Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza

by Mosab Abu Toha

PALESTINE A–Z

Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets.

How easy it becomes to recognize what kind of aircraft it is: an F-16, helicopter, or a drone? What kind of a bullet it was: from a gunboat, an M-16, a tank, or an Apache? It’s all about the sound.

When I was asked to fill out a form for my U.S. J-1 visa application, my country, Palestine, was not on the list. But lucky for me, my gender was.

In Gaza you don’t know what you’re guilty of. It feels like living in a Kafka novel.

I speak Arabic and English, but I don’t know in what language my fate is written.

I weave my poems with my veins. I want to build a poem like a solid home, but hopefully not with my bones.

Al-Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem. I have never been to al-Quds. It’s around 60 miles from Gaza. People who live 5,000 miles away can move there, while I cannot even visit.

They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?

In Gaza, you can find a man planting a rose in the hollow space of an unexploded tank shell, using it as a vase.

When I was wounded in January 2009, I was 16. I was taken to hospital and x-rayed for the first time. There were two pieces of shrapnel in my body. One in my neck, another in my forehead. Seven months later, I had my first surgery to remove them. I was still a child.

MY GRANDFATHER WAS A TERRORIST

My grandfather was a terrorist— He tended to his field, watered the roses in the courtyard, smoked cigarettes with grandmother on the yellow beach, lying there like a prayer rug.

for this home i shall not draw boundaries no punctuation marks

There is no light to help me see the boundaries of my state: my nonexistent state.

Like a woman hanging her laundry on the clothesline, I hang my words on the lines of my page.

SOBBING WITHOUT SOUND I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long. I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no buzzing drones. I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again, or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play. All around me are nothing but silent walls and people sobbing without sound.

For us, the fear of dying before living haunts us while we are still in our mothers’ wombs.

The city no longer exists except in the craters. I have nowhere to go except down a new, untrodden road.

In Gaza, some of us cannot completely die. Every time a bomb falls, every time shrapnel hits our graves, every time the rubble piles up on our heads, we are awakened from our temporary death.

For those who are standing on the other side shooting at us, spitting on us, how long can you stand there, fenced by hate? Are you going to keep your black glasses on until you’re unable to put them down?

And when we die, our bones will continue to grow, to reach and intertwine with the roots of the olive and orange trees, to bathe in the sweet Yaffa sea. One day, we will be born again when you’re not there. Because this land knows us. She is our mother. When we die, we’re just resting in her womb until the darkness is cleared.

EVERYDAY MEALS DURING WARS

Shrapnel was the tattoo marking your bodies for the ghetto of the Dead.

Palestine is also out of place: Its map falls off my wall.

Adorno tries to study the music of the falling bomb and shattering glass. But the words slipping from the books mystify his sight and mind: the dust covers his glasses, the musical score lies breathless near his shivering feet.

DISPLACED In memory of Edward Said I am neither in nor out. I am in between. I am not part of anything. I am a shadow of something. At best, I am a thing that does not really exist. I am weightless, a speck of time in Gaza. But I will remain where I am.

The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Hamas. The one who ordered the killing, the one who pressed the button thought only of Hamas.

A yellow light hits. My head’s split half open, I feel this somehow. The light might help me see more clearly, I tell myself. Blood drips onto my eyelashes and hoodie. In the brief moments standing there, I’m asking myself, How come you can stand while your head is slashed open?

I look around me, relatives circle my bed. I watch them as they chat. I imagine them praying round my coffin.

You will ask for my web site. I am no spider, and my site is wherever a rose grows, wherever clouds cast their shadows on roofless houses, wherever a bomb does not fall, wherever a child does not confuse a cloud for bomb smoke.

Why is it when I dream of Palestine, that I see it in black and white?

People say silence is a sign of consent. What if I’m not allowed to speak, my tongue severed, my mouth sewn shut?

THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR

Though we all have very different stories, as Palestinians our stories are the same in many ways. I think it’s like we are living in a grave: we are not dead, we are going about our daily business, but in a grave. We are living in place of a dead person. I know that’s contradictory.

When I think of poetry I don’t think of Arabic poetry or English poetry or Spanish poetry. No, I just think of poetry as an idea, not as rigid form that I need to follow. The word for poetry in Arabic, sha’ir, doesn’t refer to a particular form, it only has to do with feeling. So you have to be an expert in showing your feelings on paper or reciting your poetry to people so that they can feel what you’re feeling. It can be an image but it does have to leave an impact on the reader. And if you can make them cry or smile, then you are a poet; if you can make them shiver, then you are a poet.