This poem is about my grandmother, Taita Almasa, may she rest in peace, who was forced to leave Akka and live in Lebanon as a refugee in 1948. Like many descendants of Palestinian refugees, my family has not yet had the opportunity to return to Palestine. So many of us today rely on the memories of our ancestors to take us back to our land.

"Ya Sitti" is a term of endearment in Arabic used to address elderly women and grandmothers.

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Ya sitti

By: Fatima Youssef

Tell me how the olives taste fresh from the trees of Akka.

Tell me where the rivers bend.

How do the flowers blooming in the spring time smell?

What does the weather feel like in the winter?

Tell me what the red sea waves sound like.

Tell me how the homes look?

Ya sitti

Khabrini an ilhurriyah!

Tell me about. . .  freedom. . .

Pause. . . . . .

Ya sitti

Why won’t you answer me?

Is it hard to remember?

Ya sitti

Please tell me what freedom was like!

I need to know, I have to know.

Habeebti

Allow me to tell you what freedom was not.

Pause. . . . . .

Freedom did not taste like poverty.

Freedom did not smell like gun powder or burning flesh.

Freedom did not sound like mothers weeping over fallen sons.

Freedom looked nothing like apartheid.

It did not feel like the humiliation of an entire people.

Habeebti

Freedom is none of those things now.

Freedom was none of these things then.

Freedom was Palestine before 1948.

Freedom will be Palestine again.