67 years have passed since what they called the Palestinian “Nakba,” (“catastrophe”). I do not know who came up with that optimistic terminology which suggests that the worst that could happen had already come to pass and would not also be following in the days after this “Nakba.” That the following days would be a mere vigil for it--a time to study its causes, find treatments for its consequences, and then erase them from the reality completely by creating a new reality, making it a “small event” in our history. It will be handled and straightened out if only we wait! And we waited.

This is what satiated us, the ideas of our wise rulers, and this is what emerged in our consciousness. The year of the “Nakba” was the year of my birth. In accordance with this destiny or this accident, I became one of her sons. I am a son of the Nakba in the sense of inheriting all that was hoped for--all of the needs, duties, and priorities. I was raised amidst the program of supporting life within its consequences: educating the self as preparation for the “battle for liberation,” for without awareness-building, emancipating the mind for the launch of free thought, all humanitarian efforts are futile. As no individual hope or act is isolated from the masses, even if they have “good intentions,” it fell upon me (and upon all other sons of the Nakba) to engage in calling for liberation, to align ourselves with the slogans calling for it and with the “leaders,” despite any biases, animosities or contradictions that may have emerged among them. The parties and the leaders said that we would build the power for liberation if we waited. And we waited.

The 19-year-old bull trampled us in that fateful 1967. He had waited for us to confront our enemy, the causer of our Nakba, and this lead to the shocking defeat they called the “Naksa” ("setback")! Truly, I am impressed and have great admiration for the capabilities of the Arabic language to devise such vocabulary which suits (or falsifies) the reality in which we live. The people who had been driven out from their land Palestine, in what we first characterized as the Nakba, were described as “refugees.” Their descendants, and those who paid the price for that defeat/Naksa, were “displaced.” The refugees bided their time and received promises of imminent return, if only they waited for just a short time. And they waited.

Time passed. Generations were born, crises created, coups signed, systems changed, hordes entered prison on behalf of liberation and return, and other hordes came out of the camps, taking to rule with their fists instead, in order to achieve liberation and return. All the former rulers were “traitors,” they had said. A little bit of patience to wait and a bright future is coming, God willing! And we waited, oblivious that God does not concern himself with the issues of land policy, the will of earthy rulers and the people.

Because the rulers of our land were what we now know and understand them to be, we said: Let’s take our cause into our own hands. We drew arms, they drew plots and large funds for bribery! Thus, new hordes entered prison, and new hordes came out from the camps and came to rest at the helm of power--or seized it, there is no difference. Not to us.

The group was not completed, from the first ranks to the last ranks, after the critical dilemma we called “our first cause,” without providing each of those who refused to forget with “the key”--even if it was just a drawing on a piece of cardboard or printed on a t-shirt, or a drafted gold necklace attached around the neck. It was a symbol, yes, and a reality at the same time. The worry in the whole issue is that if the key is not mentioned on the 15th day of May each year, then we will wait for a new year of solutions. Palestine turned from our first cause to an annual event, and not even a solemn one, more like the rejoicing of the birth of a family member: a few candles, sweets, odes recited, then closing with entertainment! With a reminder that we never forget our share of the cake. Every year you wait for another year! No blame and no one blaming.

We have to wait. For today there is Daesh, and her sisters and cousins, contained in all our scorched earth, in succeeding lines. There are systems of resistance facing puppet regimes. There is an Iranian threat and international complicity. There are parliaments on paper only, yet real blood covering our maps--not some staged image, tomato juice for affect. There is Iraq. There is Syria. There is Libya. There is Egypt. There is Yemen. There is Somalia. We have to wait for our systems, the resistance and the agent together, until the end of the crises--our crises, created by the hands of others and yet here we are paying all the costs, our fate thrown into the unknown. Generations of illegal immigrants lying in coffins in the Mediterranean Sea. Return to the key. The key to it.

It is the key to the solution. Our key to a house in a country called Palestine turned the door into a daydream, and its lock into a question with a lost answer. In this deluge, I am afraid that “Noah” does not appear to be waiting on the coming horizon to build our rescue ship. Every 15 of May we are waiting for a quake that does not reveal itself--a mirage in the desert.

Elias Farkouh is  a writer and a novelist. He has received numerous awards for his many novels and short stories.

*The Arabic of this op-ed article appeared on May 16, 2015

Translated by Julia Norris