Layla Anwar, “Sorry To Disturb You...”

“Sorry To Disturb You...”
by Layla Anwar

“Am so sorry to disturb you...am awake and you are asleep...

Am so sorry to disturb your snores and your slumber...I happen to be wide awake. Sorry to nudge you in your coma, sorry to prick you in your amnesia, sorry that am not just laying down watching you breathe...measuring every one of your royal inhalation exhalation, like the good slave that am supposed to be...Am really sorry about that.

Did I forget my "natural" place in those moments of insomnia, that gnaw inside of me like hot iron rods, like the sound of drills piercing my flesh, expecting me to hang on a wall like one of your "art" tableaux.

It's nearly dawn in the ghetto, I just thought "I'd run my mouth" a little before the forces of law and freedom start ordering me about...before a car explodes in my uncovered face, before I get my early morning silencer gun threat, with my Corn flakes and OJ.

OJ is the way they speak...they can't be bothered to say the whole word. They are too busy you know...they love abbreviations...to save time. OJ is orange juice.

Am juiced before the early morning sun...I might become raw juice before the sun rises...

Am squeezed in the Freedom juicer. And I see myself being whipped into, being desiccated into manageable particles, shredded into pieces...

I look into my Corn Flakes, and see my flakes floating in a sea of milk and honey...and a big mouth spooning, swallowing me...”

 Author’s Blog: “An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections In A Sealed Bottle...”
- http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2011/10/sorry-to-disturb-you.html

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"The Boston Globe‘s The Big Picture news stories brilliantly depict the human side of life right outside our doorstep, thousands of miles away. On 15 August 2011, The Big Picture published a compilation of photographs of people sleeping, including Palestinians. Photo #12 was initially a pleasant surprise. The fact that a photograph from Palestine was included in a popular photo journal not related to war, terrorism, Hamas, or “Islamism” indicates that people and the media might actually be moving away from their misshapen stereotypes. But the photo shows more than a sleeping Palestinian baby girl. It shows dozens of Palestinian women packed into an iron enclosure that looks very much like the gates one would find in a standard American dairy farm.”

- Sami Kishawi, - http://smpalestine.com/tag/checkpoint/

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