In this land… A Song of Culture “Eighteen”

Over the noises of the world, I hear their art—

Not hammer-strokes, but breath on old stone,

Not chisel, but the pulse of ancient hands

Forming the sculpture of a thousand years.

These hands, these hands have learned the art of patience,

How to wait, to weave stories in the fabric of soil,

Threads of history and hope interlacing,

Binding the present with the echoes of a timeless past.

In the shadow of occupation, creativity blooms,

Anemones of resistance in the cracks of concrete,

The murals of their dreams unfurl

Beneath a sky that knows their names.

Each painting is a promise,

Each song a map to the heartland,

Every dance step a defiance,

Against the forgetting, the erasure of their names.

Smiling, they sculpt resilience,

Carving freedom from the stones of adversity,

Molding futures in the face of oppression,

Their art a bridge across a chasms of hope.

In the markets of Hebron, colours collide,

Ceramics gleam with the shine of persistence,

Patterns of pomegranates, olives, and figs

Inscribed with the poetry of survival.

Their music, a tapestry of winds and strings,

Strains of oud and darbuka weave together,

Threads of memory and living out loud,

An unbroken chord that sings of return.

These artists, these poets of the extraordinary,

Paint the walls of refugee camps with the hues of hope,

Sketching the silhouettes of villages lost,

Always alive in the heartbeats of the diaspora.

Palestinian art is not in museums,

But in the streets, in the fields, in the exile’s suitcase,

In the embroidered thobe and the keffiyeh’s weave,

In the bread they break, in the walls they reclaim,

And in the eyes and hearts of all humanity.

This art, their art, our art,

Is the essence of existence,

The ink of identity,

A mosaic of what was, what is, and what will be—

In every brushstroke, a testament,

In every note, a whisper of Palestine,

Indelible, eternal, defiant…human.