Forest of Noise Quotes

“A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“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.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“A father wakes up at night, sees the random colors on the walls drawn by his four-year-old daughter. The colors are about four feet high. Next year, they would be five. But the painter has died in an air strike. There are no colors anymore. There are no walls.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books,
the titles, and names of authors and publishers,
could flee when they hear the bombs.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“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.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“No need for radio:
We are the news.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“Sir, we are not welcome anywhere. Only cemeteries don’t mind our bodies.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“We get lost in the past, present, and future.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“Will my bones find yours after I die?”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“Even your shadow will abandon you
When there is no light.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“Her dreams,
she threw them onto the closest sea wave
and that wave
never returned”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“stones of house after explosion
get amnesia
some forget they were in a wall in a bedroom or a kitchen or a bathroom
some in a ceiling
some forget they sat behind photo frames for years
a few stones [forget] they were stones
those hit by the bomb”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“some forget they were in a wall in a bedroom or a kitchen or a bathroom some in a ceiling some forget they sat behind photo frames for years a few stones [forget] they were stones those hit by the bomb”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“When a child is born, we feel sad for him or her. A child is born here to suffer, sir!”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems

“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.”
― Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise: Poems