When I can’t turn my mind off or slow my heart enough to sleep, I dig out the pink rosary beads buried at the back of my sock drawer. Lying still under the sheets I whisper a decade of Hail Marys. When my fingers reach the small chain between the beads, I murmur “Existence is resistance,” into the darkness. I fall asleep and dream of being a wolf howling at the moon and padding quietly into a warm den in the bush. Being an animal is better than being a human animal.

In the morning, I emerge from my den and paw my face clean. I tread through the quiet house and force myself to unroll my green yoga mat onto the deck. I am a dog, now a cat, now a cow. I finish my salutes under the blue sky crouched like a beetle with forehead to the cold thin foam now smelling like a barn. “Existence is resistance,” my new mantra as I bow to finish my practice.

Later, on the train to work, the Middle East Eye shares an image of a seven-year-old girl, Sidra Hassouna, hanging like a ripped paper doll from the building that was her home. As I walk up the stairs at Town Hall, I imagine my body crumbling like a blown-up apartment block. I imagine the commuters walking over me to get through the ticket gates. “Just another dead Palestinian,” they think. Do I turn around and go home?

In the office, I respond to an inane email about incorrect numbers in a spreadsheet and decline a meeting for the internal “diversity” group. The only thing I do that feels of value is sharing a link to a fundraiser for recently arrived families from Gaza. I send it to 100 people on my floor. Four people send me a reply. When I get home that evening, I am comforted by the smell of bolognaise but when I bend to unlace my brogues, a shooting pain shatters the glass citadel inside me.

“Babe, I can’t get up,” I say to Mark, who is draining the pasta over the kitchen sink.

“Shit,” he exclaims, hurrying over to help me stretch out on the red rug in our dining room.

“It’s been going on for so long,” I sob.

My back stays frozen for twenty-four hours. When I am up doing yoga again a couple of days later, I remember the same thing happened to my sister, Rawan, when our father died unexpectedly. Grief breaks bodies but not the way bombs do. That week, I add walking to my daily repertoire. I pace through the bushy suburban streets of northwest Sydney as dusk falls and remind myself I am more than what they have made of us. A body. A body count. I am more than the artificial feeling of a fingertip scrolling on a smartphone. More than my heart hardening under the weight of a jagged stone citadel.

The following week, like a blessing, Rawan calls., “I have a spare ticket to DJ Saliah,” she says, “You should come!”

That Friday, I get dressed in a pink and red 70s dress, something I haven’t worn in years. I match my gold sneakers with gold hoops in the shape of pomegranates. Rawan picks me up in her black skinny jeans and a new denim jacket with tatreez embroidery on the back. We drive into the city and park at the multistorey carpark at the back of the Downing Centre.

“So weird doing this again. Do you remember when we used to do this every weekend?” my sister says as we walk down Goulburn Street. I feel the glass like a heavy weight of guilt inside me, and had forgotten the Civic, where the DJ is playing, was a favourite haunt in our twenties. 

“Do you remember how we used to all smoke inside? So gross,” I say as we join the queue to enter the bar.

I don’t listen to DJ Saliah but in the car on the way over my sister gives me a crash course in her music. She is from the UK and mashes up 90s pop with Arab anthems. So, it makes sense the queue is full of young and old Arabs, straight and queer. In front of us stands a young woman with long curly black hair cascading down over her little black crop top, brushing the top of her short leather hot pants and crowning her bejewelled navel.

“I’ve brought my mum,” she says after we introduce ourselves. The woman standing next to her, in a pale blue headscarf, smiles at us, “We all just need to dance!” she beams.

Rawan and I sip G&Ts by the bar, which hasn’t changed in all these years and still smells of musty beer-stained carpet. We watch as the club starts filling up and point to a guy we recognise from the protests. We call him the “Greek god” and roll our eyes because of course he is among the first on the dancefloor. Later we are dancing to the support act, Ms Rizk from Melbourne, when a young woman with a shaved head enters the dance floor, banging a huge tabal. The song “Dammi Falasteeni” comes on.

The deep trill of Muhammad Assaf’s opening note rises above the drums and the whistling of the mijwez flute. It reverberates through the club and the crowd starts singing at the top of our voices.

“Ana dammi falasteeni, falasteeni, falasteeni.”

Our blood is Palestinian, and together all hearts, and hands and legs, we jump and sway and swing our keffiyehs above our heads. 

We dance non-stop for four hours and exit into the street all sweaty.

“I’m too old for this,” Rawan laughs, taking off her black stilettos to walk back barefoot to the car.

My skin feels soft and porous in the cool night air. I lift my head to the night sky, and spotting some stars, yell out into the empty city streets, “Our Existence,” and my sister finishes “Is Resistance.”

Image: Mohammed Abubakr