To you, my loves, in Rafah…

I cannot pray for your life, your survival, or even the lack of your suffering. For already your suffering knows no end. And, for reasons I cannot comprehend, prayers don’t work that way. Ask and ye shall receive, they say. But we must limit our asking to that which is in the realm of reality.

So for what then shall I pray?

That your children survive, if traumatized? That your children’s children remember and speak your names? That your suffering may not be in vain?

But that the sorrow, the pain, though carried by generations like a psalmist’s refrain, may live in their bodies, our bodies, our brains, a testament of trauma and truth, yet without corrupting our hearts, without expanding, like a balloon, leaving no room for hope to flourish and forgiveness too?

Is such a prayer any closer to the truth of our current capacity?

Is it more realistic to ask for such elasticity in the sense of our anger and rage, that our hope may not be choked by hate, even when we are ignored, forgotten, put away, by a world that confuses victor for victim? Because only the winners’ stories are licensed for media coverage, the conqueror unquestioned while we who suffer are silenced.

Or perhaps my prayer is this:

That hardened hearts may be melted like butter – a bid for peace and punishment both. For who, upon understanding the evil unleashed on another, by your own hand, your own power, your own lack of restraint would not be tormented in a jail-cell, a hell of your own shame?

Is that what Pharaoh felt when all was said and done, I wonder. When his slaves had crossed the fickle sea and he surveyed the destruction for which his hard-heartedness served as seed  – the chariots and the chariot drivers drowned, far, far down, so deep beneath the returning waves? The boils and the bullfrogs. All the firstborn dead? Then? Did he yet repent? Consumed by his own shame?

And the ones who still today claim those ancient Israelites as their ancestors, unshared: how discordant rings the tone of their hypocrisy. No Moses here, only pharaoh after pharaoh in Congress and Knesset, bearing down, stubborn and insistent in their right to cause more pain.

And you who bear it? What prayer’s fit for you?

May you be equally stubborn in your faith. May your children’s cries be heard by God and globe. May none of it be in vain. May you rise up from the ashes, the emptiness, like the tomb, to proclaim:

This is my land too. My inheritance of humanity. My dignity. My name. Your cruelty will not crush me, will not corrupt me, will not keep me from the love of God that will one day reign.

For you, too, belong in this world. Beloved. Habibiin.

You have the right to breathe. To let your heart beat. To eat. To feed your children and the flame of your spirit, to flourish in the world and help make all things new. You, too, belong.

Perhaps that is my prayer for you:

That in your very bones you know your own belonging, that the bombing and the bullying and the bullets are harbingers not just of doom, but of falsehoods, so very untrue. Do not believe their wicked and horrific lie. And even as you die – for oh, habibiin, you will very likely die – before the heart stops beating, before the blood congeals, know beyond the shadow of a doubt the truth of you own being, your belovedness and belonging, and be at peace.

I am sorry, my loves, that this prayer is all I can offer you. In sha’ Allah it will do.