38. Please enjoy your day, and be safe.
This is, like, so disheartening, she sighed, followed by I just don’t know what to do!
She sounded defeated. And I do not know what to tell you! she continued, her voice breaking.
I listened, comforting her and peppering her words with a reassuring uh-huh and totally and so true in response, as she melted down on the other end of the phone call. I mean, having to explain, day after day, when people just want to be able to put a letter in the mail and trust that its gonna arrive at its intended destination! She continued, exasperated. I mean, WHERE DID IT GO?
When I got off the phone, I was no closer to knowing the whereabouts of the two checks I wrote and mailed over a month ago to the Philadelphia Parking Authority for an expired meter, but I had a renewed gratitude and respect for the sense of mission and duty espoused by postal workers, or at least this one postal worker, who was absolutely distraught over the system failing me in this instance. Somehow, her empathy and righteous indignation made the situation manageable for me, made me feel less alone, less tiny, less meaningless.
Last week, I walked down Lehigh Avenue to Germantown, and took a right, following the blue line on my phone’s map to the Islamic bookstore, in search of a keffiyeh to wear, as a small daily discipline of solidarity. I purchased my keffiyeh for $10, synthetic, made in China, but recognizable in the pattern of a fishnet representing the beautiful Mediterranean sea, and in the pattern of the olive leaves, representing resilience and love of the earth. The proprietor, a small, tidy man with dark skin and a soft voice asked, are you a new Muslim? To which I responded, no, I’m not a Muslim, I’m just for Palestine. He asked if he could give me a book, and I agreed. He brought me over to a bookshelf, and gave me a copy of a slender paperback entitled “A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM” which featured a sci-fi scene of a view of earth from space on its cover, with a giant Qur’an swooshing to (or from) the earth, all hovering over a scene of Mecca during the Hajj. He handed it to me, wonder in his eyes, so very happy to be sharing this gift with me, and said: this. this will explain EVERYTHING. All the mysteries of the universe. Ok?
I clutched the mysteries of the universe in one hand and my keffiyeh in the other, and set out into the night, walking back towards the train, past a grandiose scale of blight: past the flashing LED lights of a pill mill pharmacy between the soaring classical columns and archways of a 19th-century bank building, past the Ford Motor Company Model T plant, once repurposed to manufacture helmets for WWI soldiers in 1919, now 500,000 square feet of broken glass and graffiti tags towering over the traffic at Broad and Lehigh.
The mornings are finally truly cold, winter is here. The tree branches are bare, and the crows fly in threes across the morning moon. Everything is beautiful, and everything is so, so hard. First thing Monday morning last week, fresh off a beautiful holiday vacation with family and friends, someone reported me to HR for wearing a “Free Gaza” button on my coat on my way into work, and all week I was a raging bull, on the ropes, backed into the corner, swinging. And some things are broken now, and I don’t know if they can be repaired. I keep walking on, through the rain and the lights and the music of Center City at Christmastime, I keep marching through the streets with the people, I keep doomscrolling through instagram, which seems to be really confused about me, and keeps trying to sell me things, like cars, and dreidels made of chocolate filled with chocolate coins, and cottage cheese, and football cleats, and life insurance, and a vacation in the Dominican Republic; socks with my dog’s face on them, Coach handbags, period pads, medication for psoriatic arthritis.
I didn’t write last week because, yes houseguests and yes Thanksgiving but also, I don’t know how to do this. I’m a different person now. I can’t go back. I can’t stop talking and thinking about Palestine. I understand that it’s uncool and uncouth to bang the same drum all day, every day; I’m afraid all of you will turn away. I’m afraid I will be too much, again. But I have no choice.
On Friday, a protester in my home town of Atlanta, Georgia set themselves on fire in front of the Israeli consulate. The last news reports from a few days ago, which have not been updated, stated that the protester survived, that they are in critical condition. When I heard this news I was viscerally triggered, I was nauseated and my mind had a freefall of panic. And yes, self-immolation is the most extreme form of protest, and it is so severe, but I felt afraid, not because I was horrified by this act but because I understood. I understood their actions completely.
The Israeli consulate issued the following statement: “It is tragic to see the hate and incitement towards Israel expressed in such a horrific way. The sanctity of life is our highest value. Our prayers are with the security officer who was injured while trying to prevent this tragic act.” And I could write a whole book unpacking the cynical lies and narcissistic abuse inherent on so many levels in that single statement.
Last week, the subway conductor announced over the intercom: attention passengers, we’ve reached our destination station. Please check your seat and make sure to gather all your belongings before departing the train. And then, in a different voice, halting, sincere, pleading: Please, enjoy your day, and PLEASE BE SAFE.
His voice stayed with me all day. Please! Enjoy your day! and please be safe! I really felt that he wanted this for me, for me to appreciate what the day brought, dark and light, come what may, and I really felt that he sincerely wished for my safety and well-being.
That’s all any of us want, to enjoy the day, to be safe. To have a little peace, maybe a little joy, and for others to have that, too. It’s natural, for us to want that for each other. It’s natural to want to share the mysteries of the universe with a stranger, to be frustrated on their behalf over a lost piece of mail. And these systems of power—the parking authority and HR and redlining and defense contractors—have to work really hard to interrupt that generous impulse. I hope, today, you won’t let them. Please, everyone, enjoy your day, and please be safe.
everyone who is stepping into the light of solidarity helps shrink the shadow in which suppression thrives. we are growing - deepening and expanding at the same time. Palestinians are not numbers, and all of us who are moving our life force in solidarity with ending the nakba are scholars of belonging, faithful to a future unlike any day we have ever lived.
-adrienne maree brown
Home.
Barazek Cookies
Tomorrow is the holiday cookie swap at work, and I’m making a Palestinian/Levantine cookie called Barazek. They are a delicious, very shortbread-y, sesame cookie that also features pistachios (which I did not have when baking yesterday). Here’s an adaptation I came up with from a few different recipes online:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk together:
1 cup (gluten-free) flour
1/2 cup almond or coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground, toasted fennel seeds (I toasted these in a dry cast iron skillet on the stovetop, then crushed them through a sieve)
Combine in mixer:
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup tahini
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add dry to wet, combine and knead until a short dough forms.
Spread onto a plate:
1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds
Spread onto a different plate:
1/2 cup crushed raw pistachios
Form dough into balls, then press one side into the pistachios, then the other side into the sesame seeds, flattening the ball. Place the cookies on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes, or until the bottoms of the cookies are golden brown.
Tonight I’m going to try these as thumbprint cookies, with fig jam as the filling, and when I enter the cookie contest tomorrow, maybe I’ll name them “No Christmas as Usual until Palestine is Free” cookies, and see what HR thinks of that. I also plan to take a batch to the next protest. I’ll let you know how it goes. ❤️
Ten of Pentacles.
Here you see a walled estate and a family safe within, enjoying the company of beloved children, elders, animals, the good earth. In Tarot, the number ten represents the completion or culmination of a journey or cycle, and pentacles represent the element of earth: security, materiality, the physical body. Ergo, the Ten of Pentacles represents a pinnacle of safety, the fruit of one’s labor, a life well lived.
I can’t look at this image and not see the families destroyed by war across the world, and nor can I fail to see the faces of the humans that catch like driftwood under the bridges of Kensington, Philadelphia. This card carries within it a prayer for safety for all, not just me and mine, and a cry of grief and mourning for those who have lost everything.
May we each find a place of peace and rest within our own minds. May we each find a home within our own bodies. May we each find safety within our families and our communities, and may we each do our own good work to remove ourselves from standing in the way of the peace and safety of others. Amen.
Home + The World is a weekly newsletter by Jodi Rhoden featuring personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. All content is free; the paid subscriber option is a tip jar. If you wish to support my writing with a one-time donation, you may do so on Venmo @Jodi-Rhoden. Thank you for being here and thank you for being you.
⚔️❤️ Jodi
Thank you for this, Jodi! Thank you for banging that drum all day. I can hear it all the way in Georgia.