Back when I lived inside Gaza, when Gaza city stood proud with its Hamams and restaurants, its elegant hotels and its rag-tag beach cafes where we drank coffees or tea with sage till midnight, shared poems and bantered, sometimes fiercely, over who sold the best humus; back when the little city gold market thrived and other market traders sold racy lacy lingerie including of the musical kind, because this city was truly alive and kicking with orange farmers and flower farmers who sold millions of pieces of fruit and blooms to markets in the Netherlands and beyond, I was learning Arabic with a stern but kindly Palestinian teacher who taught me many things, including about pre-Islamic vagabond poets, called sa’alik. These men (all men I think) wandered the deserts railing against the strict conventions of tribal life, and loudly recited rebel poetry in raucous praise of solitude.
Sa’aliks often began public recitals with a prelude called ‘wuquf ala al-atlal’ or ‘standing at the ruins’ – evoking empty wind-scoured homes slowly eaten by sand dunes, abandoned fire pits, shreds of tents, and silence louder than any boisterous tribal family. Many people said this originated with the 6th Century King Qais, the last king of Kindah. Revered as the father of Arabic poetry, his own love of poems was so overwhelming he was banished to the desert to roar his poems to the sands.
I remember poetry in Gaza, the intensity and playfulness that sat together like old friends as my friends broke up a chat by sharing a poem she or had just wrote, or long loved. Love poems (of course!), poems of passions, for women, marriage and Palestine (of course!). I would sit back, cigarette in my fingers, breathe in the smoky words, though I usually didn’t understand all of them. But I understood the message because you could hear it ringing from the poet’s voice. It was raging, funny, political and wrapped its stories in the thick atmosphere of Gaza.
It’s no surprise to me that Gazans writers and poets created work throughout the war, to evoke the nightmare of being trapped inside Gaza, hungry thirsty and constantly afraid – and in remembrance of local poet friends killed by Israeli missiles, sliced apart by shrapnel, or buried alive in their own homes often with members of their own immediate family, as in the case of Inas Al-Saqa, entombed in her own home on 31 October (2023) with three of her children.
The influential poet Heba Abu Nada was killed ten days before Inas, on October 20th (2023). Heba’s last social media post read like this, ‘Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.’
Poetry defined something about Gaza that news report couldn’t; illustrated the depth and richness of its culture that was also deliberately being bombed to fragments.
Refaat Al-Areer’s poem, ‘If I must die’ went viral after he was killed on 6 December (2023), and rightly so. It’s a beautiful poem, I have it framed in my living room, and have memorised every word. Here’s the beginning, ‘If I must die / you must live/ to tell my story/ to sell my things/ to buy a piece of cloth/ and some strings (make it white with a long tail).’ You can read the entire poem here.
These poems don’t need me to translate them in any way, so I’ll just add that, in a word brimming with articles and media posts and soundbites, I think of poetry like a pause button, a drink of water when you have a different kind of thirst. PEN International campaigns for writers’ rights; it has a War on Writers page dedicated to every Gazan poet and writer killed since October 2023, detailing their works and telling you something of them as individuals, which is so important.
You can buy copies of Gazan poems in English; try Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha, Out of Gaza new Palestinian poetry or this digital pamphlet from emerging Gaza poets. We are Not Numbers (WANN) works with young poets and writers inside Gaza, its founding principle being to, ‘convey are the daily personal struggles and triumphs, the tears and the laughter, and the dreams and aspirations…. ‘ of Palestinians in Gaza. If you are a writer or poet yourself, you can support WANN by mentoring a Palestinian writer.
For the last word – though is there ever really a last word in poetry – I go back to a small gem from the poet Heba; ‘Oh little light in me don’t die/ even if all the galaxies of the world/ close in.’
This is why poetry matters my friends.
