A conversation between the sword and the neck
A honoring of the martyr Ghassan Kanafani, murdered by the IOF 54 years ago
The opposite of the neck is the sword.
Where the neck must bow, the sword must cleave. One smooth motion, sharpened metal falling onto soft skin.
Is it the destiny of the neck to stay bowed, so the sword may cleave through smoothly?
One may say, a bird must die and turn to soil for the tree to grow to feed the other birds.
But we aren’t birds, are we? Must we, as necks, stay bowed to our martyrdom? We mustn’t. At any cost, we mustn’t. It is not in the interest of the neck to be cleaved. It is only and alone the interest of the sword to cleave, which itself breeds the necessity of the neck to bow.
But we mustn’t bow. We must dull the sword and smelt it down to fork and spoon, pot and kettle so the children may be fed. A sword that’s a fork and a neck that’s a man is a world more equal. There is no conversation between the sword and the neck, there is only war. The Empire of Swords may rise in the West, but it shall die in the East. It shall die there and in its own forges, melted from within.
We are more than a neck to be cut. But the enemy is no more than a sword. No more than a paper tiger. A tiny man casting a large shadow, with the sun rising in his back. The sun is setting on the tiny man. An empire to fall, and all the other swords with it.
May the neck be free of cutting. May the people be free of culling. May we be just men in the sun.
