People who know better say things they shouldn’t.
I am in a DiDi. I am in a DiDi because I am boycotting Uber, and I am boycotting Uber because of where I am from.
I do not mind the question at all, just the follow-ups. I am in a DiDi and the follow up is, ‘so what are your views on the whole Palestine thing?’ and I say back, ‘oh man well I mean that’s a big question’. Big answer.
Being Palestinian means being a historian, correspondent, spokesperson. The knowledge I have isn’t inherited. It’s learned. It’s laboured over. It’s expected of Palestinians so we read, listen, talk and teach, when someone asks.
People who know better say things they shouldn’t. I am tired of being the inner-North art scene’s correspondent on Palestine. Talking to my housemate about being tired I say, ‘it feels like that schoolyard clapping game, like patty cake, like a sailor went to sea’. ‘I have to go slow and simple so no one gets lost along the way.’ I say, ‘and then I spend time with other Palestinians and it’s like double dutch, but with four ropes going at once and we’re jumping like it’s nothing’. A naff metaphor, but I am too tired to come up with something better at the time.
A blessing, a surprise: I say ‘Palestine’ at a picnic, and the person asking keeps the conversation going. We talk about the March of Return, Australia’s fickle campus movement, my right to aggression, the rotting in my core.
So I am in a DiDi and stumped by how to answer, because I don’t know how much this guy knows already, so I say, ‘big question, big answer’ and then a phone starts ringing: Mona’s phone is in my bag. We drive back the way we came to get it back to her and he lets the question go.