Home is beautiful.
Home is palm trees, roller skates, and camel rides.
Home is Grandfather smiles and schoolgirl laughs.
Home is calls to prayer in Old cities
Allahu Akbar
Home is the smell of falafel and fresh bread (ka3k)
Home is the yells of kids in the street
Home is the marble games and the parents' sighs
Home is the Arabic alphabet dancing on my tongue
Qalby fi Falasteen.
But home is broken.
Home is check points.
Home is mother's cries and children's arrests.
Home is sad eyes and torn down olive trees.
Home is occupation and shouts of protest.
Hada watany!
Home is tears and walls.
Home is 'Don't bomb my city.'
Home is dig my father out of the rubble.
Home is Palestine.
Palestine.
Holding her freedom flags high
Singing songs from past generations
She is rebellious fire
She is refusal
She is the wing that protects her people
She is Holy City.
She is Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Gaza.
Palestine is the tears in my sleepless eyes.
She is the whistle of the wind before it rains.
She is the breath of nostalgia before my father's morning smoke.
She is the fight in my mother's eyes when she is held at gunpoint for planting trees.
Palestine is home.
The fire in my soul is bread from her.
Palestine built me with her memory and sent me away.
America took me in.
America wiped my tears and hardened my bones.
America taught me how to speak in Martin Luther King.
She taught me how to distinguish between freedom and ignorance.
America showed me ignorance.
She showed me racism and blindness.
America showed me melting-pot love.
She showed me unity and double standards.
America is broken too.
America is home.
Home is heart.
My heart.
Divided like math equations.
One blood mixing with the other.
Heart is Arabic poem and English story.
Heart is family with two different shades of beauty.
Heart is the combination of two worlds inside me.
Heart is me.
I am me.
I am the half-blood.
And this is my song.
