To Palestine| We sail, and your hearts sail with us

They say 35,000 people from around the world applied to join the Global Sumud Flotilla headed to Gaza from Barcelona.

When I was selected, after filling out a number of forms and passing some interviews, I told a Palestinian friend about the number of applicants. She said I was among “the chosen people”. The global flotilla aims to break the siege and to draw the world’s attention to the genocide being carried out by the state of the so-called “chosen people of God.”

On Aug. 23, I went to a flotilla preparation meeting at a squat house—one of the occupied houses in Madrid. Most of those attending were people who will support the flotilla from land.(*)

Those who weren’t selected don’t know who will actually be boarding the boats. For safety, and to protect the mission, we were prohibited from announcing that we are among the 300 activists chosen to join the fleet that will sail from the port of Barcelona—20 boats in all—which will meet at sea with boats coming from other ports across the Mediterranean.

The meeting was run by a woman in her seventies, wearing a shirt that read “Iaioflautas”, a collective of Spanish grandparents who rose to prominence during the 2011 anti-austerity movement in Spain, organizing as seniors to advocate for socio-economic justice. The movement was founded to defend the rights of future generations to work, housing, health care, and free education.

She took out the banner they would carry bidding farewell to those boarding the boats. It read, “Carry our hearts with you to Palestine.”

I nearly cried. I couldn’t tell her that I will carry her heart with me. And my mother’s. And the hearts of my family and friends in Spain, in Egypt, in Cuba, and in other countries as well.

We will carry the hearts of millions who want to walk or sail towards Palestine but cannot. Because of their circumstances, or their impoverished lives, or their governments.

All of them are with us, on the boats headed to Gaza. Boats carrying people from more than 44 countries—representing the largest solidarity movement since the Vietnam War. This time, for the Palestinian people.

All of them dream of a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Among them are Egyptians who long to scream—who do not let their difficult lives distract them from the Palestinian people, and who do not forget that Gaza is being annihilated, and goes to bed starved.

And because we carry your hearts with us on our way to Palestine, I will try to share with you my diaries from this journey, so long as the high seas allow us to connect.

(*)The term squat house/casa okupa refers to abandoned homes that are taken over by social movements and turned into social, cultural, and political spaces.