Visual created to reflect the themes in this article

Jumu’ah Al-Hazeeni (جمعه الحزيني)… Sorrowful Friday.

In Arabic, Jumu’ah is Friday, the day of gathering and prayer, and Al-Hazeeni comes from sorrow, a deep, honest sadness, so when we say Jumu’ah Al-Hazeeni, we are really saying “the Sorrowful Friday”, and I’ve always felt that the Arabic holds the truth of the day. It lets it be what it is.

As a Palestinian Christian, this day has never felt like something in the past. It always feels like sliding doors, like time is layered and moving alongside us, like what happened then continues to echo and unfold in different ways now. Maybe it is because these are not distant places we are talking about. They are home, they are real, they are places like Nazareth, Jerusalem, Haifa, Akka, Gaza and everything in between, where the story of Christ is something you feel in the ground beneath you. It’s in our DNA.  It’s a lesson about human behaviour that keeps repeating itself.  The only difference is that today, with technology, we see it for exactly what it is, and it will impact the globe. When we don’t address issues locally that are a result of global power, it will spread………

جمعة حزينة، الله يعطيكم السلام والصبر