Each Palestinian grief is particular. For the diasporic Palestinian, sorrow helices with guilt – guilt from knowing we are spared many of the direct violences inflicted on our kin living in Palestine. And sorrow, for exile is its own kind of violence. We carry murdered histories across a fractured map. We live in the shadows of the world that might have been – a world which we do not see, but feel in our bones.
This sorrow is often an internal wound. For the Palestinian diaspora, “survival” often means living among those who would prefer you disappear. Too many of us have felt condemned to silence our sorrow and rage, left only to swim in a consensus that sanitises and excuses our deaths. Nothing is more lonely than grieving among people who erase, or cheer, your tragedy.
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