RETURN. Two Paintings. A story never to be told..
The other day I shared a story on facebook. It was not my story, but I shared it anyway because it concerns me, even though it happened long before I was born.
The story was of a man who, when he was a boy, was made to leave his home and homeland. It's a common enough story. It happens to all sorts of people all the time, through no fault of their own.
The story was controversial. How do we know he was telling the truth? Maybe he was confused. Maybe he was lying. Maybe it was only half the story...
A long debate ensued. Friends I have known for years became upset with each other and with me. What was I trying to say? What was I hoping to achieve? How would sharing this kind of story achieve anything? Why did I share it at all?
My mother told a story about my grandfather. A story I'd never heard before...
He'd returned to his homeland when the war was over, to see who or what was left. No home. No family. Another family was living in his house and his family was gone forever.
He returned to England with two paintings. Bleak Bavarian forest scenes. One of them hangs in my family's home in London. The other on a kibbutz in Galilee, which his cousin Lisa- his only surviving relative had helped to establish in the swamps of the Hula valley, in the days when the country was called Palestine.
Who painted those paintings.. where they came from.. why they were so important, I will never know. Maybe they were all that was left and that's all there is to it. Grandpa Joe and cousin Lisa are both dead and gone, taking the story of the two paintings with them.
I deleted the post. Who can say now if it was ever there at all? Does it even matter? What's gone is gone.
i guess we can never know the truth of our history exactly but we can share what we know and continue to try to make this world more fair and just..
oh and ....
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Like the great Bob Marley said 'it's not all that glitters is gold.. and half of history has never been told..'
Thanks @eco-alex and @ecotrain for all the encouragement and support.
Now we see the light!
Funny how this phrase keeps coming up for me - variations on not all that glitters is gold. I recently sent the Tolkien poem to my brother for his 50th birthday.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
I'm glad you posted it here and sad it caused such controversy on fb. Telling our family stories is important even if we don't have all the pieces. Why people would choose to take that shit personal is beyond me.
The question of Right of Return for Palestinians is one of the most controversial subject it's possible to discuss. For a lot of people it's very personal indeed. Sadly we're still a long way from a world without borders so I don't know if a diplomatic solution will ever be found. This war has been going on for 70 years with no end in sight..
Telling stories and remembering history is very important. Unfortunately many people are unwilling to listen to anything which contradicts their own accepted version of events.
I get that, but if you simply told a personal story, and they chose to take it as a commentary, thats nothing more than a reflection of their own guilt for their position on the subject. They dont want to admit the horror of what has been done. Theyre like children with their fingers in their ears saying, "lalalalala! Im not listening" when anyone tries to talk about the history, or worse theyre combative.
To be sure there will be no solution so long as the US continues sending Israel 10 million a day to fund their military. Thanks for sharing the story. Much love.
Well, the problem was that I shared someone else's personal story.. a palestinian man who had been driven out of his home in 1948 by Jewish soldiers. It turned out to be very controversial.. many people questioned the truth of his story.. many people said what happened was justified.. many people were angry at me for sharing the story at all.
I hear that. It sounds like guilty anger to me. Four generations of people living in refugee camps is a lot sadder than somebody feeling guilty and projecting that anger on others. If they don't like the way the story makes them feel, maybe it's time to change the damn story. Justified?! Damn. How the fuck can people even say shit like that?!
Anyway, hope you are doing alright.
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