Sound Like Love Songs

They all sound like love songs was written the night I returned from a two-day-long Palestinian-Israeli women's gathering in Beer Sheva in May 2009. The women's gathering was jointly initiated by two local organizations working for peace in the region. I was one among 40 women participants. Having experienced this gathering, I deeply feel that empowered women can heal the Palestinian-Israeli relationship. I see Palestinian and Israeli women creating thriving societies of mutual growth and fulfillment of their potential side by side. Societies based on honoring each other, on cooperating and working together to achieve the common good. I realized that we women are the healers, and that it is up to us to do the healing work towards peace in our region. Through the international environmental NGO Ecoweek (Israel) that I head, I launched the Midwives of Peace Project. The Midwives of Peace Project involves teaching Reiki, a healing tool, to mixed groups of Arab and Jewish women in the Negev. The project aims to empower women's innate healing capacity to render women healing agents in their respective communities and the region; thus becoming Midwives of Peace.

I hope and wish this collection of poems, as well as the Midwives of Peace Project, trigger numerous women's processes of healing and peace in the region.

Yvette Nahmia-Messinas
Chairperson, Ecoweek (Israel)
Kibbutz Kramim, Israel

June 2009

The poems:

Friends

I thought you were our enemies
Having met you I discovered
You can only be my friends

Goddess Aphrodite

Your femininity
Covered by long sleeves
Shawls, mandils
hijab and jelpab
Sneaked in with the dark
Your hair loose, long and beautiful
Your dance
Revealing
Goddess Aphrodite resides in you

Body Talk

You talked to me in Arabic
I didn't understand a word
Yet your eyes, face, hands, body
All talked about your eagerness to know me

You took off hair from my eyebrows with a thread
Asking me whether you hurt me
There was some pain
But mostly pleasure
From completely trusting your willingness to do me good

Fresh Breath

I asked you to sit
And gave you Reiki
Is there any pain? I said
You pointed to your chest
explained you were asthmatic
So I put my hands over your chest
And bathed with you into a womb of healing
Loving energy flowing in abundance
Opening up your chest and mine
To a fresh breath

First Palestinian`Friend

You gave me your email
I asked whether you were in Facebook
I will look for you and ask you to be my friend
Huda A. K .
My first Palestinian friend.
Yes!

Naela

Naela
In white
Serene and calm
In spite the hard work
Translating, facilitating,
life bearing your child in your womb
At dinner exhausted
Holding your year old daughter
While trying to eat something yourself
I looked from afar watching,
your husband had his dinner freely,
Wondering whether mine
would have also done the same

Fatma

Fatma
I imagined that under your hijab
I would see neatly combed
Coiffeur styled hair
That would reach your shoulders.
To my amazement I saw
your very short hair.
It looked terrific on you,
So fresh, so young,
so bold, so unpretentious, so strong
Well that was only the beginning
We had breakfast together in the morning
I asked you so naturally what does your husband do
To my amazement you said:
-I am not married,
I wanted a partner, someone I could talk with and feel him strong.
Someone I could respect. I did not find one.
-Would you marry a foreigner? I asked
-He has to be a Moslem.
This is my religion.
I could connect.
Mine had to be a Jew too.

Face For Peace

Amina
I am putting on night cream
And remember to lift my eyebrows
With my fingertips the way you showed me
And keep on dreaming
Of our face cream for peace
Made of your home recipe of natural, local materials
The reiki energy I will invest
Packaged in one of Ruti's recycled boxes
And think to myself
What an uplifting gift
From us women to fellow women
For beauty and peace in the world.

Back to Back

The music was on
You a Palestinian
A complete stranger
Dancing with me
Back to back.
You leaned against me
I carried your weight
I leaned against your back
And you carried mine.
Carrying weight
Palestinian or Israeli
We both knew, right?

Golden Tulip

In Beer Sheva's
Golden Tulip
We met
Ushering together
The new golden age of Israeli Palestinian
Women to women's
Connection, communication, cooperation.
Together we planted the seeds for peace.
Unlike our men, we feel,
Peace is around the corner.
We are walking the distance in haste
To embrace you fellow mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters.

They All Sound Like Love Songs

They all sound like love songs
From the yearning to meet you,
Know you, connect to you, love you.
They have tried to keep us away for so long.
Roadblocks, barriers, borders, checkpoints
All aiming to stop
The flow of love and friendship
Peace and understanding
Humanness and common sense of us women.

An Urge

The girls were in bed
The kitchen in place
I put on my nightdress
And headed to bed
But then remembered you Clarissa
And the Women Who Run With the Wolves
There was an urge to write,
An urge to express,
To put the experience into words
I headed back to the office
To honor my craft Into the night
Excited

Midwives of Peace

It took the cooperation of a queen,
A mother, a daughter, two midwives,
Rulers and slaves
Old and young
Rich and poor
Jewish and Arab women
To save a baby's life.
Those women were active, ingenious, intuitive, daring.
They followed their heart.
Let us save our babies too.
Do our part

Turning Thirty Nine This Summer

Turning thirty nine this summer
White hair shining on my head
Each new white hair appearing
Wisdom growing in my brain It is time to put together
All the talents in my hands
Draw my life again with color
Do the good that rest unheard
It is now time for me to gather
The selves of me from here and there
Bring them all together in me
Blend and merge in whole again

copyright: Yvette Nahmia-Messinas
To learn more about Yvette's poems, contact Yvette.