You live so far away, yet I feel you close.
How can we be separated by time, space, and religion?
Just because I'm an American Jew and you're a Palestinian Atheist?
Everything has double meanings, everything can be a potentially
fatal argument.
"Middle East", "Israel",
"Palestine": even the names of locations can be argued over.
As Roland Barthes explains in "Work to Text", the words
change simply with the alteration of the signifier. We each comes from
alternate sides of one of the historically resilient issues.
How can we ever agree on the issues of country, of place, of belonging,
of home? Is home where my heart is
(with you) or where I'm from? Should I give up my culture, my heritage,
thousands of years of the struggles my family has gone through in order to live
in our romantic bubble?
It is impossible to separate the essence of myself without my
identity as a Jew. As someone who has visited Israel, I fell in love with the
land simultaneously as I fell for you. When I'm back in America, I miss both
the land and the person.
"אני
אוהבת אותך"
I love you. It applies to both.
How can I ever choose one? Or more devastating, give one up?
My heart is silent in response.
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