My People 

Samer Abu Hawwash

There, on a land, we were told, was not our land,

under a sky, we were told, was not our sky,

my people live their death.

We don’t know how we got here,

and there’s nowhere else to go.

At the peak of despair,

we implore the gods

of diaspora:

Help us understand this dilemma, we say.

We don’t want to hurt the desert’s feelings

or disturb the mountain’s peace,

and the city walls are high and many.

Where to go, then?

In a garden—not the most beautiful garden,

and who knows whether ours or not,

no trees, no fruit, no birds nesting

in the ruins of our souls,

—we found ourselves one day.

Our garden, we said.

We dug our burrows with needles

and hid from the scorching sun

in the shade of distant memories,

the memories of life—we were also told—was not ours.

We did not come from a place or a direction.

We fell like the dust of a dying star,

a mere cosmic coincidence,

the sun aligning with the star of despair.

We have no idea what was in the beginning

nor what will be at the end.

We remember nothing except that

we are here,

sharing a dried-up loaf of bread,

a dried-up world,

and the tears of dried-up rivers

and mothers.

We have no color

—and all the colors are ours—

no hardened features,

no language,

no launching point,

no final direction.

In every airport on this planet,

one of us describes to a stranger

the malady of our existence on this earth.

We live an exciting life.

Every day is an adventure,

every breath a miracle.

And when we die, finally,

we die a lot.

Bored of displacement,

terrified of diaspora,

our doom is enough racket

for another exciting day

in the bosom of the sky.

No god promised us anything,

and the books neglected our names.

We were left to chase ghosts that chase us

to an elevator, out of order,

ascending to the skies.

My people write the names of their children

on arms and legs, so they can find them

later in the massacres.

They cast their gazes far into the fields.

They touch every screaming rock along the way,

every impossible branch,

hoping for a sign or a sound,

a song or a prayer,

to reunite them in the same darkness.

Ever Alive

Fadwa Tuqan

(1917-2003)

My beloved home land 

No matter how long the millstone 

Of pain and agony churns you 

In the wilderness of tyranny, 

They will never be able 

To pluck your eyes 

Or kill your hopes and dreams 

Or crucify your will to rise 

Or steel the smiles of our children 

Or destroy and burn, 

Because out from our deep sorrows, 

Out from the freshness of our spilled blood 

Out from the quiverings of life and death 

Life will be reborn in you again

A Letter From Prison

Sameeh Al Qassem 

(1939-2014)

It pains me, Mother 

That you burst in tears 

When my friends come 

Asking about me 

But I believe, mother 

That the splendor of life 

Is born in my prison 

And I believe that my last visitor 

Will not be an eyeless bat 

Coming at midnight. 

My last visitor must be daylight……

Enemy of the Sun

By Samih Al-Qasim 

I may – if you wish – lose my livelihood
I may sell my shirt and bed.
I may work as a stone cutter,
A street sweeper, a porter.
I may clean your stores
Or rummage your garbage for food.
I may lie down hungry,
O enemy of the sun,
But
I shall not compromise
And to the last pulse in my veins
I shall resist.

You may take the last strip of my land,
Feed my youth to prison cells.
You may plunder my heritage.
You may burn my books, my poems
Or feed my flesh to the dogs.
You may spread a web of terror
On the roofs of my village,
O enemy of the sun,
But
I shall not compromise
And to the last pulse in my veins
I shall resist.

You may put out the light in my eyes.
You may deprive me of my mother’s kisses.
You may curse my father, my people.
You may distort my history,
You may deprive my children of a smile
And of life’s necessities.
You may fool my friends with a borrowed face.
You may build walls of hatred around me.
You may glue my eyes to humiliations,
O enemy of the sun,
But

I shall not compromise
And to the last pulse in my veins
I shall resist.
O enemy of the sun
The decorations are raised at the port.
The ejaculations fill the air,
A glow in the hearts,
And in the horizon
A sail is seen
Challenging the wind
And the depths.
It is Ulysses
Returning home
From the sea of loss

It is the return of the sun,
Of my exiled ones
And for her sake, and his
I swear
I shall not compromise
And to the last pulse in my veins
I shall resist,
Resist—and resist.

Think of Others

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others

   (do not forget the pigeon’s food).

As you conduct your wars, think of others

   (do not forget those who seek peace).

As you pay your water bill, think of others

   (those who are nursed by clouds).

As you return home, to your home, think of others

   (do not forget the people of the camps).

As you sleep and count the stars, think of others

   (those who have nowhere to sleep).

As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others

   (those who have lost the right to speak).

As you think of others far away, think of yourself

   (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

That Nation Talk

Rasha Abdulhadi 

talk abolition, talk transformation

talk justice talk justice talk just us 

making for each other cause no one else is coming

talk breakfast, talk leban, talk coffee talk tea

tell me farms, tell me bees, tell me: make this, with me, please

talk shelter, talk compost, talk trees talk fruit,

talk clothes talk shoes, talk mending, talk pretending

with the nieces and nephews

talk niblings, talk siblings, talk cousins, talk love

kisses kisses kisses for all our friends, how we miss them

talk dirty talk fertile talk little talk turtle

mean tortoise, mean burrow, mean saving, mean refuge

talk fleeing talk fleeting talk push talk pull

talk borderless, paperless talk paper printed for this zine

talk clean talk oiled talk scented talk musk

talk us, us. us, just us, still. speak now sing now sleep now sweet

talk gun talk melt, make smelt of defense

talk safety talk team talk crew talk streets

talk halls and balls, crafting and brawling

talk nurture say accountable, 

talk resource say consequence

talk reparations talk return talk land talk deed

stop talking now and pack all your bags please

just talk none of that make nation talk with me

a litany of refusals to become ghostly

Rasha Abdulhadi

all the women are dying or forming battalions in the mountains
all the women are dying or going underground
all the women are dying or going into exile
all the women are dying or giving birth at the checkpoint
all the women are dying or in prison
all the women are dying or taking detours over the homes they can’t go back to
all the women are dead or else they are embroidering
                                                      money and food to stitch to their children’s tongues

all the children are dying or they are in protest
all the children are dead or they are reading poems at the border
all the children are dead or they are taking pieces of the wall home in their pockets
all the children are dead or they are flying kites against fighter jets
all the children are dying or they are becoming the adults who are dead

all the men are dead and on posters or they are in prison
all the men are dead or they are writing books
all the men are dying or they are digging escape tunnels with spoons
all the men are dying or they are leading songs along the wall
all the men are dying or they are flipping ladders over fences
all the men are dying or flying over every border
all the men are dead or else they are against the wall

all the students are dying or else they are organizing
all the students are dying or they are being gassed
all the students are dead or they are losing their scholarships
all the students are dying or they are stealing food for each other
all the students are dead or they are doxxed

all the women have been arrested or they are driving themselves
all the women have been assaulted or they are leading the people gathered in the square
all the women have been assassinated or else they are arresting the police

all the queers are dying or they are taking the old mens’ microphones

all the people are dying or they are refusing to go home
they are dying and dying and dead or they are refusing
we are dying we are dying we are dying we are dead
or else we are refusing to our last breath

I Write the Land

Najwan Darwish

I want to write the land,
I want the words
to be the land itself.
But I’m just a statue the Romans carved
and the Arabs forgot.
Colonizers stole my severed hand
and stuck it in a museum.
No matter. I still want to write it –
the land.
My words are everywhere
and silence is my story.

translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

I ONCE LOOKED IN A MIRROR BUT COULDN’T SEE MY BODY 

Noor Hindi 

            (Ekphrastic poem, after ‘The Persistence of Memory’ by Salvador Dali)
            after Mahmoud Darwish

It didn’t feel much different
than walking
through this country, citizen
less & carrying
a history. Somewhere
is my body
alone & watching
my father
in the middle of the night
drawing & redrawing
a map of Palestine, green
ink —

& it hurts
& it hurts
& it hurts
& it hurts

What is Palestine if not the olive tree growing on my father’s tongue
What is Palestine if not the olive tree growing
What is Palestine if not the olive
What is Palestine
What —

Somewhere is a clock.
Melting.

THE OLIVE TREE
Tawfiq Zayyad

Because I do not knit wool*
Because I am always hunted
And my house is always raided. 

Because I cannot own a piece of paper, 

I shall carve my memoirs

On the home yard olive tree.

I shall carve bitter reflections, 

Scenes of love and yearnings,

For my stolen orange grove 

And the lost tombs of my dead.

I shall carve all my strivings
For the sake of remembrance
For the time when I’ll drown them 

In the avalanche of triumph

I shall carve the serial number
Of every stolen piece of land
The place of my village on the map 

And the blown up houses,
And the uprooted trees

And every bloom that was crushed
And all the names of the experts in torture 

The names of the prisons.....

I shall carve dedications
To memories threading down to eternity 

To the blooded soil of Deir Yasin
And Kufur Qassem.
I shall carve the sun’s beckoning
And the moon’s whisperings
And what a skylark recalls
At a love deserted well.

For the sake of remembrance,

I shall continue to carve
All the chapters of my tragedy 

And all the stages of Al- Nakbah 

On the home yard olive tree!

* Reference to Madame Lafarge, who used to knit the names of the traitors and send them to the French revolutionaries during the French Revolution.

A Palestinian Might Say

 NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

What?

You don’t feel at home in your country,

almost overnight?

All the simple things

you cared about,

maybe took for granted. . .

you feel

insulted, invisible?

Almost as if you’re not there?

But you’re there.

Where before you mingled freely. . .

appreciated people who weren’t

just like you. . .

divisions grow stronger.

That’s what “chosen” and “unchosen” will do.

(Just keep your eyes on your houses and gardens.

Keep your eyes on that tree in bloom.)

Yes, a wall. Ours came later but. . .

who talks about how sad the land looks,

marked by a massive wall?

That’s not a normal shadow.

It’s something else looming over your lives.

Languaging Memory 

Leena Aboutaleb

You, we, I. Do you remember? He was your age now. Tall. The rifle. Four, then seven, then ten. Qalandia. Ramallah. September. Yarmouk. Kuwait. Can you say the name? Everyone wants futility. Let them languish and despair, disguising pride in cowardice. I am born in fugitive, the cover of eternity clothing me. If not this life, the next. If not us, the next. They will forget. I list massacres in my head by the decade. What has been stolen cannot be said. What do I know of theft? What do I know of loss? My lungs permanently damaged from the teargas. I am scared for my womb. April, the fear of motherhood. What was I supposed to tell him? Maryam called. Did they think one begets emptiness? Father of what? The strikes left on me like an infant suckling. My daughter will hold them as I have. Like her mother, she will grow into her mother. The banner of fire setting her aflame. The prison, the sound bombs, the stampedes. I grew with hands tracing the walls in search of radios, training paranoia. My mother’s daughter. Her eyes and her will. I know the shape war leaves. I, too, played between the abandoned homes. Stuck my fingers through the bullet holes like a portal, a looking glass into the other side, imagining the width of despair as if I am not made of my mother’s fractured hips and begotten memory. I still know the shape of the bunker. We spent twenty years not eating lentils afterwards. Would you give birth in Palestine? I can no longer wait. I remember forever now, embraced in the still death. How memory becomes tangible, genetics permanently altered. I speak like my father. How beautiful you are, habeebi. To’burni. I’ll see you on the other side, our children naming the fruits.

THE INTERVIEWER WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT FASHION

Hala Alyan 

 “They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
—Ayelet Shaked

 Think of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
I watch a woman and the watching is a crime,
so I return my eyes. The sea foams like a dog.
What’s five thousand miles between friends?
If you listen close enough,
you can hear the earth crack like a neck.
Be lucky. Try to make it to the morning.
Try to find your heart in the newsprint.
Please. I’d rather be alive than holy.
I don’t have time to write about the soul.
There are bodies to count.
The news anchor says oopsie.
The Prime Minister says thanks.
There’s a man wearing his wedding tuxedo to sleep in case
I meet God and there’s a brick of light before each bombing.
I dream I am a snake after all.
I dream I do Jerusalem all over again. This time,
I don’t shake my hair down when the soldier tells me to.
I don’t thank them for my passport.
Later my grandfather said they couldn’t have kept it.
You know that, don’t you?
I don’t know what they couldn’t do.
I only know that enormous light.
Only that roar of nothing,
as certain and incorrect as a sermon.

It No Longer Matters If Anyone Loves Us

Samer Abu Hawwash 

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

The love of the great angel

in his bright white sky

is enough.

Our children see him standing in the distance,

holding his hands in the shape of a heart

and they smile.

Our women see him waving a sprig of white jasmine

and close their eyes once

and forever.

Our men see his blue wings

as clear as a sky.

Their hearts are seized,

and they set out toward him.

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

Bombs have liberated us from our ears,

with which we used to hear words of love.

Rockets have liberated us from our eyes,

with which we used to see loving glances.

Hate-filled words have liberated us from our hearts,

in which we used to cherish the enchantments of love.

It no longer matters

if anyone, in this world, loves us.

“It seems to have been an unreciprocated love, anyway,”

say our elders, now exhausted by the idea of land.

Our poet stands on the distant horizon and proclaims:

“Save us from your cruel love!”

He then whispers, apologizing for an earlier, childish optimism:

“On this Earth,

nothing deserves life.”

It no longer matters

if anyone loves us.

We are tired of words, the said and the unsaid,

tired of hands that reach out but do not touch,

of eyes that see but do not see.

We are tired of ourselves in this endless night,

and tired of our mothers clinging to what’s left of us,

tired of this rock we carry on our backs,

this eternal curse.

From abyss to abyss, we carry it,

from death to death,

and we never arrive.

It no longer matters, after this, if anyone loves us,

or if anyone walks in our funerals.

Here we go in silence, toward the final abyss.

We hold each other’s hands,

go forth alone in this desert of a world.

At some moment, one of us, a child, will look back,

will cast one last glance at the ruins, and

shedding a single tear, will say:

“It no longer matters that anyone love us.”

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine