Everything I Will Not Write
My writing constraints itself. It limits itself to what I know and cages itself within my experience. When it attempts to sneak through the chicken-coop fence of my being to rob the stories of others, I seize it and ground it to what is responsible and fair, religiously protecting the dignity of my characters. I will not write about the abandoned refugee boy wearing his sister’s white handy-down gown, its lace sleeves torn and stained, nor his soiled scalp, nor the rusty nail between his teeth. I will not write about the Kakuma Camp rehabilitation ward where an infant lay entangled in tubes, restless, wide-eyed, and crazed with hunger, too weak to weep. I will not write about the Holocaust, lest I make comparisons I know are not to be made because they parch my throat and raise my hair on end. I will not mention what I felt last month when I visited Yad Vashem and froze before the black-and-white photograph of the two bony barefoot beggar children wrapped in oversized tattered woolen overcoats, listlessly strolling the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, finding hope only in each other’s warmth. I will only mention the lone thought that echoed in my throbbing head: that I would be a fool to bring children into this world. But while my procreation may be within my control, my writing writes itself.
January 1, 2022
The Secrets of Seasonal Floodplains Resurface in Sudan of 2021
In our time,
somewhere between Ethiopia and Sudan,
they drift amid the muddy reeds, mangroves, and hyacinth fields,
like vagrant palm fronds.
They swirl with great force, towards the monstrous mouth of a Nubian estuary,
towards a hemostatic Nile,
From up the stream, come what my eyes fail to register and my mind fails to grasp:
those who sail without a skiff,
not flotsam, not jetsam,
but damned nameless souls sentenced to float along the border with bound hands,
marking the boundary between the kingdom of Abyssinia and the kingdom of the dead,
haunted by the fresh entry wounds on their foreheads,
debris of war they could not flee,
and familiar faces who took their lives.
August 7, 2021, Jaffa
Reflections on the Aid Industry
I need a muse.
She shall come as a goddess, with broad wings and white feathers.
She shall incarnate as a youth, with fair skin and golden hair.
As she descends from the heavens, she shall place the laurel wreath upon my head and I shall be instantly blessed by her touch.
She shall instill in me the knowledge of everything to which I am oblivious:
She shall educate me on the ways of the land which I have been harvesting for decades;
She shall teach me the secrets of the springs which brought life to my ancestors for centuries;
She shall inspire me with new customs and manners of which I am ignorant;
She shall build my capacities and raise my awareness, like a female Buddha or Jesus;
She shall sensitize me to condemn my harmful cultural practices, like an apostle, unveiling the sacred gospels of life, enlightening me while exposing me to categorical imperatives, binding me to newly found normative obligations and ecclesiastical commitments.
She shall not only tell me who I am but also who I need to be.
She shall give meaning to my life: meaning which it lacks until the moment in which she discovers me and calls me her own.
And in this revelatory moment of apotheosis, she shall know me, and I shall know the truth.
And once I know her, I shall be hooked.
I shall become powerless under her narcotic spell.
And once she leaves me, all I shall do is wait, idly and humbly, for her return.
Tel Aviv, December 20, 2017
Or Mor-Yosef
CEO of the African Refugee Development Center and has worked in development programs in refugee settings in Israel and in East Africa. He previously co-founded the Jerusalem African Community Center before leading IsraAID’s country offices in Kenya and Uganda and working on IsraAID's Africa desk supporting programs in South Sudan and Mozambique, among other countries. Or holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Comparative Literature and an M.A. in Glocal Development Studies, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He writes fiction and poetry published in various literary magazines and often relates to humanitarian work.
