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

by Mosab Abu Toha

“Am” is the linking verb that follows “I” in the present tense when I am no longer present, when I’m shattered.

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

Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards. A country that exists only in my mind. Its flag has no room to fly freely, but there is space on the coffins of my countrymen.

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’m not sure if that would change anything.

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

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

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

Yaffa is my daughter’s name. I put my ears near her mouth when she speaks, and I hear Yaffa’s sea, waves lapping against the shore. I look in her eyes, and I see my grandparents’ footsteps still imprinted on the sand.

I hated death, but I hated life, too, when we had to walk to our drawn-out death, reciting our never-ending ode.

i wish i were with you grandpa i would have taught myself to write you poems volumes of them and paint our home for you i would have sewn you from soil a garment decorated with plants and trees you had grown i would have made you perfume from the oranges and soap from the skys tears of joy couldnt think of something purer

you wish i can annex a neighboring planet or two vi for this home i shall not draw boundaries no punctuation marks

The sun sets behind the eyelid. The words in the drawer swelter and stew in their sweat. My little niece smells them. She opens the drawer. The words fly out. The poem is free. It lands in nests of migratory birds. They sing it to the passing clouds.

All around me are nothing but silent walls and people sobbing without sound.

In Gaza, the sun shines and the moon flirts with the leaves of the orange trees; However, Gaza’s people come and go empty-handed: No good news to give to their children, no candy to sweeten their pale mouths, and no light to read by.

In Gaza, breathing is a task, smiling is performing plastic surgery on one’s own face, and rising in the morning, trying to survive another day, is coming back from the dead.

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

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.

The river that separates us from you is just a mirage you created when you expelled us. IT IS ONE LAND!

You can’t build a new colony on our graves.

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.

That voice takes away my voice. It squeezes my poetry pages, tears them from my head. Blood showers my curly hair. My desk becomes crimson red. Screams fill the cracks in the walls and the potholes in the nameless roads.

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.

Don’t ever be surprised to see a rose shoulder up among the ruins of the house: This is how we survived.