Suheir Hammad - Maria S. Kahie
Suheir Hammad
What I Will
I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.
Watch Suheir Hammad perform What I Will at TED Women 2010 here
Maria S. Kahie
'I will not dance to your war drum'. Self Portrait with Keffiyeh, 2023
Conversation January 2024:
I have been feeling so overwhelmed and enraged. I see my children in every child that they pull out of the rubble, dead or alive. I feel so much pain for those parents as there is not much that separates us. Devastating. Utterly devastating!
We will never be the same after this. People's true colours have been shown. As I go through this I'm also grieving friendships that I thought were based on Humanity. I was totally wrong. Their humanity turned out to be selective'.
-Maria S. Kahie
Suheir Hammad is a Palestinian-American poet and activist. Hammad‘s books include Breaking Poems, ZaatarDiva and Drops of This Story. An original writer and performer in the TONY awarded Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Suheir appears in the Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, Salt of This Sea. She has delivered her poetry to folk around the world.
Maria S. Kahie is a mother, photographer, and small business owner living in Meanjin. She has previously published with Writing Through Fences inlcuding in Writing Through Fences: An Archipelago of Letters, Southerly, 2022.
