Not sure where to start, because I have a lot on my mind, but maybe we could start with a good book?

Salt Houses, by Hala Alyan, was on a list of recommended books by Palestinian authors. I don’t want to ruin it by going on and on about it, but read it. It’s a sweeping story that crosses generations and tell stories of individuals over time, and those stories come together to communicate a greater whole. It creates a world full of rich detail, and it is so, so good.

I used that book as the photo for the whole post, but I do have more to say about other things, so I’m just going to keep going, OK?

I did a 24-hour media blackout Friday into Saturday this weekend. It wasn’t completely intentional. This has been *another* week, with a dead fridge, an ER visit (we are fine), and two appliance deliveries (thanks, Mom and Dad), in the midst of very weird spring weather in the middle of February.

I did use the weather to get out and garden. Tackling weeds that have been an irritant for years in the dead of winter is satisfying, but unsettling at the same time. The damp earth was easy to dig. Soft weeds ripped through it in long, meaty threads in my hands. Not a winter sensation, not a winter activity.

By Friday night, I had been off social media all day and was about to take a nap before a night shift. I knew if I got online before I went to sleep, I would get upset and probably doom scroll my rest time away. So I didn’t. I finished Salt Houses. Then I read You Can Only Yell at Me For One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples, by Patricia Marx and Roz Chast. It was also good, but for very different reasons. The dry humor was a good emotional transition from Salt Houses to sleep.

I came across this page, which accurately sums up The Chaplain’s and my approach to life right now:The book was published in 2020 and unfortunately, this cartoon hasn’t aged a bit.

I worked a very busy night shift. My patients needed lots of things, only some of which I could provide. I spent too much time hunting for supplies that we should just HAVE on the floor, especially on a neuro floor. Again, 2020, thanks for nothing, because we still have supply chain issues. The most basic items are too often missing from the stock room. Therefore, I have to waste my valuable time looking for stuff that may or may not even be anywhere.

I came home exhausted and frustrated. I’d had to pass on too many problems to the ongoing nurse for my comfort, in spite of a night of advocacy, constant bedside care, consultation with specialists, and continuous texting with doctors who kept saying “the day team…” and “this has been a problem for four days…” neither of which help my patient.

At home in bed, freshly showered, I ate a charred breakfast made by a helpful but distracted child. I stared blearily at a page from my book for I don’t know how long before I realized I was sleep reading, closed the book, and shut off my light.

When I woke up, I felt predictably terrible, and in the dusky late afternoon light with my emotional support animal perched on my left hip, I picked up my phone to check in with the world.

It was as bad as it could have been.

It’s hard to remember the sequence of details because it’s so upsetting, so I’m going to tell this the way I remember it: ten or eleven days ago a six-year-old little Palestinian girl, the same age as my youngest child, was in a car with her family when the vehicle was fired on by Israeli soldiers.

She and her older cousin survived. They tried to call for help, but while they were on the phone, the cousin was killed. This little girl, Hind, was trapped in a car full of her dead relatives pleading with her mother for help from a cell phone.

The ambulance service communicated with the Israeli soldiers to obtain clearance to get to the area and rescue her. They received permission, and went in. Soon after, connection with both the Hind, and the rescuers, was cut off.

For a week and a half, no one knew for sure what happened. Today, the site was finally safe to access. Witnesses found the ambulance, now a charred metal frame, not far from the car where Hind was trapped. Both rescuers  were dead. They found the body of Hind among her family members. She had survived for days in the vehicle, but Israeli troops had refused to let anyone near the car to rescue her, targeted her rescuers, and killed her as she waited for help, terrified and alone.

That was the end of my media blackout. Welcome back. The little girl we have all been rooting for has died in the most horrific circumstances possible, and also, Israel has publicly announced they are going to proceed to move into Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians are trapped with inadequate resources and scarce healthcare. Babies are being forced to suck on fruit because there is no formula. Diapers are insanely expensive and hard to find. And Rafah is already being bombed every day.

In the midst of this horror and feelings of helplessness, there was an ad on my feed for keffiyeh. Now, I have tried to order keffiyeh directly from Palestine. I placed orders months ago, and nothing has come through. I am on the mailing list of the only Palestinian company selling keffiyeh, but the last time they had a restock, I missed it by *two hours* and by the time I saw the email, everything was sold out. Buying keffiyeh from Palestine is best practice.

But a comment on this ad basically said, “Shame on you for making money off of this tragedy. Buy Hirbawi keffiyeh only!”

Here we are, watching a genocide livestreamed. It does not matter that we are writing and calling our representatives. It does not matter that we are protesting. It does not matter that we are upvoting Palestinian content and donating to UNRWA and Doctors Without Borders and Refugee Relief. None of it matters, because those in power refuse to act.

Everything I do is coming to nothing. I’ve watch tens of thousands of people die, and I’m going to be shamed because I literally can’t get a keffiyeh from the one place that makes the original because they are completely sold out *all the time*?

I get that for alternate sellers, it’s not a good look to benefit from a crisis like this. But also, people like me are feeling hopeless. We want to keep publicly advocating for Palestine, and one of the most visible ways to do that is to keep wearing keffiyeh.

So I’m pushing back. Yes, I’m sure there are people who are wearing keffiyeh who are being performative. Maybe all public acts of solidarity are a little performative; I accept that. But let’s go back to my work shift. One of the things I was hunting high and low for was a set of equipment for suction.

On a floor with a lot of stroke patients who have swallowing issues, having suction at the bedside is essential, so not having those supplies is absolutely not OK. I know this isn’t a perfect comparison, and it’s particularly bad BECAUSE I NEVER FOUND THE SUPPLIES. I finally went and found the old suction set my patient had from the room where they had been before they came to me. It was kind of gross and I would have liked a fresh set, but that wasn’t an option. We were already cobbling together two mismatched pieces of equipment to make the suction work, and even one of THOSE pieces was missing.

You need something you don’t have. You want something you don’t have. You know what the best thing is: A fresh set of suction supplies. A keffiyeh made in Palestine. But you have mucus and saliva to get out of someone’s throat. And you have a genocide to protest. And you are going to do those things whether you have the ideal supplies or not.

Let’s not shame each other for our advocacy. This is already a painful world to be in. My hospital is out of essential supplies, just like the hospitals in Gaza which are under siege. A siege that is being funded by my country, using my tax dollars. Dollars which could instead be used to provide aid to Palestinians and also, perhaps be used to solve the supply chain issues that continue to plague the healthcare system in our own country.

For the love of God, FREE PALESTINE.