This address was given by my dear friend Dr Obada Kayali at the Free Palestine Dinner, which was held in Canberra in September 2002. If you would like to send comments to Obada please do so through my feedback form and I will pass them on to him. (October 2002)


Assalamu Alaikum — Shalom Aleikhem — Peace be upon you

As I am sure we are all already converted, and seeing the exotic atmosphere, I decided to tell you a fairy tale. An Arabian Nights fairy Tale.

Once upon a time there was a king. His name was Solomon. He, like me, was born in Jerusalem.

This king, according to the present day Israel would have been barred from entering Israel let alone having Israeli citizenship. This is because his mother was not Jewish. Worse still, his mother was a Palestinian.

I am not going into the detail, exactly as told in the Old Testament, of how King Solomon came into being, for it is an R-rated story. Moreover I do not want to offend some people, especially Muslims who have very high regard for David and have it in the Quran that David and Solomon were not only prophets but also messengers of God exactly like Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.

Nevertheless, Solomon's mother was a very beautiful Jebusite woman called Bint Sabaá. In Arabic it means the daughter of the seven (that is seven gods) or, can also mean the daughter of the lioness. Her husband, that is before David took her over, was called Uriah the Hittite who was a Palestinian general in David's army.

Maybe because of his unique heritage, Solomon was a man of peace, unlike his dad.

Anyway, coming back to my tale, Solomon was gifted with extraordinary powers. He could talk to any creature and as it says in the Quran he understood what the ants were saying. More than that he had power over the unseen creatures called Ginn. This was to the extent that he even made them build his magnificent temple. Those of them who were disobedient, he punished them. He did not know of Australia at that time. Otherwise he would have sent them to live happily here. So he invented a new punishment method. He used to order the Gennie to become smoke and then enter into a small bottle. Solomon would then cork shut the bottle and hurl it into the sea. So the story goes that Solomon once brought one of his recalcitrant giants, converted him into smoke, put him in the bottle, put the cork on and into the sea it went.

One thousand years passed and the poor giant counting time in the bottle. Then the giant said to himself, “If anyone rescues me I will make him the richest person in the world.”

He waited and waited and another thousand years passed but nobody came to the rescue. So the giant said, “If anyone rescues me I will grant him all his wishes all his life.”

And he waited and waited, but nobody came for another thousand years.

So the giant now said, “Now if any one rescues me I will only give him the choice of how I will kill him.”

And so one day, a poor fisherman from Gaza, throws his net into the Mediterranean in defiance of Israeli curfew, and after a day of trying to catch a fish in vain, he catches something real heavy. Finally he manages to drag it ashore and finds that all that the net caught was a small bottle. But he was very intrigued by the enormous weight of the bottle, so he sat there staring at it wanting to open it but also afraid of it….

And as I follow Shehrazade's sensuous lips, I drift into my thoughts:

The first two thousand years of this giant's ordeal made him strive to find a meaning to his suffering. A meaning to his existence. Yet it had not matured enough in his mind beyond the action and reward. Resentment was an inevitable stage that had to follow in the process of trying to find a meaning to his ordeal. Soon this resentment and hate for every other being outside his bottle took over to become the very definition of his existence.

In contrast, the suffering of Jesus during his life and his ultimate suffering on the cross defined him as a human being who defined his existence by the heroism of living and dying for his principles. While he was sacrificing himself he knew that he has fulfilled his meaning and that those moments on the cross will continue to reverberate in humanity forever.

When Muhammad suffered banishment, humiliation and torture at the hands of his people, he stood alone in that wilderness knowing that he was struggling for a most noble cause.

Very recently Marwan Barghouti was brought to trial by the Israeli soldiers, his hands tied in steel cuffs. He raised his shackled fists high in proud defiance. I then recalled what the Iraqi poet Aljawaheri said expressing the state of mind of such a human:

Salamun Ala Muthkalen Bilhadidi Wayashmakhu Kalqaidith-thafiri,
Kaannal Quyooda ala Miesamaihi Mafateehu Mustakbalen Zahiri.

Peace upon him who is weighed down with iron yet his head is aloft like that of a triumphant leader,
As if the shackles on his wrists are nothing but the keys to a glorious future.

The persecution of the Jewish people through history culminating in their brutal suffering in the Holocaust was not in vain in the minds of those who suffered and ended up in the gas chambers. Neither was it in vain in the minds of many who survived the concentration camps. All those knew that they are the real victors and heroes who lived and died unashamedly for what they are. They knew that their suffering should become a huge landmark in the journey of maturity of mankind.

Alas, at this time of ours it only appears that those victims have sacrificed their lives only to be hijacked by the wealthy capitalists who made their suffering a market commodity. That commodity provided the capitalists and colonialists with obscene luxuries in places like New York. But worse still it provided them with the fake excuse of justifying miseries on innocent people.

But Shehrazade continues her story:

And so it came to pass that the Palestinian fisherman opened the bottle and out came blinding white smoke that roared to the sky and then took the shape of a frightening angry giant.

“Choose how you want me to kill you!” thundered the giant.

And my thoughts float in again:

The suffering of the Jewish people for two thousand years has also made of them that angry resentful giant who now wanted to take revenge for his suffering on those who are outside even if it was those who rescued them.

So they end up in the land of the warm welcoming Palestinians only to tell them “Now choose how you want to be killed.”

And as the Arabian nights story goes, the giant narrated his story to the fisherman, who in spite of his fascination and extreme sympathy still saw that his own fate had become doomed. So, with the most humble voice he pleaded with the Giant of Solomon:

“Before I die, O mightiest of giants, please tell me something that is bewildering me.” he said. “I really do not believe for one moment that it was you inside that small bottle. It is just impossible.”

The giant laughed in amusement at this simple pathetic figure.

“I will show you.” he said, and he shook himself into a cloud of white smoke, and slowly streamed into the bottle's neck.

As his last speck went inside, the fisherman swiftly pressed the cork into the bottle's mouth, grabbed it and aimed for the middle of the sea.

The trapped Gennie now realised what had happened and started begging: “I promise you by the Almighty God, by the scriptures that are on the seal of King Solomon, that I will make you the happiest in the world and will be your faithful and obedient companion for ever.”

Having heard these very sincere promises the good hearted Gazan fisherman decided to free the Gennie again.

The Genni lived up to his promise, and of course both of them, as the story says lived the most prosperous life.

And today, the fishermen in Gaza and Galilee, the labourers of Nablus, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the children of Jenin, Ramallah and Toulkarem, look with bewilderment at the giant of the Jewish state who is not even giving them the privilege of choosing how to die. Will this giant realise that his own salvation will never come except through that of these poor yet proud Palestinians? Will he ever realise that they are the people who hold the bottle of his imprisonment and the keys of his freedom? Will he ever realise that his fate and theirs have become too intertwined to be separated? How will their story end?

Page content last modified: 27 Apr 2003