Oksana Ponaida Reads Ukrainian Poetry

Oksana Ponaida was born in Ukraine in 1971, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. Her father, a professional musician and choirmaster, encouraged her passion for music. She studied music throughout her schooling, attending a music academy in Lviv.

Oksana came to the UK with two of her three children. Her eldest son remains in Ukraine, serving as a fighting soldier. Her 18 y.o. daughter studies dance in Peterborough and her 13 y.o. daughter paints. Oksana has an active musical life in the UK, singing in a church choir, participating in charity concerts and making music with Ukrainian families in Peterborough.

The family came to the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. They are settled in their own home now. Oksana writes, ‘I am happy that at least my two children are safe and can study in peace.’

Oksana reads three poems, from Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine.

'When You Clean Your Weapon' by Borys Humenyuk, in Ukranian and English.

'He Says Everything Will Be Fine' by Lyubov Yakymchuk, in English.

'Caterpillar' by Lyubov Yakymchuk, in Ukrainian and English.

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Oksana singing in church in the UK (left) and at an event (right):

Oksana teaching in class:

Olive Harvest in Palestine

Rania Tawfiq Abu Taima is the second author in our series featuring writings from the Gaza based group We Are Not Numbers. The essay below is published with permission from We Are Not Numbers.

The mission of We Are Not Numbers is to create a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who together can bring about a profound change for Palestinians by getting their voices heard. WANN provides the world with direct access to the Palestinian narrative without restrictions and without foreign intermediaries speaking on behalf of Palestinians.

The season begins

November is not an ordinary month in Palestine.

Young and old hands come together as the olive harvest season begins. We have been eagerly awaiting this time all year.

My family owns two plots bearing olive trees. The one in the garden behind our home holds nearly twenty trees. The other holds three times as many and sits on the eastern border, about a ten-minute walk from our house.

We wait for the sign to start our work: the light “olive rain” that washes the dust off the fruit.

Once that happens, my father and uncle bring out the basic tools from our warehouse, each considered a hand that joins ours in the harvesting process: wooden ladders, plastic bags, sieves, buckets, and yellow boxes.

They place large transparent plastic bags under the trees to keep the olives clean when they fall.

As a child my favorite tool was the wooden ladder. I would hurry back from school, eager to join my family, and rush through my homework so I could start picking the olives. I waited with anticipation for my father to set up and straighten the ladder, so step by step I could become taller than the olive tree, breathe in the fresh air, and look up at the sky. At that moment I would think, “I am close to heaven,” before hearing a light scolding from below: “Hold on tight, Rania!” “Get down now!”

My laughter would rise as I continued to climb, no doubt that if I fell, the many tender hands that picked the olives would stop me from hitting the ground.

Olive trees with stairs in the garden of Rannia's home at the beginning of the season. Photo by Rania Rawfiq Abu Taima

Like many Palestinian families, mine gathers early in the morning during the harvest season to pick as many olives as we can before the sun becomes too hot.

At rest time, my mother and aunt bring us cheese sandwiches, tea with mint, a big pot of coffee, and orange cakes. They serve us pastries hot out of the oven on circular trays.

The olives fall like drops of water as we pluck them from the branches or shake them from the trees. Some of our friends use the sieves to separate them from their leaves and clusters, so the olives do not taste sour. Then we store some of each type, green and black, in tightly closed jars mixed with lemons, green pepper, water, and salt.

We take the rest of the green olives to the press.

Competing to see who can collect the most olives makes us work harder. But from time to time, we each sneak some olives from our pail without giving a thought to winning, then run to show my father that we helped him more than the others.

In these exceptional moments, I want to stop time right there on our land in Gaza. But time passes as if we were riding a horse, not feeling it at all.

In the final stage of harvesting, we send the yield to the olive press where workers empty them into a large metal basin, where blown air then separates them from the remaining leaves. They are then fed into the press, where they are cleaned, washed, and slowly kneaded. Finally the long-awaited moment arrives, when the gleaming liquid begins rolling from the long iron machine into designated faucets and, finally, into yellow containers. About twenty of the containers will be transferred to our home for daily use. The oil’s presence is as firm on the dining table as the pillar of a house. At breakfast, it’s dip on the companion of thyme grown in our land whose grains are ground till dinner, it’s drizzled on chickpeas and local beans.

Originally, baked goods such as bread and pastries were not made without oil. The olive is essential to our life and the land here in Palestine.

Left to their own devices, the olive trees are always blessed, steadfast, and loaded with a good harvest. But they haven’t always been left to their own devices.

The aggression against Gaza

When I was nine years old, we waited as usual for the start of November. But that year was different. Although the land and trees were waiting as usual, the occupier had another plan.

The calm changed, and in December 2008, at the height of harvest season, the occupation began its first aggression against the Gaza Strip. The Israeli drones, zanana, spread suddenly and densely, covering the sky of Gaza. The buzzing made it difficult to hear myself think. Heavy shelling began, from where I did not know, and trying to escape the intensity of the sound by covering my ears was useless.

All we could do was sit and wait anxiously for the current attack to stop, our hearts pounding. No one knew what the coming moments would bring. When the sun went down, we said to each other, “The night has come“ in a voice completely stripped of reassurance. We could get no rest, no sleep. As the night comes for us in Gaza at the time of aggression, it is another aggression. I struggled to sleep, knowing the house could collapse on me at any time, knowing I could vanish under the rubble.

All this is a huge burden on a child who is nine years old and who still has toys in her hand. But in Gaza, the child and the adult are equal in these moments, there is no difference; they both have to think about survival only and nothing else.

We all had to face life under occupation and aggression. When the sun rose, we knew we needed to find a safe place. At first, my thoughts turned to my red fabric toy box. I wanted to bring it with us.

But even as a child I quickly realized there was no time to linger on thoughts unrelated to our survival. I stuck to my mother’s every step, as I had at the beginning of the aggression, when, to avoid Israeli shelling, my mother and I ran for cover into the house of a stranger, who’d opened his big blue door for us, inviting us inside.

My family divided itself into three different houses. My father didn’t say it, but I knew the reason for our separation: if one of us goes, others will survive. We will not all die together.

We began sleeping apart and coming back together in the mornings to tell one another what we saw and how we survived the bombings.

Three weeks passed and we were still alive.

But the days of aggression are not counted by hours and minutes; days or weeks; we count them by fears, losses, the places that are bombed next to us, the souls that are lost, the bodies that remain without a soul, the remnants of hopes, the desperate eyes that anxiously watch loved ones.

My father looked at us anxiously when he said, “The land in the east was swept away with all the trees on it, along with our small house.” I imagine he was thinking about all his efforts over the years. Our land meant everything to him.

At that moment no one knew how to respond. What I wanted was not to hear anything about what had happened. I wanted to flee. But with the ongoing aggression, going outside meant risking death.

Did our destination change?

After the black cloud of aggression was gone, the impact remained.

No tree or stone had survived the bulldozers. The place where we played, walked, picked trees, and came back to bearing fruits no longer existed.

We saw only backfill, stones, and some intertwined tree roots still holding on.

Perhaps the occupiers believed that bulldozing our land would rid it of our steadfastness, along with an important witness to the entitlement of our ownership of this Palestinian land.

However, the owner of the land was still alive and had an entirely contradictory opinion. We came back determined to begin again. That summer, we planted new roots. And by November, the olive trees stood again, loaded and waiting for the real owner of the land to embrace it.

THE WRITER

Rania Tawfiq Abu Taima is a Palestinian translator residing in Gaza. Journalism is one of her passions. Writing is Rania's way of expressing what she stands for. "As Palestinians, we have significant stories that we can share with the world through our loyal pens to our powerful voices." Rania is grateful to be a Palestinian woman whose words leave a trace.

THE MENTOR

Tori Marlan’s freelance reporting has appeared in a variety of publications in the United States and Canada. She also has made audio documentaries for the podcast Vox Tablet and CBC Radio’s The Doc Project. She works as an investigative reporter for Capital Daily in Victoria, BC. Her stories for the digital-news outlet have been recognized with a National Newspaper Award, Canadian Online Publishing awards, and Canadian Association of Journalists awards.Previously, Tori was a staff writer for the Chicago Reader. In 2006, she received an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship to write about detained unaccompanied minors.She has lived in Pittsburgh, London, Chicago, Austin, Montreal, and Seattle. Learn more from her website.

When War Ends, the Struggle Begins – We Are Not Numbers

The Gaza based group, We Are Not Numbers (WANN), will be regular contributors to the Palestinian Platform, along with others. As their website states: The mission of We Are Not Numbers is to create a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who together can bring about a profound change for Palestinians by getting their voices heard. WANN provides the world with direct access to the Palestinian narrative without restrictions and without foreign intermediaries speaking on behalf of Palestinians.

Ahmed Hosni Dremly is our first We Are Not Numbers contributor. The essay below is published with permission from We Are Not Numbers.

The author with the horse Dana, in a photograph taken by a stranger on the beach who also loves horses.

It is 5:00 a.m. My jostling thoughts have beaten my sleepy eyes. I push the pillow off my face and I move slowly to the open window. Fresh air from the dark street has not been enough to breathe deeply. My mother’s voice breaks the silence. “I couldn’t sleep, either.”

It has been two weeks since the red nights and the rattling thunder of the latest Israeli assault on Gaza. Still, I cannot sleep or stop remembering. What calms my soul is riding horseback along the beach in the dawn before anyone else is there. I ride a friend’s horse, Dana, who allows only me to ride her. Dana and I dance on the wet sand, where the sound of her hooves and the waves block the noise of my thinking. The beach, usually crowded with people, is ours alone. That’s when I am almost able to forget everything, until those thoughts come back to my mind violently, like thunder.

No returning to normal

The most recent Israeli assault on Gaza left 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 3 women, dead, and at least 386 injured. These are the numbers reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. These are just numbers. But for Gazans, they are friends, neighbors, and members of the family. The shops are reopened. The schools are reopened. Everything is open, and the circle of life returns as it was. But the people are not the same.

Pallid faces and shaken eyes survey the streets. Dust and missile powder waft from the ground. An echo of children’s nervous smiles is heard around. The war is over for everybody but not for the Gazans. How can you tell a woman about the normalcy of life after she lost her only son during the latest war? How can you convince a woman to return to normal, such as Abeer Harb, who was planning for a new life with her fiancé before he was killed in a bombing in Rafah during the latest war? The most painful wounds are the ones that cannot be seen and no amount of talking can heal.

The war is over for everybody but not for the Gazans. How can you tell a woman about the normalcy of life after she lost her only son during the latest war?

After the ceasefire, I yearn to know if the souls of people I always run into — taxi drivers, waiters, grocery salespeople, and street children — are still alive. Or are they alive but fear being bombed in their houses while they are sleeping, eating, or gathering with family and friends? Do they fear an Israeli airstrike could kill them at any second?

The worst part of war is the aftermath: reactions become cold and hopes fade. Living in Gaza for more than five wars has numbed my response to seeing dead bodies in the streets or innocent kids in the hospitals injured for no reason.

When I look at those kids, I think of my five-year-old niece Talia, for whom we kept the TV off during the attacks to prevent her from seeing what was happening outside. Maybe because we tried to protect her from the horrors, she later became very intent and focused when we talked about the war. We would calm the younger children of my family the same way my mum calmed us during previous wars, by keeping us close to her and telling us that the bombing was far away.

One of the many animal casualties from Israeli attacks on Gaza. Photo: Atia Darwish

The return of even more violent war

I thought I would not be surprised by any more wars. But, then, the attacks become more violent. In the latest war, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Ashor building on El-Shabia Street. My friend, Mahmoud, had lived there with 13 members of his family. They live in a small rental flat now. When I pass through El-Shabia Street and I see the rubble of that building, I flash back to the memories of our childhood when we were playing in that wide house. I wonder how Mahmoud and his family could be living in that tiny flat now.

On the afternoon of the third day of the most recent attacks, I was walking near my house to buy some groceries when an Israeli airstrike targeted a cart on Omar Al Mukhtar Street, 100 meters from me. In Gaza, carts are used to deliver food rations, transport materials such as steel and cement, and sell items such as fruits and canned foods. The people who transport goods by cart are not well off, but they are peacefully going about their trade. Three such Palestinians were killed in this attack.

The young men died instantly, but the horse that was pulling the cart was bleeding for a while. I will not forget its unblinking gaze at its wounds.

The young men died instantly, but the horse that was pulling the cart was bleeding for a while. I will not forget its unblinking gaze at its wounds. Then it hit its head on the ground and died. The last thing that the horse had seen was its wound. How will I ever walk to get groceries without thinking of those men? Or ride a horse like Dana as I do in the early dawn without thinking about that horse and that day?

I asked my mum what was the difference between her dreams for me when I was a baby and now. She told me she dreamt of me as becoming an important person with a good job, and a healthy family. But for now, she says, I just want you to be safe. It is like asking a sick person what he is hoping for and he is only interested in having no pain. Before dreams can thrive, Gazans will need to be sure that the attacks will end. Only this will give them the time that is needed for memories of war to fade and dreams to surface.

Ahmed Hosni Dremly, 26 years old, is a Gaza-based journalist and translator. His articles have appeared in the Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Mondoweiss. They have been published in translation by French and Italian websites and newspapers. One of his essays was selected as a 20 Cinta Gaza Malaysia Prize winner, to be included in a forthcoming book.

Gina Crandell serves as a mentor to Ahmed Hosni, Asma Abu Amra, and Noura Selmi. Crandell’s books have focused on the intersection of natural processes and cultural geometries, beginning with Nature Pictorialized: The View in Landscape History, 1993, and Tree Gardens: Architecture and the Forest, 2013. Crandell is formerly a professor of landscape architecture and her work now focuses on planting mini-forests to address climate change.