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

by Mosab Abu Toha

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

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?

Grownups in Palestine only use their IDs so as not to forget who they are.

HARD EXERCISE 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.

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

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.

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.

No matter where I am—in Gaza, in Palestine, if I could even get there, or in the United States—I remain stateless.