It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying. Sometimes I mean it. Sometimes I don’t. And as Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.
Refaat Alareer.
There hasn’t been a day since October 7th, 2023, I haven’t thought of Palestine.
Since October 7th to the date this publication is coming out, over 23 thousand people have been murdered in Palestinian territory, by direct action of the Israeli military. Out of all those people, how many of them were artists, poets, writers, and creators? I wonder.
“In paradise a new Gaza exists, without fences, now forming”, recites in Spanish my friend Ahmad Mohsen in a video he uploads to Instagram. Through this quote, I got to know the work of Heba Abu Nada, too late unfortunately, as the Palestinian poet and writer wrote these lines just a few days before her death.
"Growing up in Gaza is inspiring for poets – life here is poetry blown into pieces and scattered all over the place”, writes Mohammed Moussa in an Al Jazeera publication I ran into while researching the work of Palestinian authors.
I don’t know, to be honest, how many of the authors here quoted are still alive, but thinking of statistics, it is most likely a minority.
It’s easy to turn humans into no more than numbers and devastating images when these types of tragedies happen. That is how conflict, colonialism, genocide, and war operate - by dehumanizing an entire population, it is much easier to erase them.
While I dig, read, translate, and copy the texts you are about to read I wonder whether or not these words inspire me, or devastate me. Reproducing them though, taking them out of the rubble and placing their names beside them is the only way I have to honor those who wrote them. For those who are gone, it is the only way I can think of to bring their humanity back.
Palestine could very easily be any piece of land, and their tragedy could very easily be mine, yours, ours.
These texts have been copied as a tribute, I do not own their rights nor those of their translators. If you can, please support the Palestinian artists and relief funds I have quoted at the end of this post.
“I Grant You Refuge” - Heba Abu Nada.
1.
I grant you refuge
in invocation and prayer.
I bless the neighborhood and the minaret
to guard them
from the rocket
from the moment
it is a general’s command
until it becomes
a raid.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones who
change the rocket’s course
before it lands
with their smiles.
2.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest.
They don’t walk in their sleep toward dreams.
They know death lurks outside the house.
Their mothers’ tears are now doves
following them, trailing behind
every coffin.
3.
I grant the father refuge,
the little ones’ father who holds the house upright
when it tilts after the bombs.
He implores the moment of death:
“Have mercy. Spare me a little while.
For their sake, I’ve learned to love my life.
Grant them a death
as beautiful as they are.”
4.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and death,
refuge in the glory of our siege,
here in the belly of the whale.
Our streets exalt God with every bomb.
They pray for the mosques and the houses.
And every time the bombing begins in the North,
our supplications rise in the South.
5.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and suffering.
With words of sacred scripture
I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous
and the shades of cloud from the smog.
I grant you refuge in knowing
that the dust will clear,
and they who fell in love and died together
will one day laugh.
Heba Abu Nada was a poet, novelist, and feminist activist from occupied Palestine. In 2017 she won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for her novel titled “Oxigen is for the dead”. This poem was translated from the original Arabic by Huda Fakhreddine, and published by Protean Magazine.
“If I Must Die” - Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live,
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze -
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself -
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
A few weeks before his death, Refaat Alareer pinned this poem to his X - formerly Twitter - page. He was a poet and academic, co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, a non-profit organization dedicated to “creating a new generation of Palestinian poets and thinkers, who can bring with themselves a profound change to the Palestinian cause”.
This Is Why We Dance - Mohammed El Kurd
Mohammed El-Kurd is a poet, writer, journalist, and activist from Jerusalem. In 2021 he was named as one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. He became known for his role as co-founder of the #SaveSheikhJarrah movement, an online campaign to avoid the evacuation of Sheikh Jarrah district, back then inhabited by refugees of the 1948 Nakba.
Ohmar Moussa
The whites of his eyes take the last form,
Then they dribble and take the paper shape.
With bullets; he smashes the mouth of the warplanes –
and plucks out the tusks of killing and destruction.
With bullets;
he demolishes the borders of siege:
and the walls of the world which is slumping over
in its selfishness.
With bullets and blood; he draws a free homeland
and a long and edgeless coastline
to fail memories to slumber.
Omar Moussa is (was?) a poet, journalist, and member of the Gaza Poets Society.
“Against Death” - Noor Hindi
After my best friend died I became jealous of the fireflies and kept smashing them against my forehead. I wanted my loneliness to be visible to those I loved. For people to see the yellow balloons I hid in my lungs.
What I’m saying is I couldn’t breathe for an entire year.
When they tore down her elementary school, we all lined up, days later, for bricks. We held them against our bodies. I’d like to think this is how we embrace our ghosts.
Years later, it took my grandfather three days to die. I grew so bored I left to get ice cream. In the car, with the July sun soaking my back, I let my tongue protest death. Hours after my grandfather died, I wanted to take a photo of his body. His skin the color of faded marigolds.
As a child, when my goldfish died I mourned the entire ocean. My father told me children in Palestine die every day.
Hours before dying from cancer, Jim said take care of yourself. I said you too. When I visit graveyards now, all I see is grass and grass and grass. I think about how it takes forever to get to nowhere.
Maybe I’ve outlived my life.
And would like to become a bird.
Dear God. Dear Earth. Dear Clouds. Why should anything die? I want it all to live forever.
What I mean is I want to stand in my garden and gaze at the sunflowers.
Amen.
Noor Hindi is a Palestinian-American author and reporter. Get to know more about her work here.
support palestinian creators and organizations
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Bisan Assi, audiovisual artist
Old Palestine, Documental History of Palestine
Documenting Palestine, Palestine identity archive
Sanaa Moussa, vocalist, and Palestinian folk music researcher
Samar Saadallah, writer