A friend sent me this photo that he took this morning on the Victoria line train London (southbound).
It is a poster of my poem “Daughter” on the subway.
It is an official Transport for London poster, too.
“In Forest of Noise, his astonishing second
book, Mosab Abu Toha is the essential poet embodying the humanity of
Gaza, the precious hopes and dreams of all humans, the searing
collective cries of children, the indelible honest conscience, the heart
and soul. Miraculously he has continued speaking and writing through
the horrific genocide of his people and beloved place. His elemental
poems dissolve the empty rhetoric and posturing with simple, striking
truth. Not blows. Who else among us founds a library in our early
twenties? Today Mosab’s books may be crushed, but his most powerful
spirit is not.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of The Tiny Journalist
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As a child, I watched my mother precisely, yet effortlessly line her
beautiful almond-shaped brown eyes in the mornings. The earthy colors of
her make-up palette and the color-tone of the room were comforting in
their familiarity. The various shades of green and beige on the
bedcovers, the hints of red and orange on the book covers by her bed and
sometimes in the clothes she meticulously hangs the night before. The
beautiful wood closet doors and brass-colored hardware from the 1960s
still feel timeless and homey.
The cream-brown instant coffee that was always placed within the
perfect reach of her right hand, would always be followed by the much
darker umber of Arabic coffee; the scent adding to the palette of the
senses. She always looked focused yet graceful in her application. One
line or two, then she checks each eye in the mirror before purposefully
moving on to the next step in her routine. The yellow in the palette
always came from her notepad that she kept to the side of her dresser,
where she wrote down thoughts for a speech she had to give that day or
notes for a paper she was working on (or both). I was later told by my
father that that is Mama’s space when she takes time for herself to get
her thoughts together for the day.
The phone rings almost constantly, then as now; calls from fellow
activists and colleagues discussing strategy, from the press requesting a
statement or an interview, or from family or friends wanting to stop by
or to discuss plans for family lunch on Sunday. The news, in both
Arabic and English, is always on interchangeably, and sometimes
simultaneously!
With students.
Her public impromptu speeches, interviews, and writing display her
linguistic mastery of both Arabic and English. It was always apparent
that she has a deep passion for literature and the arts.... READ MORE https://thisweekinpalestine.com/hanan-daoud-mikhail-ashrawi/
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In a tent,
Two thin mats stretched
Over the rippled sand.
Two little girls chat:
“I earned more money today,”
One says,
Moving her fist in a circular motion
Over her other palm,
Teasingly.
The other promises
She’ll force her small neck
To endure the box of biscuits
For a longer time,
To withstand more hours of work.
She slowly twists her body,
With great difficulty,
To the other side
And cries…
Then she realizes…
That – for comfort – she doesn’t even have arms
To hug herself.
Asmaa
Dwaima is a Palestinian writer, poet, artist, and dentist. After being
displaced multiple times since October 2023, she currently shelters with
her family in southern Gaza. Her creative work delves into themes of
loss, resilience, and identity, capturing the enduring strength of the
Palestinian people. She is committed to preserving their stories and
humanity amid ongoing conflict.
My body recognizes the feel of the air inside tents. It’s
well-acquainted with the windy nights and the scorching days and
everything in between.
The humidity, relentless in both summer and winter, wraps itself
around me like a suffocating shroud. It swells my limbs, making my hands
and feet feel heavy and stiff, barely capable of movement. In summer,
my face and hands easily get sunburnt; they feel like they are literally
on fire, such that I cannot bear the gentle touches of my nieces and
nephews. In winter, the biting wind lashes at my hunched back leaving me
with searing pain and numb fingers.
Within the confines of tents, I have longed for walls to straighten
my back, to shield me from the relentless sun, the biting wind, and the
unrelenting rain. -Shaimaa Abulebda
The Tent Is Closing in on Us
By Shaimaa Abulebda
After Mahmoud Darwish
The tent is closing in on us.
Our limbs are squeezed tightly together
in search of warmth in cramped space.
We wish for the unmerciful stones—
knowing they could crumble to rubble
and tear us limb by limb—
to surround us, to straighten our hunched backs.
The nights stretch long and bitter;
the cold wind coming from the sea
gnaws at our bones and lashes at our backs.
We wish for the treacherous ceilings—
knowing they could collapse upon us
and crush our frail skeletons—
to shield us from the dreadful rain.
The mornings are too short
spent on the weight of endless chores—
scrubbing hands raw, standing in the ceaseless queues—
distracted from the unsaid fears that haunt our nights.
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Mosab Abu Toha taught English at United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) schools in Gaza from 2016 until 2019, and is the founder of the
Edward Said Library, the only English-language library in Gaza.[5] In 2019-20 he was a visitor at Harvard University, as a Scholar-at-Risk Fellow at the Department of Comparative Literature,[5] a librarian at the Houghton Library, and a fellow in the Harvard Divinity School.
In 2022, he published his first book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (City Lights). It won the Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Walcott Poetry Prize.[1]The New York Times said, "Abu Toha’s accomplished debut contrasts scenes of political violence with natural beauty."[12] For the National Book Critics Circle, Jacob Appel
wrote, "What makes Abu Toha’s work resonate so strongly is his gift for
the particular. By avoiding panoramic generalizations, he hones in upon
evocative images that capture the larger plight of his people."[13]
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In Zeina Azzam’s mesmerizing collection of poems Some Things Never Leave You
(Tiger Bark Press, 2023), tenderness means gazing directly at what both
cuts and fills you. A universal factor of human existence is the need
to enter an expressive space, which distills moments from one’s life
into essences. Whether it’s standing at a parent’s deathbed wondering
when the next reunion with a dying beloved will be or rejoicing at a
child’s ability to enunciate Arabic letters despite truncation from the
foundational homeland (Palestine), Azzam deftly parses the threshold of
joys and losses and renders them in a breathless lyricism.
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"... The late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, as a child, survived the
1948 Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when 750,000 Palestinians were
driven from their homes and 15,000 were killed during Israel’s founding.
Darwish lived much of his life in exile and was a critic of Hamas. He
wrote in his poem, “To A Young Poet,”
“A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.”
“… I offer you this Palestinian archive of poems, a record of
repeated exiles, of ongoing Nakba, a collection of poems that scrutinize
the language rife with hierarchies aimed at undoing us.” Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, from the Introduction
“Archives and archiving can offer poetic material and process for
articulating presences and histories and trajectories tethered to
truth.”Siwar Masannat
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It's nothing new for Israel to murder poets. From my blog 18 years ago:
Kamal Nasir , Palestinian poet , killed by an Israeli death squad on April 10, 1973 during a time when 1570 Palestinian educators, doctors, and professionals were deported from their homeland as well as assassinated and maimed in botched assassinations. Their crimes: intellect , resistance , leadership.
This poem "The Story" by Kamal Nasir was written in 1961.
I will tell you a story
A story that lived in the dreams of people
A story that comes out of the world of tents
Was made by hunger and decorated in the dark nights
In my country, and my country is a handful of refugees
Every twenty of them have a pound of flour
And promises of a relief...gifts and parcels
It is the story of the suffering group
Who stood for ten years in hunger
In tears and agony
In hardship and yearning
It is a story of people who were misled
Who were thrown in the mazes of years
But they defied and stood
Disrobed and united
And went to light, from the tents
The revolution of return
in the world of darkness.
Kamal Nasser
umkahlil "I first heard of Kamal Nasir from my late father, Baseel, who knew Nasir
in Ramallah. My father was born in 1922. Nasir was born in Gaza in
1925, but his family lived in Bir Zeit. I was somewhat annoyed that my
father, long since living in the states, had not heard of Mahmoud
Darwish, famous contemporary Palestinian poet. "Do you know Kamal
Nasir?" he challenged. "He was killed in front of his wife by Ehud
Barak," he said angrily.
Musician Rima Nasir Tarazi, President of the Administrative Board of the General Union of Palestinian Women, recalls
"Between 1954 and 1956, Kamal Nasir was staying at his home in Birzeit and would pour his soul out in passionate verses singing praises to the beautiful lost homeland and calling on the masses to stand up for their rights. He would put his poems before the three of us and we would decide amongst ourselves which to choose.His song, 'Ya Akhi El-Lajea,' (Oh, My Refugee Brother) adapted to the music of Fleifel immediately after the Catastrophe, had already become a landmark song widely known all over Palestine. It was a call to rise and to act against injustice and to stand up against attempts at humiliating our people and bartering their rights for meagre food rations: 'They offered us poison in our food / turning us into a docile and silent flock of sheep.'"
Tarazi writes
that Nasir "was writing an elegy to a friend" when he was killed. "His
body was found with hands outstretched, his mouth and right hand riddled
with bullets."
Sina Rahmani paraphrases Edward Said: "Another saddening story he [Said]
tells is that of the death of PLO spokesmen Kamal Nasir. Nasir was
babysitting for a relative of Said who had gone with Said to Jordan to
bury an aunt who had recently passed away. That very night that the two
of them had left for Jordan, Nasir was assassinated by an Israeli strike
team lead by Ehud Barak, who would become Prime Minister more than two
decades later. Exemplifying the vindictiveness of the Israeli attitude
towards Palestinians, the eloquent poet and writer Nasir was found
riddled with bullets in his mouth and his right hand."
"His poetic talents," Tarazi writes,
"which appeared early in childhood, were nurtured by the annual Suq
Okath (a traditional Arab poetry contest) held at the College [Bir Zeit]
and in which he always extemporized and excelled. He completed his
education at the American University of Beirut where he won the
prestigious poetry prize for his poem "The Orphan."
By
murdering Nasir, who was exiled from Jordan only to return and be
deported again by Israel along with hundreds of other Palestinian
intellectuals in 1967, Israel "was to demonstrate, once again,"
according to Tarazi,
"its commitment to destroying any embodiment of Palestinian identity
and any resistance to its attempts at establishing facts on the ground.
Thinkers and writers were viewed as a threat."
Ariel Sharon's legacy wrote Edward Said, will be that of an Arab killer,
as will that of Nasir's gleeful executor, Ehud Barak. Kamal Nasir was a
threat, but contrary to his rather stupid and short-sighted
executioners' expectations, he remains a threat to Israel's injustice;
it is in part from his painful experience of the "ugly side of
civilization," that he created a wealth of beauty that will inspire and
instruct "so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see." It is the legacy
which my late father, neither a poet, nor an intellectual, bequeathed
to me one day while we were talking in his Central California backyard.
"Nasir will always be remembered
as a man with boundless love for his people and for humanity as a
whole. His charm, compassion and tolerance won him several friends and
admirers among people from all walks of life. As a poet, he was widely
acclaimed for eloquently expressing the hopes and pains of his people,
and advocating their cause. His charismatic public appearances were a
source of inspiration to the masses that flocked to listen to him at
every possible occasion."
Kamal Nasir's Last Poem addresses exile and the longing for return as he admonishes his "beloved,"
Tell my only one, for I love him,
That I have tasted the joy of giving
And my heart relishes the wounds of sacrifice.
There is nothing left for him
Save the sighs from my song...Save the remnants of my lute
Lying piled and scattered in our house.
Tell my only one if he ever visits my grave
And yearns for my memory,
Tell him one day that I shall return --
to pick the fruits.
In Letter to Fadwa, Nasir anticipates his death, inspires hope, emits courage, and conveys beauty:
If my songs should reach you despite the narrow skies around me,
remember that I will return to life,
to the quest for liberty,
remember that my people may call on my soul
and feel it rising again from the folds of the earth.
Rahmani,
Sina. "Edward Said: The Last Interview, and: Selves and Others: A
Portrait of Edward Said, and: The Battle of Algiers (review)"
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume
25, Number 2, 2005, Duke University Press, pp. 512-514. Body
