into neat stacks, clothes pressed. Every shirt carries grief and survival, stitched with the stubborn life of a people who refuse erasure.
I know this weight: from fleeing Gaza in 2014 after my newborn was injured, to the years of uneasy refuge in D.C., until even survival there became impossible. I sold my house, closed accounts, and left the United States for Ireland.
Each move was a survival attempt. Each suitcase was tethered to memory and loss.
Life in the United States gnawed at me. Each swipe of the card is a choice. I scanned every aisle for ties to Elbit Systems. Every salute to the flag felt like complicity, living inside the empire’s favorite colony, while my child, an American citizen, was bombed by America.
We fully divested, and then came Ireland, not as escape, but as intervention. For my Irish American partner, the country was in his blood, not the green beer version sold on St. Patrick’s Day, but in sean nós songs in smoky pubs, footpaths worn by ancestors evading occupiers, hedge schools once outlawed, and of course, Bloomsday. We only disagreed on where to settle, Dublin or Galway? I said Dublin, but Galway stayed in my mind.
