Displacement Quotes

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The fish,
Even in the fisherman's net,
Still carries,
The smell of the sea.”
― Mourid Barghouti

“Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it’s more forceful than that.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama

“Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements but as to their subjective experiences.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I’ve seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You’re ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you’re not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don’t know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You’re poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I’m small. It’s what’s in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don’t excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don’t match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You’re dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I’m from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don’t adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you’re better than me. You don’t like me. You don’t have any interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walks around without shoes or electric light. You don’t go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturday night. You get drunk. You don’t like me and you don’t like women. You put your arm around men in bars. You’re rough. I can’t speak to you. You burly burly. You’re just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. You relaxed in your summer stupor. All year. Never fully awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Can’t imagine. Workhorse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tram.”
― Ania Walwicz

“mingling with the remains of the plane, equally fragmented, equally absurd, there floated the debris of the soul, broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Reem’s life was one of a lost past, a present she rejected, and a future that is up in the air, like a plane traveling between continents.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“[my father in law] told me I was nothing but trouble. I felt the truth of that. I really am nothing. . . . Nothing with a body. I create a kind of displacement around myself as I pass through the world, which can fairly be called trouble. This is a mystery, I believe. . . . It’s why I keep to myself. When I can.”
― Marilynne Robinson

“Wherever I land, next time I'll look close, swear to God.”
― Ray Bradbury, I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories

“Straw"

I still keep the last straw I picked

from the harvested wheat field near my home

before the war forced me out…

I have the straw framed

and take it with me everywhere I go…

And when asked about it, I tell people:

It is the straw that broke my back…


[Published on April 7, 2023 on CounterPunch.org]”
― Louis Yako

“A Sweet Woman from a War-Torn Country"

In her exile, they often describe her

as that “sweet woman from a war-torn country” …

They don’t know that she loved smelling roses …

That she enjoyed picking spring wildflowers

and bringing them home after long walks…

They don’t know about that first kiss her first lover stole from her

during a power outage at church on that Easter evening

Before the generators were turned on…

They don’t know anything about the long hours

she spent contemplating life

under the ancient walnut tree in her village,

while waiting for her grandfather to call her

to eat her favorite freshly baked pita bread with ghee and honey…

They don’t know anything about her grandmother’s delicious mixed grains

that she prepared every year before Easter fasting began…

In exile, they try to be nice to her…

They keep repeating that she is now in a “safe haven”…

They attribute her silence is either to her poor language skills,

or perhaps because she agrees with them…

They don’t know that the shocks of life have silenced her forever…

All she enjoys doing now is pressing her ears

against the cold window glass in her apartment

listening to the wailing wind outside …

They repeatedly remind her that she is now in a place

where all values, beliefs, religions, and ethnicities are honored,

but life has taught her that all of that is too late…

She no longer needs any of that…

All she needs, occasionally,

is a sincere hand to be placed on her shoulder

or around her neck

To remind her that nothing lasts

That this too shall pass…


[Published on April 7, 2023 on CounterPunch.org]”
― Louis Yako

“But when a community comes together to demand more, when we do not let trauma stay obscured but bring it up to the surface and remember it together, we can make sure it is not repeated.”
― Kiku Hughes, Displacement

“me standing there- just standing there- looking around and thinking, God, I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be somewhere else, this is wrong, this is *wrong*.”
― Chloe Gong, The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror

“Exile is not just the location where exiled people are today, it is also everything that happened before arriving at their current destination.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“I thought how the lives of exiled people are like being on a flight. They are up in the air, between land and sky, not knowing when and whether they will ever land somewhere…I thought how transits are like the lives of many dislocated people like myself. The storyline from my experience often goes like this: a disaster befalls the place you call ‘home.’ You leave for another place hoping it will be just a temporary wait. Sometimes, the second destination is so harsh and unforgiving that you think of it as a ‘temporary transit’ and keep looking for a ‘final’ station that can grant you at least the basic human rights with some dignity. Over time, the temporary becomes permanent. But, deep inside, your feelings, senses, and existence may not cooperate with your new permanent reality. And so, you may find yourself in a state that can be best described as ‘permanently temporary.’ You become divided and torn deep inside constantly hearing two voices: one voice tells you that it is all temporary no matter how long it takes; and a second voice tells you not to believe the first one as this is your permanent destiny.”
― Louis Yako, Bullets in Envelopes: Iraqi Academics in Exile

“The cultural tools people employ to make sense of displacement are the means by which migrants guard against that shattering or implosion of self and attachment. Without these tools, the disruption of migration leaves disintegration in its wake that neither the individual immigrant nor the community of immigrants can bear.”
― Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

“We Albanians are washed across the world like a handful of sand scattered into the sea, we have disappeared into the landscape like a wooden altar screen against a wooden altar. Our country is forever tainted, it has been violated with malicious words, demarcated in the maps of the world with a dashed black line.”
― Pajtim Statovci, Bolla

“What deprives the spirit of its colors? What is it other than the bullets of the invaders that have hit the body?”
― Mourid Barghouti, رأيت رام الله

“I know how it feels to be someplace you no longer belong, or to no longer be in the place you do belong, because that place has ceased to exist. I know what it’s like to be robbed of your foundation walls, how difficult it becomes to stand firm or stand at all, to provide others with protection. It’s impossible to imagine; it must be experienced, although best avoided. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.”
― Hans von Trotha, Pollaks Arm

“Therefore, my friends,
The humanity of those who lose a war may be broken,
But that of the winners is totally lost…
And I confess to you, sometimes I don’t know which is more merciful:
To lose your humanity or to live broken in a shattered world?”
― Louis Yako

“I don't need to shut my eyes to go blind...
When your blind time passes strangely
Floating and dreamy in a way speeded up like the Time Traveler apon his machine.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde

“Hand Watches"

I opened the drawer

where I keep old things and tokens…

I looked over some hand watches

with dead batteries and frozen times…

Watches gifted to me over the years

by teachers or friends

commending my accomplishments and respect for time…

It never occurred to them nor to me then

that Time would die in a heart attack

and cease to matter

the day my homeland was occupied and destroyed…

The day plunderers, in collaboration with thieves at home,

would burn and destroy everything beautiful…

And ever since, I refuse to wear hand watches…

I vowed not to wear a hand watch

until my people retrieve their Time and dignity…

And when that happens, Time will not matter

for I will then turn into a butterfly

a sparrow

a daffodil

an orange

Or perhaps an apricot blossom on a branch…

I will turn into a spring of water

flowing beyond time and timing …

In that same drawer I found

pens that have run out of ink

looking now like mummified corpses…

At a moment of despair,

A strong feeling struck me like a lightning

leaving me with a frightening question:

What if this is a wound no time can heal,

a cause that no ink can revive?

[Published on April 7, 2023 on CounterPunch.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Fragility is the single most salient cause of displacement around the world today. Even factors that may become increasingly common drivers of flight like climate change and natural disasters are only likely to cause mass cross-border movements if they affect fragile states. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans it did not require people to leave the United States. In contrast, when the earthquake struck Haiti many people fled to the neighbouring Dominican Republic because they could not find a domestic remedy or resolution to their situation.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“There is a striking correlation between the levels of fragility and levels of displacement. Fragile states are those that have no defence against mass violence. They are not invariably beset by mass violence: but each state is a house of cards.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“Nabokov famously never had a home. In the United States he and his wife, Vera, always rented. At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he taught for a decade, they occupied homes vacated by professors on sabbatical. The Nabokovs ended their days in a small suite of rooms at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. When asked to explain his peripatetic life of exile, Nabokov said, “Nothing short of a replica of my childhood surroundings would have satisfied me.” His hero Pushkin was a wanderer, too, exiled from St. Petersburg by the czar for years at a time. Like Nabokov, “To the end of his life he remained deeply attached to what he considered his real home, the Lyceum, and to his former fellow students.”
― Alex Beam, The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson, and the End of a Beautiful Friendship

“Where are you from?"
Wherever I go,
people think I am from somewhere else!
The first question they ask
is that same sad question
that confirms and reminds me of not belonging anywhere:
“Where are you from?”
They are right to ask!
My grandma used to say
that I am from a time and a place that don’t exist anymore…
My friends tell me that I carry my home with me everywhere I go,
therefore, I belong to all times and all places!
As for me, I often wish I weren’t at all!

[Original poem published in Arabic on September 1, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Spices"
The scents of spices are sad
whether at home or in foreign lands ...
At home, they passes through the nose
to give a ray of hope,
a breathing space
that make us forget – albeit for a short while –
all about the chains of religions, gossip,
the absurdity of politics,
and the cruelty of the ruling classes …
At home, spices help us cope with
the heavy weight of the backbreaking
customs and traditions …
You see everyone excited to have a meal
that help them forget about
the hardships, the crises,
and the unsuitability of life at home …
In alienating foreign lands,
The scent of spices awakens everything that was lost,
including the lost lands and homes…
There is something unbearably sad about the image of a woman
Standing in a kitchen filled with scents of spices reminding her
of all that happened,
all that was possible,
all that should never have happened,
and of all the irreplaceable losses …
So many are the societies that have been
completely destroyed,
and of which nothing remains but scents of spices
that add flavor to foods
and marinate the wounds …
Could spices be like old songs?
We love them at home because
they touch wounds we wish we could heal from,
the same old songs break our hearts in foreign lands,
because by then we have finally learned
that exile doesn’t heal wounds,
but rather pushes the knife deeper into them …
And like the alienating foreign lands,
the scents of spices declare
that there is much more
to the story of the wound;
a story that kills if untold,
and doesn’t heal when narrated …

[Original poem published in Arabic on December 11, 2023 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“I knew I could never again be complete in one place. This was what it meant to be exiled and disinherited - to straddle closed borders, never whole anywhere. To remain in one place meant tearing one's limbs from another.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World

“for Falasteen

the boy i adored at sixteen gifted me his keffiyeh
feeling guilty for living when others were killed
simply for existing i haven’t seen him in sixteen years
but think of him often these days his grandmother’s purse
still carrying keys to their home believing they’d return
in weeks can it even be called a key
if what it unlocked is no longer there?
we’d sneak onto mall rooftops & pretend shooting
only happened with stars! 'we have a duty of memory,'
he said, 'so they’ll kill us all until only the soil
is witness' how could i reply? i sat in my liquid silence
today there are nurseries of martyrs
they bomb babies for they fear enemies
hiding between pacifiers & tiny wrists
bomb hospitals because enemies hide in ICU bedpans
bomb schools because enemies hide in children’s bags
bomb the oldest mosques & churches because enemies
hide in rosary beads & votive candles
they bomb journalists because enemies are hiding
under their PRESS vests & helmets
bomb poets because enemies hide in pages
of peace poems the elderly are bombed
because enemies hide under their canes
the disabled are bombed because they harbour
enemies in their artificial limbs
they raze & burn all the ancient trees
because enemies make bombs from olives
they bomb water treatment plants
because enemies are now water
& so it goes: justification provided
exoneration granted business as usual
& the boy I adored has green-grey eyes
the colour of fig leaves
we don’t speak but i wish to tell him
'i’m sorry the world is a blade i’m sorry
home is blood & bones i’m sorry music
is sirens & wails i’m sorry night is infinite'
but the boy I adored has grey-green eyes
the colour of forgotten ash”
― Kamand Kojouri

“The Involuntary Princeling by Stewart Stafford

The candle's blaze grows distant fast,
Quenched to an ember spark, unseen,
Carriage taken in larceny's grasp,
Darkness made far bank unclean.

Daubing a sovereign slogan,
In violet shadows unmasked,
A delinquent reunion reprieved,
A doggerel name outcast.

Trade winds howl to storming,
As fireballs 'neath seas seek to atone,
The red-crowned crest now stakes its claim,
On writhed Rosetta's key stone.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford