September 28, 2026

What Prisoners Do

Here, on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time, near gardens whose shadows have been severed, we do what prisoners do, and what the jobless do: we cultivate hope.

Darwish wrote these lines in 2002, during the Israeli military's siege of Ramallah, where he lived and was confined to his home while tanks moved through the streets outside. He had no way of knowing when the curfew would lift or what news the next hour would bring, so he wrote the poem in short, dated fragments, one for each day of waiting. This line names hope as a discipline shared by prisoners and the unemployed alike, people with no control over their circumstances who still choose what to do with the hours in front of them. It matters this morning because hope here is not a mood that shows up on its own, it is a task, something you tend today regardless of what tomorrow holds.