Sumud as Key to Global Liberation
On the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, I reflect on why I always resented the symbolism of Palestine as "rusty old keys" and even the most well-meaning calls for Palestinian statehood.
This article originally appeared in the relaunch issue of Muftah.org dated May 16th, 2024.
I seek refuge for you, Gaza, not to get stricken, nor to suffer. I encircle you with the Seven Oft-Repeated verses from phosphorous flavored oranges, and the colors of clouds, from smoke. I seek refuge for you, oh Gaza, from the nightfall.
– Gazan poetess Heba Abu Nada, October 10th, 2023. She was killed by an Israeli air strike 11 days later (Translated from Arabic by F. El-Sharif).
I was born in the year of the First Intifada. The iconic image of Palestine as wrinkled old hands holding rusted keys was a fixture of my cultural upbringing. But I never saw or heard of that image evoked nostalgically by Jiddo Jamal, my maternal grandfather, who was a Nakba survivor from Bir al-Sabi’. He never liked to discuss the Nakba or any vestiges of the past. He named me Farah (joy) because he saw in us—his grandchildren—a promise for the future, a triumph over darkness and a symbol of hope that could perhaps bury the pain of his past.
Through grit and perseverance, he prospered as a merchant in Amman, being the first to import sesame from Sudan. In stark contrast with his stateless childhood, Jiddo Jamal cherished joy as a sacred commodity. When my mother was born, he lit up Jabal al-Taj (an area in East Amman) in celebration after waiting for years to be blessed with a child. His latter days saw far less joy, however, as he suffered through dialysis treatment three times a week. As I held his dying, frail, wrinkly hands, I tried to stave off the painful image of them holding the keys to his home in Bir al-Sabi’, which became part of a kibbutz for Israeli settlers. The past, like death, always finds ways to creep up.
My mother would say that, throughout his life, Jiddo Jamal possessed sabr Ayub (“the patience of Prophet Job”). We never saw him utter a word of complaint, hurt, anger, sadness, or pain. Perhaps he seldom complained because at some point he was told it is best to suffer in silence to survive. Perhaps he was never allowed to complain since his stolen boyhood as a refugee in Gaza. His life and that of so many Palestinians both in and outside of their homeland evoke the age-old Arabic adage: al-sabr muftah al faraj, (“patience is the key to relief”).
Patience is baked into my peoples’ psyche. An Arabic word—sumud—with no English equivalent is reserved for, and encapsulates the meaning of, the perseverance of the Palestinians alone. Like a stubborn olive tree ravaged by fire, wind, and the harshest elements, the Palestinian people remain standing: samidun. Onlookers are often confounded by Palestinian patience. At the height of Gaza’s bombardment in December 2023, Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli scholar of Arab culture, warned viewers that the Palestinians adhere quite seriously to the Qur’anic injunction: inna Allah ma’a al-sabirin, “verily, Allah is with the patient.” He alarmingly decried that, “we do not have a Hebrew equivalent to this concept of sabr that they have,” and he warned that Israelis need to understand the power of Palestinian faith.
There is a tendency, however, to valorize Palestinian resilience as something other-worldly or superhuman. Just because they bury the pain and carry it well, does not mean it is not there. Its volcanic fury murmurs under a raging sea, tempered by faith and an unrelenting right of belonging to their land. As I grew older, the more I learned about the colonization of Palestine, the more I too came to resent the symbolism of Palestine as rusty old keys—but for different reasons than those of my avoidant Jiddo. Unlike my grandfather, I trained as a historian to take a good hard look at the past, despite (or perhaps because of) his intentional evasion of it. I wanted to see what was so horrible about looking back. Perhaps escapism was once imperative for survival, but it also brought with it an air of suffocating dissonance and ambiguity that permeated the myth of our “post”-colonial lives. It felt like a canvas of unresolved, ongoing, collective trauma that needed to be faced head on.
For me, the rusty keys came to connote inertia; they are a caricature for impossible statehood. They made the right of return a distant mirage and a relic of cultural nostalgia barring justice as a lived possibility. This did not come from a place of delusion: I found that same discourse rooted in the life’s labor of geographer Salman Abu Sitta, who painstakingly laid out a plan for the right of return as an entirely possible and plausible reality. The ‘rusty keys narrative’ ignores the fact that, despite the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 Naksa, and the present apartheid regime, 88% of Palestinian refugees still live in historic Palestine. Ignoring this often-obscured fact makes it harder to see the pernicious attack on Gaza as simply an ongoing land-grab many decades in the making. In a sense, time froze in 1948.
Through the work of Palestinian scholars like Edward Said and Salman Abu Sitta, holding on to a narrative of conceivable, logical liberation led me to resent even the most morally principled calls for Palestinian nationalism. The two-state solution struck me as part-and-parcel of the same pernicious system that bore and sustained the Israeli occupation in the first place. Demands for statehood, however indignant and righteous, still deployed the same vernacular of the rules-based order whose very genesis was based on the perpetual dehumanization of Palestinians. How can we expect the same house that was built on the premise of excluding us to offer us anything but mere crumbs?
Today, Netanyahu and his henchmen sinisterly perform the final Danse Macabre on what remains of Palestinian statehood. No peace treaty or diplomatic accord could halt the horror of our current moment. No eschatological predictions could have prepared us for this cacophony of basest evil. None of us could have imagined we would live through a more brutal nakba than the Nakba: a livestreamed genocide more harrowing than even our grandparents’ worst nightmares. Even our legendary, signature sumud is screaming in agony and begging to be euthanized. We have looked into the sorrowful eyes of an entirely new wartime category, the WCNSF (“wounded children with no surviving family”). We have seen weeping men desperately search for their kids under the rubble for days, and fathers scoop up the remains of their family in plastic bags. The lives of over 15,000 innocent children have been ruthlessly reaped like plows in a harvest of death.
Drawing hope from Gaza—the world’s largest concentration camp—which has been abandoned, carpet bombed, and rendered ‘uninhabitable’ might seem insane or paradoxical. Under one narrative, it might seem like the final nail in the coffin of Palestine has been firmly placed. Yet despite this grim reality, if this essay had but one message, it would be centering the narrative of hope. Cynical onlookers might rightly ask: after all this, is this imagined narrative of liberation still plausible? Now, when humanity itself is under attack, and all of joy feels extinct? Yes, unequivocally. Especially now. More than ever.
The stunning failure to stop this genocide will forever constitute a stain on humanity and will stand as one of the starkest examples of hypocrisy and collective abandonment in modern history. But through this all, Gaza acted as a litmus test, revealing the true colors of all. It is reminiscent in its revelatory qualities of the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, often known as “al-Faruq” for his strict discernment between truth and falsehood. It is no wonder then, that voices from Gaza—the Faruq of the 21st century—would invoke Umar, the Caliph who brought Islam to Palestine. Poetess Heba Abu Nada, a mere few days before her martyrdom, lamented on her Facebook page: “the shame of our era, oh Faruq, is seeing [mere] protests in support of Gaza on TV screens, thank God that you are not witnessing this.”
In stark contrast to the ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestine, when the Caliph ‘Umar arrived in modest dress on horseback to Jerusalem in 636, he conquered it bloodlessly and mercifully. Not only that, he also initiated one of the most pioneering pacts in history—what became known as the Pact of ‘Umar—which guaranteed the freedom and protection of Christians in the Holy Land and relaxed the stringent restrictions on the presence and freedom of Jews that Christian which pre-Islamic rulers previously enforced.
In Arabic, Islamic conquests are described as futuhat (“openings”), connoting that Muslim governance in new territory came with great moral responsibility—a trust, more than a mere land grab. Despite the occupation, we can see living vestiges of this trusteeship in Palestine extend to this day. Consider the example of the two Jerusalemite Muslim families who still hold the keys to the doors of Christendom’s holiest site, the Holy Sepulcher. With the consecration of the church, this trust was overseen by Salahuddin in 1187 to ensure that the church remained a haven for all Christian denominations.
Perhaps this glimpse into a more just, humane past is what makes the present-day abandonment of the Palestinian people so much more disgraceful and devastating. Not only are the people of Palestine still paying the price for European antisemitism, but they are also still subject to the worst forms of 19th century European colonization, dehumanization, and ethnic cleansing. The difference is that, now, Palestinians are being brutalized through an apparatus much more pernicious and militarized than ever before. They face an ethno-religious supremacist nuclear power that has been fattened up by decades of impunity provided by the “rules-based order.”
Deterred by none, the State of Israel insists on turning the Holy Land into a graveyard for children—children who simply wanted to live, laugh, and longed to go home. Like masters of the underworld, the ethno-supremacist state unleashed the keys to the gates of Hades rather than living up to the honor of being trustees to the promised land. By brutalizing Gaza, Israel and its wealthy benefactors, including the United States, United Kingdom and European Union (who profess to be the apex of the civilized West), have colossally betrayed all basic universal norms and humanitarian principles. No better are the pernicious normalization efforts by Arab governments in recent years, enshrined in the so-called “Abraham Accords”; disingenuously calling for “peace” by placing the onus of “deradicalization” on the oppressed, rather than the radically violent oppressor. Such efforts even receive the rubber-stamping of Muslim scholars who place the burden of “non-violence” on Palestinians and actively calls for “the urgency of spreading peace” rather than the urgency of justice.
Yet the David-esque resistance of the Gaza Ghetto has still garnered the unprecedented support of many around the world: from the Irish to South Africans and even American “Gen Z”ers. Despite decades of blockade and bombardment, the world has seen stunning displays of the preservation of humanity at all costs under relentless suffering. We have seen babies take their first steps under bombs. We have seen elderly men make their ablutions under the rain and in the sea. We have seen disheveled boys covered in rubble dust share their meager rations of water with kittens and dogs. We have seen a Gazan man in love spend the few remaining shekels in his pocket to buy red roses for his young wife, so she can muster a giggle in this new life of cold tents. We have seen the wide-eyed child, Lama, the youngest reporter in Gaza, broadcast stories of her people’s pain. We have seen loving mothers make donuts, pizza, and other makeshift bakes in DIY tin-can ovens. We have seen a devout grandfather kiss the eyeballs of the corpse of his ‘soul’s soul’, Reem, with her perfectly coiffed pom-poms.
Perhaps no better words can capture the beautiful spirit of Gaza better than the iconic figure of Wael al-Dahdouh (affectionately known as Al-Jabal, or “the Mountain,” to most Gazans for his gentle, paternal strength) in the funeral of his beloved son and fellow journalist Hamza, who was assassinated in cold-blood while in the line of duty. Wael endearingly described Hamza as “all of me.” In a tearful yet defiant sermon that will go down as one of the most thunderous declarations of principled resistance and resilience in our time, he said: “these tears make us different than our enemies, we cry and shed tears because we are saturated with humanity.” Drawing a poignant faruqi distinction, as Gazans tend to do instinctively, he continued, “these are tears of generosity and magnanimity, not tears of humiliation.”
If these displays of tragic, raw, celebrations of life in the midst of atrocity do not orient us to believe that the Palestinian people hold the keys to a better world, then we have failed to understand their story. If we fail to see the divine wisdom animating this grave injustice, then we err most grievously. Although it appears to outsiders that the compounded, “superhuman” patience of the Palestinians is wearing dangerously thin, its inverse reality is one of monumental power.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “victory is with patience.” Patience—coupled with righteous indignation and unrelenting commitment to the higher cause of liberation—is the very twin of victory, according to the Prophetic formula. It is not a path of resignation for the weak, but a strategy reserved for “those who truly believe” (Qur’an 2:165). Therein lies the ultimate faruq–delineation—in this story: the oppressor incurs the wrath of divine power, whereas the oppressed strikes with it and are shielded by it. This lens is what makes the futile, fickle calculus of any oppressive earthly army doomed for failure.
This lens also underscores the imperative of alternative narratives and the reclamation of our collective imagination in the quest for liberation. In the hopeful words of the Egyptian political prisoner, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, “you have not yet been defeated.” As long as defeat has not been declared—as long as the spirit of Palestine resists—freedom remains a possibility. There are heartening instances from scripture and history that remind us that injustice cannot last forever. Dawn is always preceded by pitch darkness. Just as the Jews, Algerians and Vietnamese saw their eventual liberation from their oppressors, we must hold on to the same hope for the Palestinians. The key, therefore, is not simply one of liberation. The question becomes one of the preservation of the human spirit both in the struggle for liberation and after it is hopefully achieved.
If retaining one’s humanity is the true measure of victory, then the Palestinians have already won. They have certainly won the moral war and the war of narrative. Palestine today is upending decades—if not centuries—of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab animus. Thanks to them, the ruse is over. This genocide has unraveled something far greater than even itself: it challenged an entire global system to take a good hard look at itself—to look within. In theological terms, Palestine represents the nafs al-mutma’nia (‘the contented soul’), whereas Israel and its benefactors represent the tormented, maniacal soul which burns all in its wake. Faced with the inevitability of tomorrow, the West and the “rules-based order” must choose between continuing to be potentates for godless violence or cede to the moral authority of Palestinians as the potential liberators of this broken world. Between the two paths, there is no other way.
Just like their brazen abandonment constitutes a war on humanity, the singular faith of the people of Gaza stands as a shining pillar in what feels like the 21st century’s darkest hour. The resilience of the Palestinian collective presents a portal into an alternative world: one not governed by supremacy and hypocrisy, but instead, by faith and justice.
It is alleged that the Caliph ‘Umar once asked the elders of the warring tribe of Banu Abasa, “what tool do you fight people with?” They replied, “with patience for an hour.” We are now in this final hour. In this darkest hour, there is no more an indefatigable weapon than persevering. Rather than a Palestine of stasis and rusty old keys, the Palestine of today—in the words of the Jerusalemite Canadian citizen journalist Mansour Shouman—is the living “tip of the spear” in the most critical fight for the soul of humanity. Even the likes of my sorrow-averse Jiddo, God rest his soul, would find renewed hope in seeing what has transpired to the spirit of Gaza today. From the ashes of its fury, it is rising as a faruq for humanity, unlocking a new world, a more humane world.
If patience for but one hour is the key to relief, then perhaps this matchless, singular Palestinian sumud in this era of treachery is the key to global liberation.
https://muftah.org/2024/05/16/sumud-as-a-key/