Mahmoud Khalil // "These are my first words to you… During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch... Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. How is it that the same politicians who preach 'family values' are the ones tearing families apart? My heart aches that I could not hold you in my arms and hear your first cry…but my absence is not unique… In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers…not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations… It was not a gap in the law that made me a political prisoner in Louisiana. It was my firm belief that our people deserve to be free, that their lives are worth more than the televised massacre we are witnessing…and that the displacement that began in 1948 and culminated in the current genocide must finally end… As a Palestinian refugee, I inherited a kind of exile that followed me to every border, every airport, every form... Each crossing required me to prove my docility, my identity and my very right to exist... You may never feel that weight. You may never have to translate your humanity through paperwork… I hope, with all my heart, that you will not witness the oppression that I have known… Loving you is not separate from the struggle for liberation. It is liberation itself. I fight for you, and for every Palestinian child whose life deserves safety, tenderness and freedom. I hope one day you will stand tall knowing your father was not absent out of apathy, but out of conviction. And I will spend my life making up for the moments we lost…starting with this one, writing to you with all the love in my heart."