Some of these poems were translated into Italian by Sana Darghmouni, from the original Arabic version, and into English by Pina Piccolo from the Italian version. Cover art: Malak Mattar’s painting, Last Breath.
Heba Al Agha
When the war ends
I will not remain as I am
Maybe I’ll turn into a wardrobe or a bed
Maybe I will turn into a carpet, a gas canister
Or a library
Will turn into a big hug.
When the war will be over
I won’t find a cemetery to visit
The whole street will be a cemetery
Nor will I find roses
To place over the remains
Even the roses are dead.
There won’t be palm leaves on the graves, there will be no graves at all.
I will stumble on a head, here and on a foot there, I will stumble on a friend’s face sticking
from the ground,
In his bag I will find leftover bread for his little ones.
I will see many eyes scattered about
And I will find a lost heart panting.
The heart will rest on my shoulder
With it I will walk on the rubble
Over the stones with which we were slain.
In history classes no one had taught us
How to prepare us for a long war
the civics teacher did not teach us how to pitch a tent
on the pavement
The math teacher did not tell us that the corner
can accommodate ten people
The religion teacher did not tell us
that even children die
And that then they ascend in the shape
of butterfly, bird or star.
I hated the chalk
and the queues in the morning
But I loved to stand in the front row
And walk the eastern line
absorbed in imagining the city resting on two big trees.
But I am outside the cities I know
and outside the places
under coercion, I stepped out of the envelope of time
of the Gaza buffer zone, to wonder what has happened and is happening.
What is the name of our street?
Have any of you seen our street, our house?
Do the neighborhoods know us?
Does the city know us?
Does my mother know us?
Does the sea count the victims?
Does the sun come out to protect the bodies lying in the streets?
Can merchants buy paradise?
Iistead of bodies, will huge buildings with their names be dug up?
Will we know the names of all the unidentified people?
Will my aunts realize the extent of our bereveament?
Was the house really ours?
Does the soldier sleep at night?
I have so many words in my throat
And it is sore
no remedy but the house.
February 8, 2024
City of Rafah
(Italian translation from Arabic by Sana Darghmouni and into English , from the Italian translation, by Pina Piccolo)
Heba Al-Agha is a mother, amateur writer, and creative writing educator at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Gaza City. She does not belong to any writers’ unions and has not published any literary books, but works with an army of young writers training them in freedom and the power of writing. She writes at t.me/hebalaghatalkwar andhttps://gazastory.com/archives/author/hebaaga.
I
YOUSEF EL-QEDRA
I have no home
I saw clouds running away from the hurt.
I have no language.
Its weight is lighter than a feather.
The quill does not write.
The ink of the spirit burns on the shore of meaning.
The clouds are tears, filled with escape and lacking definition.
A cloud realizes the beauty she forms—
beauty which contains all good things,
for whom trees, gardens, and tired young women wait.
I have no home.
I have a night overripe with sweats caused by numbness all over.
Time has grown up on its own without me.
In my dream, I asked him what he looks like.
My small defeats answered me.
So I asked him again, What did he mean?
Then I found myself suspended in nothingness,
Stretched like a string that doesn’t belong to an instrument.
The wind played me. So did irresistible gravity.
I was a run of lost notes that have a sad, strong desire to live.
English translation by Yasmin Snounu and Edward Morin
From BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE ISRAEL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. By Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012.
Suppose today is Sunday
we have entered this virtual time
to count our steps
return is far away
stretches of the road have faded
we were on the verge of believing we were in a madman’s dream
as he tossed and turned in his sleep
beating his head against his pillow
shaking us like flakes of cotton
to make us scatter like the odds.
Fed up, we turned to the pious man
the market sellers had pointed out to us
He was sitting on a stone at the center of his hut
“Our Lord, we have lost the path while searching.
We no longer know what we are looking for,”
we said. “Searching is the path
he who searches shall not go astray”,
he said and turned his face into the book in his hands
like an orange in the sand, he turned it.
We have burned with perplexity
we are weak
but our souls are dear to us.
We traveled the path of the water
Water knows its way
we said let’s go with the river
and we’ll end up in its estuary
perhaps we’ll reach the goal.
We rose with the rising sun
after a night spent on the sand.
In our dreams we saw it hanging on the scaffold of silence
dangling towards a deep abyss
We rose towards what could rekindle it
we too were hurt
wounded like the country plundered by bastards and murderers
and from an affliction that never stops
that has demolished our sense of wonder and longing for childhood.
Innocence sweeps over us
in the form of longing
but what are we nostalgic for?
We ask ourselves but do not answer.
Translated from Arabic into Italian by Sana Darghmouni and from Italian into English by Pina Piccolo.
The Dreaming Machine is helping promote a grassroots fundraising effort to help Yousef El-Qedra and his elderly parents to leave Gaza . Please donate at this link and help spread the word https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-yousef-and-his-elderly-parents-get-out-of-gaza
Yousef el Qedra is a young poet and playwright living in Gaza, Palestine. He holds a B.A. in Arabic literature from Al-Azhar University, Gaza. His poems have been published locally and internationally, in print and online. His four poetry collections are The Memory Is I and the Memory Is Forgotten (2001), Innocence of the Darkness (2004), You Might (2007), Her Tears Lament the Devastation (2011). He is a co-author of Outside the River’s Path (2003). Since 2006, he has worked as a project coordinator of theatre and youth groups for the Cultural Free Thought Association in Gaza City, Occupied Palestine Territories. He is a founding member of the Gaza Poets Forum and the El-Bayader Cultural Forum. He teaches drama, literature, and writing. He has written, directed, and acted in several plays, and has given reading tours in the Middle East and Spain. His poems have been translated into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch.
ALA’A SBAIH
In the Symphony of Twilight
I.
In the symphony of twilight, where shadows waltz with fleeting light,
I traverse the corridors of my soul, seeking solace in the quiet night,
beseech the heavens, pondering if this marks my final earthly script.
A silent plea resonates, questioning the cosmic tapestry,
Why must some souls dance with demise in myriad guises?
In the vast expanse of existence, the purpose (death) eludes,
An intricate mosaic of queries, stitched with threads of “whies?”
In the realm where life is a relentless trial,
Yearning for the day when the whys find their redemption.
With each attempt to grasp the essence of existence,
The echoes of war leave indelible imprints, a somber signature,
That merge a thousand of yesterday’s memories with dawn anew.
Survival becomes a dance with shadows, witnessing the ebb of lives,
Perhaps I’ve glimpsed my own reflection in the ethereal waters of mortality.
Yet, beneath the weight of existential quandaries, a fragile hope persists,
A whispered promise in the breeze that this tumultuous journey coexists.
In the cadence of heartbeat, a delicate rhythm of life’s intricate song,
I find fragments of purpose, elusive, yet undeniably strong.
So, let the ink of inquiry flow, as the pen of existence continues to write,
In the tapestry of existence, where darkness and dawn unite.
For within the enigma of this transient existence, a resilient spirit weaves,
A poetic resilience that whispers, “Live on,” as the soul perceives,
at the time when all the sorrows are postponed.
In the Tapestry of Existence
II.
In the tapestry of existence where darkness and dawn unite,
Seeking apricity all the time,
My tongue, a silent warrior in the battle of speech and hush,
In life’s crucible, where each moment is a trial to brush.
Pain of existence grapples with the instinct to survive,
Death, the veil separating wonder and eternal hive.
Shadows take the shape of my thoughts,
Throwing all the weight on my soul,
They grow longer every time I trudge upon my feet
Trying to catch up -as they say- my dreams,
Confusion wears me out every time choices come to me,
I rummage among all my traces
They disappear whenever I reach
In a place where sight falters, obscured by the unseen,
The missing light, a guide led astray, desires careen.
Malaise envelops, defying my expectations,
It brightens up the life that is written
as bubble-wraps around what I have dreamt.
(English translation by the author herself).
Ala’a Sbaih holds a degree in English and French literature. Oct. 7 was the day when one of her dreams didn’t come true, as she was supposed to travel in the first week of that month to Italy to perform in a play, a Palestinian adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The show was canceled, and the actor playing the hero of the play was killed in an Israeli airstrike. “As Gazans,” she writes, “we’re people whose stories aren’t complete and whose ambitions aren’t realized, and everything we try to build anew is crushed from its root after years, and the end of our path is always known.”
AHMED MASOUD
If only
If only just one time
The tourists came to join us on Gaza beach,
Drank our sweet mint tea
If only just one time
the vegans came to try our food
If the soldiers got off their tanks
and joined us in a sport’s café
To watch an El Classico game
If only just one time
I could take a train from Cairo to Rafah
Stop to smoke shisha and carry on to Jerusalem
To by souvenirs for my friends in Beirut.
If only the politicians shut up
The media closed down
The guards opened the prison doors
The pigeons destroyed the drones.
If only I didn’t have to write this poem
Or stand on this stage.
You who want us to vanish,
ask the land if that’s what it wants
Ask the trees that we planted and watered with our sweat
Tell us what you are going to do after you’ve killed us
Where will you hide our souls
To the General: order your soldiers to shoot and destroy
We will remain
To the soldier: We are the phoenix and we will shoot back with feathers
We will fill the land with colours
To the politician: they are deceiving you, they just want your name in the history books
To us: keep swimming on Deir El Balah beach
Maybe the sky will come down close to the sea
They will be one pond where everything is the same
Everyone equal
To Gaza, With Hope
I love you further
I love you more.
Even with no buildings
Even with no cafés I love you further
I love you twice
Once for your pride
And twice for your strength
Your Jabalia will be inside my heart.
I will rite it on every beach
And on bus stops
I will call my children Rafah, Khan Younis,
Nuseirat and Beit Hanoun.
I love you further
Beyond what they say and their pain
Away from their tanks and hate speeches.
I will continue to eat chilli like you taught me
Tell jokes as you showed me
Love life the way you do
Be brave and resist
Keep hoping , keep dreaming.
I only ask you one thing
Stay here, for everyone I love.
Ahmed Masoud is an award winning writer and theater director who grew up in Gaza and moved to the UK in 2002. His theatre credits include The Shroud Maker, (London 2015) which recently had a run in Chicago, and is the recipient of numerous awards . His debut novel is Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda (2016), which is also been translated into Spanish and Italian. His second novel Come what May (Victorina Press 2022) has received favorable reviews; the Italian translation will published this coming June by Edizioni Valeria de Felice. Ahmed is the founder of Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre (2005) where he wrote and directed several productions in London, with subsequent European Tours. After finishing his PhD research, Ahmed published many journals and articles including a chapter in Britain and the Muslim World: A historical Perspective (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)
