Institute for Palestine Studies
SPECIAL SERIES
“I Hear The Voice of My Ancestors Calling”: From The Camps to The Campus
DATE:
August 13, 2024
AUTHOR:
Mustapha Kharbouch
BLOG SERIES:
Genocide in Gaza
Student Essays: Brown University Encampment 2024
“I hear the voice of my ancestors calling,
I hear the voice of my ancestor’s call.
I hear the voice of my ancestor’s calling,
I hear the voice of my ancestors call.
Singing wake up, wake up child,
wake up wake up,
listen, listen,
listen listen
Singing wake up, wake up child,
wake up wake up,
listen, listen,
listen listen”
Author’s Note: The lyrics come from “Ancestors Song” popularized by the student movement for Palestine at Brown University. Versions vary. Adapted from the original “Grandmother Song” by Sandy Vaughn.
In the cold, early days of February 2024 in Providence, Rhode Island, I sat on the ground nestled among hundreds of my peers in a room at Brown University’s campus center. Leaning on each other, we filled the little space between us with our hands rocking back and forth in unison, striking our bodies and creating the loud percussion accompanying our chants. Those of us who were standing tapped the ground; the whole room was vibrating with music, emotion, and tactility. We had just announced the end of an eight-day hunger strike by 19 of my fellow brave student comrades, but there was something more in the air. As the genocide in Gaza continued to unfold, we held our grief in our collective solidarity and yelled out, from the deepest parts of ourselves, for a glimmer of hope. From Turtle Island to Palestine, we called upon the strength of our ancestor’s spirits to fuel the sumud (Arabic for steadfastness) of our resilient kin in Gaza. With the bittersweet end of the hunger strike as the third major action after two student sit-ins were met with arrest by the university, we left the campus center with the painful knowledge of our Palestinian kin’s inability to escape the forced Israeli blockade. This spearheading of a steadfast encampment, our power only grew as the number of encampments expanded across the country and beyond and continues to grow as I write this.
Retrospectively, every now and then, I have to look at the images and videos from the week of the encampment to remind myself that it was real. This sentiment is met with wonder when shared with many of my non-Palestinian friends who are committed to fighting for Palestinian liberation. How can I even begin to explain to them the tearful disbelief of my parents, who for so long had urged me not to wear my Keffiyeh in public for fear of persecution? How do I convey the transformative power the student movement has given to us Palestinians watching on and participating when a hundred or more students, mostly non-Palestinian, locked hand in hand, dancing the traditional Palestinian Dabke on the main green, while popular Palestinian music played on big speakers? Solidarity in those moments did not only take on the form of support, but it was also immersed in a courageous and accountable ethos of sharing struggle and pain. Our resolute solidarity ultimately fueled durable, radical hope.
For a full week, as I spent time on the main green, I constantly reflected on this microcosm of a world we were building together: a world where we recalled our ancestors daily to guide us, where we took care of the land which hosted us, and where belonging was defined by a shared caringness and truth to one another, rather than state citizenship. We continuously rooted every decision we collectively took in the Palestinian revolutionary tradition which rejects colonialism, carcerality, and any other agents of imperialism and oppression. This is not to say it was a perfect world, for we made many mistakes to which we held and still must hold ourselves accountable. The encampment became an experiment in an attempt to best carve spaces for collective healing, reconciliation, and moving forward through and in the aftermath of the action. This is to say, I have never learned and reflected on “solidarity as revolutionary worldmaking,” as Robin Kelly puts it, throughout all of my first year as an undergraduate at this institution as much as I have done so through the praxis of being at, engaging with, and co-shaping the People’s Plaza on the main green.
As I unconsciously catch myself humming the tune of the ancestor’s song, I realize that, indeed, the voice of my ancestors never leaves me these days. I often find myself asking: what would my ancestors think of this? While I have always kept a habit of preserving my late grandfather’s spirit in my consciousness, I cannot help but recall his voice more loudly than ever since the encampment. Time and time again, I think of his trek from Akka in Palestine to Saida in Lebanon during the 1948 Nakba. I try to imagine what thoughts and emotions he must have experienced as he was expelled from the only home he had ever known. I regret never asking him for more details as a child before he passed. A lot about him and that time remains cloudy, a gap in my and our collective histories as Palestinians. But the student encampment at Brown, along with the greater transformations in Palestinian studies and Palestine solidarity movements today, teach me to fill in these holes in our hearts and histories with that which is needed to build a different world.
A queer feminist approach to world-making rooted in decolonial radical love is what I turn to here. Sarah Ihmoud powerfully explains, “to practice feminism in the midst of bearing witness to genocide is to embrace love as a radical consciousness, as a radical decolonial politic of fighting for life. To practice feminism in this moment is to hold each other through the vast darkness of our grief, to walk with each other hand in hand, to bear witness to landscapes of death, and, […], to tell the truth.” At moments during organizing where I felt my grief transform to anger, a friend reminded me once of their favorite Palestinian truth: we keep fighting not because of hate for those who have wronged us but because of love.
About the Author
