Forest of Noise: Poems

by Mosab Abu Toha

slow death of survival.

At fifth grade, I visit the school library. On a wall by the door, a poster claims, “If you read books, you live more than one life.” Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces around me, old or young, on each forehead I read: “If you live in Gaza, you die several times.”

upon birth, mask up your children and leave them unnamed so the angel of death can’t find them someone may ask why not paint their faces change their names every day a nightingale on the tree of dusk exclaims what if both the painter and the paint work for the angel of death a stone near a cemetery suggests why give birth to children at all

I dream still about my grandfather, how much I want to pick oranges with him in Yaffa. But my grandfather died, Yaffa is occupied, and oranges no longer grow in his weeping groves.

Every time we hear a bomb falling from an F-16 or an F-35, our lives panic. Our lives freeze somewhere in between, confused where to head next: a graveyard, a hospital, a nightmare.

In the refugee camp, where land is strewn with debris, where air chokes with rage, my harvest is yet to arrive, my seeds only sprout on this page.

Even your shadow will abandon you when there is no light.

I’ve personally lost three friends to war, a city to darkness, and a language to fear. This was not easy to survive, but survival proved necessary to master. But of all things, losing the only photo of my grandfather under the rubble of my house was a real disaster.

We stuff our suitcases with pictures and memories. They feel very heavy on the ground; we can’t carry them, neither can the roads. They scar the surface of the earth.

When a child is born, we feel sad for him or her. A child is born here to suffer, sir!

Sir, we are not welcome anywhere. Only cemeteries don’t mind our bodies.

We no longer look for Palestine. Our time is spent dying. Soon, Palestine will search for us, for our whispers, for our footsteps, our fading pictures fallen off blown-up walls.

the cemetery you were buried in was razed by Israeli bulldozers and tanks. How can I find you now? Will my bones find yours after I die?

My mother’s voice, the magnet of my life, swaying my head just in time.

Where should people go? Should they build a big ladder and go up? But heaven has been blocked by the drones and F-16s and the smoke of death.

I ask my son if he wishes to become a pilot when he grows up. He says he won’t wish to drop bombs on people and houses.

In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed. Nothing remains for the soul. Even our souls, they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.

Inside my suitcase are some clothes of my father, mother, two sisters, and three brothers. I also have their shoes and slippers. The suitcase is their new home and I want to put it in a safe place. And I also have my father’s favorite books, mainly poetry books and short stories. He never had the chance to finish a novel. You know, wars and work.”

I’m nameless for the first time. I’m stateless for a long time.

Drop your boy, drop everything! I’m not a thing, I will not drop myself.

Yes, I’m a teacher, I say. On your knees! But I won’t reach the blackboard when on my knees. I’m handcuffed, blindfolded. I’m shoved from the back of my neck.

Terrorist! On your knees! Show me any proof, I ask. A slap across my face. You get us proof! On your knees!

Interrogation. Two hours later a soldier in English says, We are sorry about the mistake. You are going back to Gaza on your knees.

Angel of death, When you collect the souls of those killed in an air strike, do you mind leaving a sign for us, so we know who is who?

On the back of the paper, he pens the same letter in Arabic, because who could know what language the angel of death uses, the most-spoken language in the world, or the language of God:

in my city, streets are never flat. Potholes from bombs are everywhere, like crows’ nests in a forest of noise.

At my first history class, the only students attending are the future, the present, and the past. But when I step in, the future gets ready to leave, while the past is handcuffing the present, slicing its hamstrings, and dyeing its clothes gray.

If I am going to die, let it be a clean death. No rubble over my corpse, no broken dishes or glasses, and not many cuts in my head or chest.

When I read the poem to you and ask, What do you think? You say, It’s beautiful, though you know that frustrates me. Beautiful is not enough, not next to you, not next to the poem.

I’m asking you about what makes my poem a poem, just like when you ask me what makes you my love:

your carrying our home, our destroyed home, with you in your memories

your hand holding the pencil with me when my fingers freeze out of fear, your name, which reminds me there is a goal.

I need you, Mother. You are my better heart when I feel I am about to die. I do not know if you are even alive.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed in a tent,

I saw the best brains of my generation protruding from their slashed heads.

I wish there were no planes at all. I wish there were no war. I wish we never had to wish.

Before I sleep, Death is always sitting on my windowsill,

It looks me in the eye and recounts to me the many times it let me live.

You are alive for a moment, when living people run after you.

I wish my words would turn into clouds that could protect you and all our neighbors and friends from the bombs.

To the souls who remain stuck under the rubble of their houses for weeks or blocked by clouds of smoke from continuing the journey.

To Gaza, I will continue to search for my books under your rubble, for my shadows in your bombed streets and fields of corn and strawberry, an...