Birds & freedom

Birds & freedom

Birds are free. There are so many songs about wanting to be free like a bird. I wonder why do birds sing. I love birds. I also eat them. I am not happy with that. I don't want to be their enemy and devour birds. It is a habit that I grew up with that is hard to stop. But I do try to be reasonable. I am mindful, thankful, and respectful when I eat animal meat. That is the least that I can do.

There is a poem that I learned as a child that still rings in my heart:
الحيوان خلق The Animal is a creature
 له عليك حق You owe it its rights
 ان كل دعه يسترح If he got tired let it rest
وداوه اذا جرح Heal it if it got wounded
 ولا يجع في داركا Never let it go hungry in your house
 او يظما في جواركا or go thirsty while with you
 بهيمة مسكين Poor Animal
 يشكو فلا يبين when it complains we cant tell
لسانه مقطوع as if its tongue is cut
 وما له دموع as if it has no tears

Growing up, I was fascinated with birds. Birds are beautiful creatures that fly in the sky, or do they? Not all of them. There are birds in cages, there are birds in coops waiting to be killed and eaten ! Sadly , not all birds are free. When I was a kid I used to love going to the village to visit my aunt. I still do. She lives in a village near Jerusalem. When I was a kid, we used to go almost every weekend, on Eids* and special occasions. Sometimes, when our parents had to travel and couldn't take us with them, we kids spent weeks there without mom & dad. We stayed with our 3amma. -ّ_N. The symbol 3 here represents the letter 'Ein in Arabic, which can be left out for people who can't say it. That's what we call her. : El 3amma, it means: ‘The Auntie’. The Amma has a garden with all kinds of fruit trees in it. She has birds too. When I was a kid she had chicken, pigeons, a couple of goats and some rabbits too.
I loved staying with the Amma because she was gentle and loving. She was also very smart and resourceful; She was able to make things. She made carpets with her own hands. She designed the loom, sheered the sheep, spun the wool into balls of strings. She then dyed the wool and then weaved it into beautiful colorful carpets. She even designed the patterns as she was weaving.
The Amma made bread too. She made big shrak bread on the saj. She had a little dome shaped building made out of rocks right outside her house in the front garden. Inside this little room there was a saj oven, it is a dome shaped steel thing called the saj. The Amma collected dry branches and stuck them under the saj and lit the fire. When the saj is hot enough, she spreads the dough in the most skillful fashion like an Italian chef makes pizza, she rolls the dough with her hand in the air so fast until it becomes as thin as paper and then while turning it around in the air, she flips it so that it would land on the Saj. In a few minutes the delicious smell fills the air and the beautiful big round thin hot shrak bread is ready to eat. Palestinians call it shrak or saj bread. It smelled like the elixir of life. No bread is more delicious than the bread my Amma makes on her saj.
My Amma lived in a beautiful village, surrounded by nature. I enjoyed being there. The Amma had animals and lots of trees. There were a lot of kids to play with. I played with my cousins and their friends. I learned a lot from them. I loved being in their world which was very different from my world. I was more like a city kid.
Later when I did go to real cities I discovered that Bethlehem wasn't really a city. I discovered it was a town. I realized I was a town kid, still, to the village kids, me and my siblings were very different. They were not like us, we were too soft, we were cleaner, our clothes were nicer. They were tougher than us. They had information we didn't have, particularly about nature. They had stories and songs that were very interesting. They had folklore. I learned there about el Ghoula who eats kids! A traditional way to scare kids is to mention this Ghoula. I was impressed with the village kids strength and courage. Nothing seemed to scare them. I wanted to be courageous and tough like those kids.
When I was very young. My aunt's village didn't have electricity or running water. My cousin fetched the water from a well nearby. I watched her with terror. She was a teenager with a wide imagination and I was an impressionable little child. She liked telling folk tales and singing folk stories. When we were at the well, she particularly enjoyed telling me stories about the Ghoula and kids who fall in wells... I was amazed watching her get the water from the well without fear, so casually. The bucket was made from black rubber. I remember how she secured the rope with her feet, threw down the bucket into the well. Then like a fisherman with his fishing rod, she pulled and threw a bit further until the catch is made. When she pulled, the bucket came out shining black full of fresh cold delicious water. The floppy bucket had to be handled with skill so that the precious water doesn't get spilled out. Then she had a big tin can were she emptied the water that she just fished. She needed half a dozen buckets to fill the can. Then she carried it all the way to the house. I tried to help but I was too little. My cousin made me a mini watering bucket from a small tin can and a long thread. That made me very happy. I enjoyed the daily water fetching trip & observing my cousin do her chores. I helped feed the animals. The pigeons & rabbits lived together in a big barn-like building made of tin. It had no roof. Pigeons could fly away. They did fly and come back. They sat on their shelves up on the walls. I thought it was stupid of them to come back, where their babies will get picked up & end up on our dinner table! People prefer to eat baby animals. Sad but true. The chickens had a their own little house. In the morning we go get the eggs. I was so excited I could die. :). The suspense! What will we find today? How many eggs? I loved eggs. Getting them from the chicken personally and then enjoying eating them right away was very pleasing to me. A part of me feels guilty that I took the chicken unborn babies & ate them. The poor chickens. It is not fair how we eat them too. I used to watch the chickens for hours. I was very interested
in comparing them to each other, trying to figure out their characters, watching how they relate to each other. Kids had stories they imposed on the chicken: like: there was a black little hen that kids called the crazy chicken! the kids weren't too nice to animals. Especially chicken. Chicken can't fly like the pigeons, kids enjoyed practicing their power over them. They sometimes threw pebbles at them so the they would jump of fear and quack! I thought that was a horrible thing to do. I did do it though at times, pure peer pressure. I wanted to be respected by the village kids. That caused me to compromise my own integrity. Later I'd feel bad and promise not to scare the chickens. Isn't it bad enough that I eat them. I felt bad about that. I tried to become a vegetarian when I was a teenager but I lasted less than a couple of weeks. My dad had a barbecue and I could not resist. The poor black chicken was not crazy, she was smaller and slower than the other chickens, she couldn't escape from the kids pebbles as fast. She got too scared too fast. She was jumpy and terrified and running in fear more than the rest. The poor chicken was a victim of human cruelty & power abuse. The kids also liked raiding small birds' nests and eating their eggs. I thought that wasn't ok. A person needed to eat at least 6 of these eggs to have a reasonable meal. I thought it wasn't fair to do that to the beautiful birds. They just want to have babies. They should have the right to be safe. As I grew older and stronger I became bolder in defending birds. On one of her birthdays, my sister wanted birds. Mom and dad got her birds in a cage. I couldn't let that happen.
Nothing seemed to annoy me more that seeing birds in a cage. I was obsessed with their freedom. 'Why are they in a cage? Because you think they are pretty?', I told my sister. I told her that she was being unfair to deprive them from their natural right to fly freely in the sky and live their life as they want. I told her that she was being selfish to cage them just because she loves them and loves their singing. I told her this singing is maybe them crying for their freedom. My poor sister. I put her in a hard place. Adults told her that her birds aren't able to make it outside the cage because they don't have survival skills, because they were raised in captivity. Adults gave her the impression that if she let the birds fly that would be like killing them, that the cats will eat them in no time. My poor sister was torn in conflict. I told her: Even so, maybe the birds would rather die free than live in a cage. Freedom is their right. I feel bad now how i made her suffer but the birds' freedom was my priority. I appealed to my sister's heart: “Imagine you are them. All day in a cage, you can't even move properly, you can't use your wings. While watching this beautiful world full of trees and flowers and free birds. You like your freedom, how can you take it away from the birds?” , I told her. My speeches made her cry. To make it worse some of the birds were dying, I told her it must be because of sadness. I really believed it. There was only 2 birds left, Eventually she let one of them fly away. My sister was 6 or 7. The dilemma was too hard for her. Waheed, the remaining bird died soon after. I think he got too lonely. How was all this drama useful?. Why does a little child wish for birds in a cage to start with? The result is two dead birds and a sad little girl. All she wanted is to love and admire the birds. Me too, all I wanted is to set them free. My mom and dad wanted us to be happy. How come the result was death and pain?
He was small and weak. His name was Waheed, which means alone in Arabic. He died alone. In the cage.