Fady Joudah , March 26, 2025

Truth Is Never Finished

Ruins in Gaza, approximately 1920 to 1926. | Library of Congress

I.

First they came for the Palestinians,
and I didn’t speak out
because I wasn’t Palestinian.

Then they came for America
and we all became Palestinian.

Then we were good.
They came back for the Palestinians
and we didn’t speak out.

First they came for good,
and I didn’t speak out
because I wasn’t good.

They came for natives:
This is a land without natives,
and the natives shall be removed.

They came for Iraqis, Yemenis, Congolese,
and I said nothing because
they’ve been coming for the Congolese
for so long, and we never spoke out.

They came for rubber then for blood minerals.
I was petrol waiting to be electric vehicle.

And when they came for the Japanese,
I said come after them some more.

First they came for Hanoi in Timor,
and again for Afghans while waving
freedom flags for Sudan in Haiti.

They came for so many others.
I was a shadow. I wanted to be praised.
Then they shushed the world, praised it,

and it wasn’t praise.

II.

First they came for my heart: I was a child, and they ate my heart.  

First we had legs and ran for the hills, and the horses said nothing, because we were unicorns. Then they came for the hills and forced us down to sea, and we said nothing because we had drowned.  

Then they came for the desert, but the desert, like the sea, didn’t quench their thirst. And that was when they came for the river to stop it from talking marine.  

First they laid God to rest. And on the seventh day God rose and spoke the city’s name in every alphabet to revive the city of the dead in every alphabet.  

First they came for my grandparents, but my parents lived. Then for me, but my children lived. Then they came for the media, and the media hailed the kingdom of nothing and severed our tongues. 

Then they came for the courts, and I wasn’t a judge, then for schools and wiped them out for generations. 

First they came for water, and you said nothing, because your pee was well-balanced. Then they came for aid, kneecapped and decapitated it, and you said nothing, because you were not hungry or cold, had hogged all the medicine and cereals, blocked access to pigeon and poultry feed. 

Then they came back for the map, but the map laughed them off: Who bombs hospitals to inherit the earth? 

And you said nothing, because you sold them weapons, and when they came for mobile clinics, they set up a no-fly zone for kites, air, and wind. Because no oxygen for the dead. 

Then they came for the dirt, and dirt had no lips, so they tossed our corpses in the streets, and our corpses dared to be humanitarian for the animals. And you reposted the images. 

Then they came for the cemeteries, and when the skeletons said nothing, they asked for more caterpillars and dozers, and that was when you passed your bills.  

Then they circled back to identity, and my authenticity said, I am that I am, I am that I am not, and I am not that I am, and neither they nor you are the doctors of my bones. 

Then they returned for the face of God, because it’s everywhere you turn, but it said nothing. 

First they came for the order of things, and my ashes said nothing, because I was a phoenix. Then they embezzled history, but memory’s account grew a forest, and that was when they came for time. 

And it drove them insane that they couldn’t turn off time, and they went crazy that they had colonized a time in which there was no one left for them to come after, for they did not know how to be with others outside the madness of pursuit, the sweet perfume of domination. 

Then time did them in, and they did their time and were so alone for so long until we whom they had abolished returned from our aloneness with our cities rebuilt. 

And in the new time, they came for forgiveness, and I said nothing because I was not the forgiveness they were asking for. Then they came around and asked for it right. And it was the only power I had that I could grant, and I granted it. 

Then they came for their astonishment. Who was I to grant them what only Gods can grant? But their astonishment said nothing. And when there was no astonishment left, there was nothing left to forgive.