Sage:Miramiya

I am currently sick with major stomach problems and have just been given a strong sage tea mixture by my friends in Jenin to drink - I am told it will heal my stomach. The taste is pretty damn bitter, but I down it quickly, eagerly hoping to end the waves of nausea.

Sage: Miramiya in Arabic. An herb that grows wild in Palestine..and in Turtle Island (the land of north america). This little plant is the link in my mind right now between Palestine and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.

I went to visit Ni'lin for the first time, a village to the North-West of Ramallah. I sat underneath olive trees in this beautiful farming land as someone pointed out over the hill where the wall was being built and how the land had been stolen by the encroaching Israeli settlements of Modin Illit (Keryat Sefr), Mattityahu, Hashmona'im and others. Already Ni'lin has seen its land diminish to 1/5 of its original size - now the wall confiscates another 2 500 dunums of farming land. The olive trees are short and stubby but are generations old - deceiving in appearance when I am used to seeing the old growth forests in northern ontario or the west coast of canada - there they are so tall you can imagine how they have been there long before any European settlers or lumber companies aiming to chop them down.

I am told that miramiya grows wild under the old olive trees and in the hills of Palestine. The wind is constantly blowing when you sit on a hilltop such as the one outside of Ni'lin overlooking the settlements and the construction of the wall. When the wind blows strong you can smell the wild sage and thyme. I picked up a small branch and rubbed it between my fingers - the rest of the day the sage oil was seeped in to my hands.

I came to Ramallah and checked my email - there was a new message saying Shawn Brant - spokesperson for the Tyendinaga Mohawks, along with 9 others are arrested again - facing serious charges for, plain and simple, defending their land and upholding their rights as the Mohawk nation. Shawn has now been put under 23 hour lockdown for burning sage in his cell - a tradition, a medicine - punished by settler courts that are clearly designed to uphold colonial rule. Burning sage in his cell. 23 hour lock down - unable to see or even really speak with his children.

Back in Ni'lin - at a recent demonstration I was walking in the back as the demonstrators from the village marched through that same olive grove to the location that the wall is being built - bulldozers were working at digging up land, surrounded securely by fully armed IDF soldiers and military jeeps. As the demonstration approached the soldiers began firing round after round of tear gas canisters directly in to the crowd. People re-gained their breath and went right back forward towards the bulldozers. Again the soldiers drowned the area in tear gas, then took aim and started shooting rubber coated bullets at close range. The youth, some with slingshots in hand, started grabbing stones and throwing them as far as possible at the soldiers. Back and forth it went, all the while people choking from the toxic smell of tear gas or some being carried away in stretchers after being hit by rubber bullets. One kid - 15 years old - had a rubber bullet enter his leg above his knee - his friends trying to get to him to help him but the soldiers were still firing. Finally the medics got to him and carried him down the hill towards an ambulance. At one point the grass caught on fire, spreading quickly in the dry area of the olive grove. People ran through the gas to jump on the fire in an attempt to put it out to stop it from burning the land.

In the midst of this the many miramiya bushes on the ground are being stamped on by soldiers and people running away. There is a strange mixture of smells between the toxic gas and healing sage...

As the demonstration ends I am sitting with some of the people from the popular committee talking about what people want to do next against the building of the wall on their land. They ask me about canada and so I begin to talk about what I know of the history and ongoing process of genocide, transfer, and land and resource theft of the First Nations people. And about Tyendinaga - about the land reclamation and the Quarry, the highway and rail blockades in resistance, and the recent jailing of leaders from the community - treated as criminals on their own land for defending their land.

'Ah, i see, Palestinians in Canada', one man says.

'Yes', i said, 'it is similar, but for 500 years, and i am the settler'.

We talk some more about the history of both Palestine and Turtle Island.

'We know this very well..The land is everything - we give everything for it' he says.

In Balata camp - speaking with an 80 year old woman from Haifa - living for 60 years in a refugee camp. She puts sage in her tea everyday - says it is good for you to drink sage every day. She tells us that the best place to pick Miramiya in Nablus in on the mountain, but that she can't go there because of the settlement and therefore closure for Palestinians. But a friend managed to bring her some sage from the mountain, and the rest of the time people in the camp grow the herb in small pots on their steps of their crowded cement refugee houses.

Sage - Miramiya grows wild and resiliant on the land. It is medicine and ceremony in the face of 500 years or 60 years. Medicine in the cells of 12 000 political prisoners in Palesine; burned in ceremony by political prisoners in Quinte Detention Centre in Turtle Island.

Back to drinking my tea...I am realizing that perhaps my stomach issues are from being...i think the word is overwhelmed, and so incredibly humbled that my heart has dropped in to my stomach and is swishing around down there.

From: A State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish

...This siege will endure until the besiegers feel,

like the besieged that anger is an emotion like any other.

"I don't love you. I don't hate you,"

The prisoner said to the interrogator.
"My heart is full of that which is of no concern to you. My heart is full of the aroma of sage.

My heart is innocent, radiant, brimming. There is no time in the heart for tests"...

Speech of the Red Indian by Mahmoud Darwish:
http://arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com/2007/01/poem-speech-of-red-indian.html

For more on Tyendinga:http://www.ocap.ca/supporttmt
For more on Ni'lin:http://stopthewall.org/factsheets/1669.shtml