 |
I am not funded by corporations or compromised by the status quo. If you want reporting that speaks truth—on Palestine, on U.S. power, and the systems that connect them—this work depends on you. Paid subscriptions start at just $5 a month and keep this community alive. If you can’t support financially, your time, your attention, and your willingness to share this work are just as powerful.
As we head into two years of Israel’s Genocide of Gaza, more than 300 journalists, artists, intellectuals, and poets have been killed. They are among the over 200,000 Palestinians who have been murdered in the face of indiscriminate bombing.
The war on culture has been on the heart of the aggressors’ war on the Palestinian people as they aim to shift the narrative on the rich treasures of knowledge and history of the Palestinians – our poets the gatekeepers of the stories held amongst the ancient cities. The loss of our poets is one that will be felt for generations, but their work, and their words, live on
Poets, by their very nature, are historians of emotions. They try to capture thoughts that are not quite easily understood in words, and as Palestinians it has been an impossible task – to capture the unimaginable grief and anger in watching the attempted erasure of your homes, your memories, and your people. Although a world away from my people, a part of me has died with the 20,000 children who never experienced freedom, who lived their whole lives under siege. In my own struggle of dealing with this grief and anger, I turned to Rafaat, and the countless other Palestinian poets, who used their words to solidify our oneness with the land.
How powerful are words? They have defeated swords and guns, toppled regimes, and governments, stirred the pot for massive cultural upheavals that have brought together white and black in school and allowed Indians to gain their independence from a distant empire. There is no weapon on the face of the planet more powerful than words. Because of this, poets are some of Palestinians greatest warriors, and for that they hunted and killed.
Palestinian poetry has never existed for applause. It was not born in university halls or low-lit galleries, it was born under occupation, in refugee camps, at the graveyards of our martyrs. It is a poetry of defiance, forged under exile, from the grief of displacement, and from the unrelenting insistence that we deserve to live with dignity. This is what the bombs have tried to silence. But words are harder to bury than bodies.
 |
MY POEMS:
Living in Memories
Memory tastes like ash on my tongue, shatters like bone between my teeth. I walk through clean streets where no blood pools, yet my shoes are always wet.
In the supermarket, plastic bags whisper of a father's hands that once gathered fruits, now gather fragments no parent should ever have to name.
In my dreams, bodies become smoke become sky become the air I cannot stop breathing.
He was a student, ink-stained fingers. He was me in another timeline, flesh dissolving into flame, coursework turned to cinders.
Children's hands, small universes of possibility, now know the weight of mops, cleaning their mother’s blood from their kitchen floor, learning the chemistry of loss—how it thickens, refuses to disappear completely.
My day is partitioned: 8 AM: brush teeth 9 AM: drown in absent faces 12 PM: pretend to eat
lunch 3 PM: carry ghosts beneath my ribs 7 PM: watch others laugh.
"How are you?" they ask. And I almost say, "I am haunted by plastic bags, by children forced to clean what violence left behind, by flames that never stop burning." Instead, I say "Fine."
We will not leave these memories. They have corseted our days, speared our nights, become the edifice in which we dwell.
I eat dinner while remembering. I sleep while remembering. I breathe while remembering. This is how we live now: half here, half there, fully nowhere.
Found here
State of Siege is written to deliver the truth. If you can afford to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support for this community helps fund research, interviews, writing, and donations to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I do this work because I must, because staying silent helps those in power.
When the Sun Becomes Shrapnel
I want to be like those
Who worship the sacred sun
Our children catch its rays through rifle sights
Seconds before becoming light
So beautiful, the morning
So divine, they say
But daybreak bleeds through bullet holes
Each morning paints our graves gold
Nature's brutal tenderness
Children chase warmth through bombed hospitals
Seconds before joining stars
They capture our burning horizon
Call it breathtaking art
Not knowing each sunset
Is colored by children's blood
The sun sets like a promise
While poets pen their gentle verses
One day I'll write about daylight
When it stops illuminating the grave
HereTime's Teeth in Our Throats
the hour breaks against our windows like waves of shattered light while children gather pieces of sky in their small palms learning how morning tastes of metal and mercy and mother's tears fall backwards through time where every drop becomes a door through which our dead return carrying armfuls of yesterday's bread still warm from ovens that now bloom with fire and always this perfect storm of grief spinning through streets where grandmothers collect prayer beads from rubble each bead a universe of loss each whispered word a seed planted in the throat of history where even silence has learned to scream and our city folds into itself like a burning map while phosphorus paints false stars across children's eyelids and their dreams spiral upward through smoke carrying fragments of lullabies that taste of za'atar and gunpowder until every broken wall becomes an altar where pigeons nest in bullet holes and teach their young how to fly through flames how to carry hope in their beaks like olive branches while beneath our feet the earth remembers every name every fallen tooth every lost marble every scattered shoe every unfinished prayer spinning through time's throat where even our shadows have shadows and memory bleeds its testimony into stone into sky into the spaces between heartbeats where we remain we remain we remain eternal as salt deeper than their weapons can reach wild as weeds growing through bomb craters singing singing singing until dawn breaks like a promise over ruins where even death has learned to dance
MARTYRED PALESTINIAN POETS + THEIR WORK
Heba Abu Nada
 |
Heba Abu Nada was an established figure in the Palestinian art community who authored Oxygen is Not for the Dead. Abu Nada, educated at the Islamic University in Gaza, studied biochemistry as she continued sharing her words as poet. She was killed by an Israeli airstrike on October 20th.
On October 8th, in her final Facebook post, Abu Nada said:
Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet a part from the sound of bombs, terrifying a part from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.
Excerpt from I Grant You Refuge – Heba Abu Nada (translated from original Arabic)
I grant you refuge in knowing
That the dust will clear,
And they who fell in love and died together
Will one day laugh.
Omar Abu Shaweesh
 |
On October 7th in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, Omar Faris Abu Shaweesh was killed by a shelling. Abu Shaweesh was a poet and community activist who started youth associations in the way of literary arts.
Abu Shaweesh was an accomplished writer, having won the “Best National Song of the Year 2007” at the International Festival of National Song and Heritage in Jordan. A collection of his poetry is published alongside is novel, Ala qayd al-mawt (2016).
Refaat Alareer
 |
Dr. Refaat Alareer has gained international recognition after his martyrdom on December 6th, when an Israeli airstrike targeted his home, also killing his brother, sister, and his nieces and nephews.
Alareer had been teaching at the Islamic University since 2007, a professor in creative writing, and also co-edited several short stories to bring light to the plight of Gazans: Gaza Writes Back & Light in Gaza: Writings born of Fire.
Most notably, Alareer has become known for his work “If I must Die”, a heartbreaking farewell to his daughter asking her to continue living life. Sadly, his daughter was also murdered by Israel.
“If I must Die”
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 story.
Mohammad Abdulrahim Saleh
 |
Mohammad Saleh has become known as the youngest poet to publish a collection in Palestine. Born and raised in the Jabila refugee camp, Mohammad was killed on October 10th, in his home, at the age of twenty-one.
Mohammad was a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, and while a student published his debut collection, His Hand Fell.
Mohammad was described as being passionate about literature and life.
An untitled poem by Mohammad,
“She tripped in beauty
and a shining splendor burned me.
And hers is a beauty that does what it may.”
Inas al-Saqa
 |
Inas al-Saqa was killed in late October alongside her children when their building was hit by an airstrike. Inas was an educator of creative arts, an actress, and celebrated playwright.
Inas appeared in films such as Sara and The Homeland’s Sparrow which covered the Palestinian struggle – her work serving a remembered of her people, their struggle, and their culture.
In here final Facebook post dated August 27th, she wrote “Sometimes you look back and take a glimpse of your past… only to discover that you’ve come out alive from a massacre.”
Yousef Dawas
 |
A writer and journalist, Yousef Dawas was killed on October 14th by an airstrike that hit his family home.
Yousef was also a guartist and member of the We Are Not Numbers initiative to document the lives of Gazans living under besiegement. Often, in his various projects, he wrote about his dreams of exploring the world.
Below is an excerpt from his published essay entitled, “Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”
“But now, three rocket holes plagued these memories. They had left dark grey sand and the scorched remains of trunks and branches from trees that used to bear the fruit of olives, oranges, clementines, loquat, guavas, lemons and pomegranates. I put my hands on my heart to catch it from falling, and I felt the three holes there in my heart.”
“Even if somebody helps us repair the damage and plants new trees, who will give me those years back that I spent nurturing them and supporting them to grow?” he snapped back at me. “Who will pay for the 20 years we have lost?”
Saleem Al-Naffar
 |
Saleem Al-Naffar was born in Gaza and started his life as a refugee as child when his family escaped to Syria during the 1967 war. Saleem was a renowned writer whose poetry expressed the struggle of Palestinians to be remembered.
Saleem and his family were killed in Gaza City on December 7th, 2023. In his life, Saleem published collections of poetry, his poem Life:
“Knives might eat
what remains of my ribs,
machines might smash
what remains of stones,
but life is coming,
for that is its way,
creating life even for us.
Nour al-Din Hajjaj
 |
Nour al-Din Hajjaj was a writer, teacher, and playwright who was killed in Northern Gaza on December 3rd, 2023 when his home was destroyed in an airstrike.
At only 27 years old, Nour had written the play “The Gray Ones” and the novel “Wings That Do Not Fly”.
On a social media post, Nour’s final message to the world:
“This is why I am writing now; it might be my last message that makes it out to the free world, flying with the doves of peace to tell them that we love life, or at least what life we have managed to live; in Gaza all paths before us are blocked, and instead we’re just one tweet or breaking news story away from death.
Anyway, I’ll begin.
My name is Nour al-Din Hajjaj, I am a Palestinian writer, I am twenty-seven years old and I have many dreams.
I am not a number and I do not consent to my death being passing news. Say, too, that I love life, happiness, freedom, children’s laughter, the sea, coffee, writing, Fairouz, everything that is joyful—though these things will all disappear in the space of a moment.”
State of Siege is written to deliver the truth. If you can afford to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support for this community helps fund research, interviews, writing, and donations to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I do this work because I must, because staying silent helps those in power.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten