by Lillian Farzan-Kashani (Santa Monica, CA)
How many more tears
do I have left for a home
I’ve never been?
Longing to see where my mother
played when she was just
a daughter.
The other boys left as my father,
named after Elyahu, ventured into the water,
seen as dirty, I’m afraid, his name a tricky thing to hide.
And where my grandfather took a routine beating
on the way to school for being a Jew
in Tehran.
How many more tears
do I have left for Palestine?
They say thirty percent of the deaths are children alone.
Aid distribution a catastrophe,
a needlessly fatal obstacle course for the hungry.
How can the extremists live with themselves?
I hear the stories, read the poems,
and feel changed. Please don’t look away
for too long.
We must know
the horror
to alter it.
Suddenly, reservoirs of tears
I thought had emptied
appear replenished.
How many more tears do I have left to cry
for the hostages– their families, the honorable peace builders–
even that poor dog, killed.
From Be’eri to DC, followed by chants of “Free Palestine!”
This–this is not how you liberate,
though I myself have no answers beyond love.
That is the antidote I hold onto tightly
mistakenly thinking I could leave it
to the political experts.
How many tears do I possibly have left
listening to one of the survivors
after all she has lived through on her kibbutz lately.
Vehemently stating how unwelcome the PM is
like a bad word, I do not wish to give his name
the time nor the space.
Of course the last thing on earth she would want to do
is pose with him. What— for optics?
You really want to discuss the optics right now?
How much longer will I be chained to the news
eagerly awaiting the latest episode of Amanpour?
This is my least favorite addiction.
But who else can I trust?
Am I supposed to go about as normal?
The whole of it has been tossed upside down, to be reductive.
Trying to gather a morsel of control:
listen, dialogue, donate, organize, protest, build peace.
Rinse, Repeat.
While my family and my love hide in the mamads.
Bombs where there should be falling stars
over your home and mine.
Giving way to a day when we share
the bounty of olives,
laugh over Turkish coffee, the irony.
Together in the shuk
bound, our stories
forever intertwined.
Lillian Farzan-Kashani is an Iranian American and Jewish therapist, poet, and speaker based in Los Angeles, CA. Much of her work is rooted in being a child of immigrants and is reflective of her intersectionality. Read more about her professional and creative pursuits at https://www.lillianfarzan.com/
The Jewish Writing Project 