18.8.09

People not places



PEOPLE NOT PLACES
Lyrics by Invincible, Suhell Nafar (DAM), and Abeer

Prepare for take off
Touch down Ben-Gurion

Strict search make sure nobody enters with bombs
Blue white flags
For the Birthright Tour I'm on

Never mention three villages the airport is on

Recent history buried
But it speaks through the sand
All Jews: Law of Return

I don't seem to understand
"A land without a people for people without a land"?

But I see a man standing with a key and a deed in his hand
First stop: museum of the Holocaust

Walkin outside—in the distance—saw a ghost throwing a Molotov

Houses burnt with kerosene
Mass graves
Couldn't bear the scene
It wasn't a pogrom—it was the ruins of Deir Yassin
Next stop: shopping at the Kenyon Malcha

Built it on the back of the town Al-Malha

Wishing we could call it its name
Uphauled by the change
And now a mall full of chains
Is all that remains

 

This line is a reference to the book All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi (Institute for Palestine Studies).

HOOK:
My Ima misses people not places
Has she seen the towns with names in Arabic the Hebrew replaces?
The policies are evil and racist, deceitful and heinous
You'l never be a peaceful state with legal displacement

[Abeer - translated from Arabic]
Remember the names of our cities before you came and replaced it
Remember and tell me how am I supposed not to miss a nation living within us?


At the Wailing Wall I'm rollin a wish
Then stick it in between the hole in the bricks
I'm feelin more than melancholy
This used to be the Moroccan quarter

Until we stopped em short and
Now their grandkids is the ones that's throwing rocks at borders
I aint one to play and I don't pray often
So I'm AWOL'n

While you making native sons
Feel like a stranger in they own land like James Baldwin
This aint about a Qur'an or a synagogue or Mosque or Torah
The colonizer break it into acres and dunums

Erasing the culture
Changed Haifa to Chaifa
Changed Yaffa to Yaffo

The old city left to haunt
Hummus pronounced chumoos, we ate in a restaurant

Next hit the discotheque
Yes we on the list of guests
Palestinians cant get in
Its blatant disrespect
Cops stop em for speakin they language
Its dangerous
To repeat it when
With history we disconnect

[Suhell Nafar (DAM) - translated from Arabic]
My life is like a flight from an Israeli airport
It means that you'll never see me with pink

And I know that I'm 1 but they say that I'm 5

They're dying to talk talk to me
So the security wait in the entrance
Suddenly the whole airport flew and it became Tel Aviv airport
Even though its in Lydd

Dig the land of Lydd and you'll see resistance
Go to the houses you'll see hopelessness
The streets are called Tzahal and Hertzl

Not Salahadin

Khen el Helu

Became sour
A place for junkies and addicts
The carpets of the Dahamash Mosque
Is covering the wound that is still bleeding

Yehud Lod

Another project that drives you crazy
And its not the first and its not the last
We're an ocean and the Zionist project is a ship
We're rowing with the right and the left wing straight to the waterfall
When they fall the Holy Land will stop being a hell land

HOOK

200 year old olive trees
Uprooted the groves
To build a wall
Now their future enclosed
Settlements spreading like cancer and toxic sewage polluted the roads

Now full of checkpoints
I superimpose the truth and it shows
Village ruins overgrown with planted trees
Who'd have thought the "desert blooms" and Tu Bishvat

I cant believe
This aint environmental
Disguising lies, extincting lives like manatees
Callin it a transfer? Please—
More like a catastrophe!
Birthright tours recruiting em, confuse em into moving in
Claim its only names and words but denying the root of them
Power been abusing it
Our past never excusing them
60 years since 48 and 40 since Jerusalem
My boy Shadi wanted to visit it so badly
He lied he's diabetic to see it for five seconds

One Nine Four ruled the courts in the case

Mom, you can't disconnect a people from the importance of place

HOOK

هناك تعليقان (2):

RiddleR يقول...

Thank you so much for the lyrics :D

أبو كريم يقول...

thanks alot for your effort and God bless you

هرم الناس وكانو يرضعون
عندما غنى المغنى عائدون
يافلسطين ومازال المغنى يتغنى
وملايين اللحون
فى فضاء الجرح تفنى
واليتامى من يتامى يولدون
يافلسطين
وأرباب النضال المدمنون
سائهم ما يشهدون
فمضوا يستنكرون
ويخوضون النضالات على هز القنانى
وعلى هز البطون....عائدون

ولقد عاد الأسى للمرة الألف
فلا عدنا ولا هم يحزنون


أحمد مطر

 
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