trans.  Huda Fakhreddine

In Beirut this July. I wake up, as we all do, to images of starving Palestinians—humiliated, hunted down, spectated, documented, and yet abandoned every minute to the monstrosity and performativity of a complicit world. In Beirut, a city holding its breath, anticipating something to descend upon it—nothing good—Gaza is always on my mind.

A message on my phone jolts me from the all-encompassing horror to a more pointed one.” Fady Joudah writes to me in Arabic: “It’s unbearable that we all know a silence will soon descend on Gaza when hunger takes hold of them—the voices whose words we follow and wait for every hour.”

I panic.

I think of friends in Gaza—but also of many others I don’t know but follow obsessively on social media, checking their pages every few hours as if feeling for the pulse of an ailing loved one. I think of Anas al-Sharif, whose body has grown thinner and frailer before our eyes as he documents two years of genocide. I think of Nima Hasan, whom I only began following a few months ago, awed by her ability to speak from the darkest depths with clarity, force, and, at times, a biting humor that pins me in place. Everything else outside Nima’s voice shrinks into nothing but a guilty distraction from Gaza.

The next day, Joudah writes again. He shares a poem Nima had sent him that morning—a poem she had just written. “I love you is enough,” she says. The complete sentence, housed in a single Arabic word, أحبّك, suffices when the world closes in and there is no room for longer declarations, for the leisure of language and its constructions. “I love you” is enough to resist with, to fight with, to live with for a moment—and perhaps to survive. I read it once, then twice.

أحبّك
العبارات الطويلة تحتاج جدراناً ومخيماً 
وصبية لها جديلة من قمح
تحمل ملعقة سكر بين أناملها
مثل غيمة ملونة
أو موسماً ينمو فيه قصب السكر.

It feels like an impossible poem for Nima to have written in this moment. But then again, a real poem is never only of the moment. A real poem defeats time, every time. And here, Nima writes a poem that time will have to accommodate, will have to make room for—whether there are walls to write on or not.

On August 1st, a young man arrived at Odeh Hospital in Gaza—a martyr. In his pocket, the medical staff found a crumpled napkin with the words “I love you so much” written in English. He must have held onto it for a long time.

Her name was likely Hiba. She signed the message: “from the one who loves you, Habboush.” She had written it first in black ink, then traced it in red. They must have had time—perhaps sitting in a café by the sea, unhurried. There was time. She took her time. In the corner, she drew a heart, colored it in, pierced it with an arrow. She gave the arrow a head and a tail, and at either end she wrote two initials: A and H. A small, ordinary miracle—this love. She had no idea that death, with its blunt hand, would reveal her small secret and turn it into myth. “I love you so much,” she confessed, playfully. She didn’t know he would carry her love all the way to the end—grasping it in his pocket at the edge of time.

Gaza lives and traces for the rest of us paths to survival. When the world collapses and language fails, as it does every minute now, Gaza reminds us that between two lovers, between a mother and her child, a girl and the house she longs for, a boy and the orange grove where he once ran, a man and his beloved, a people and their homeland—against time and its monsters—I love you is enough.

Nima Hasan is a Palestinian poet surviving genocide in Gaza, insisting on poetry that overcomes the most horrific timelines. She is a living Palestinian poet in every sense. Her voice and her language shame and expose the politics of necromancy that pass as solidarity, a necromancy that requires a compromised Palestinian voice or a broken Palestinian body to hold up. Nima’s poetry uncompromisingly resists and exposes that hypocrisy. It is an example of “Palestine in Arabic” that Joudah tells us will liberate itself and us in its course. Her writings lay bare our failures and the many small deaths we die each day before the enormity of life, or what remains of it, in Gaza.

—Huda Fakhreddine, translator

“I love you—
Force the city to hear it out loud.”

—Nima Hasan (trans. Huda Fakhreddine)

Old Song

by Nima Hasan

(translated from the Arabic by Huda Fakhreddine)

“I love you” is enough.
A longer phrase requires sprawling walls, refugee camps,
and a girl with braids long as wheat fields,
a candy swirl the color of a rainbow cloud
between her fingers.

A longer phrase requires a season
when sugarcane grows.
“I love you” is enough,
so write it then,
on a large piece of cloth,
to sustain the mosque-goers,
those servants of the Merciful,
and the peddlers of sweetened drinks.
“I love you” will become a litany
for the ruined street.
All will recite it:
the loose tobacco seller,
the flour thief,
and those who own
a loaf of bread,
an empty bullet,
and a donkey with a broken cart.

I will also provide you with another list—
the names of those who were killed,
those who left the city without “I love you,”
those who breathed through stuffed holes,
longed for a trace of perfume
in a smuggled bottle.
See there, the checkpoints are opening their arms.
I love you—
say it again
like a rebel
or a soldier
who misread the map.

Mothers are searching for henna,
for the Zawiya market,
for the t̩asht of dough in the darkness of tents.
I love you—
say it again.
Give an old song
a chance to explain itself.
A white strand of hair
will light your path.
A lantern,
a sprig of basil,
and a country
that walks alone
without losing its way
will then be yours.

I love you—
Force the city to hear it out loud.
Doesn’t the tribal code grant men a minaret?
Then raise your voice to the greater one,
before sin falls and the last leaf drops.
Shadows betray their trees,
their heads bare,
their necks a guide for the hungry.
This fear—burn it.

And squeeze the mothers’ breasts,
mix their milk with the fig’s.
Let the child grow wild and strong.
Let him collect his baby teeth
behind pursed lips
and swallow the tumbling words,
before he speaks them
in a fit of tears.
I love you—
until the child cries himself to sleep.

Throw your instincts wide open.
Summon the notary
before he swears the oath,
and leave all your inheritance
to a man who waged a war
he had nothing to do with,
a man who called out across the land:
“I love you,”
and then set all the gardens ablaze

أغنية قديمة

العبارات الطويلة تحتاج جدراناً ومخيماً 
وصبية لها جديلة من قمح
تحمل ملعقة سكر بين أناملها
مثل غيمة ملونة
أو موسماً ينمو فيه قصب السكر.
ستكتبها إذن
على قطعة قماش كبيرة 
ليكتفي بها رواد المساجد
وعباد الرحمن
وبائع الشراب المحلى.
ستصبح أذكاراً
للشارع المهدوم،
لبائع الدخان العربي
وسارق الطحين.
سيتلوها من يملك
رغيف خبز
ورصاصة فارغة
وحماراً بعربة مكسورة.

سأبلغك بقائمة من قتلوا
وتركوا المدينة دونها
من تنفسوا من ثقوب مطوية
واشتهوا رشة عطر
داخل زجاجة مهربة.
المعابر تفتح ذراعيها،
أحبك.
أعد قولها
كثائر أغنية قديمة
أو جندي أخطأ قراءة الخريطة.

الأمهات يبحثن عن الحناء
وعن سوق الزاوية
وعن (طشت) العجين في عتمة الخيام.
أحبك
أعد قولها
امنح أغنية قديمة فرصة شرح نفسها.
الشعرة البيضاء
ستضيئ لك الطريق.
سيصبح لديك مصباح
وعود من ريحان
وبلاد تمشي وحدها
دون أن تتوه.

 أحبك
أجبر المدينة على سماعها جهراً.
عرف القبيلة جعل للرجال مئذنة.
كَبّر قبل أن يسقطَ الذنب،
قبل أن تسقط الورقة الأخيرة.
الأشجار يخونها الظل،
رؤوسها مكشوفة
وأعناقها دليل للجوعى.
أحرق هذا
الخوف.

اعصر أثداء الأمهات
وامزجه بحليب التين
دع الطفل يكبر بمزاج عال
يجمع أسنانه اللبنية
بزمة شفاه
يبتلع تعثر الكلمات
ينطقها
بوصلة بكاء حارة.
أحبك
حتى يدركه النوم.

افتح غرائزك على مصراعيها.
استدعٍِ ِ كاتب العدل
قبل أن يحلف يمين الولاء.
وسجلْ أرثك كله
لرجل
صنع حرباً
لا ناقة له فيها
ولا جمل،
ونادى في البلاد
أحبك
ثم أحرق الحديقة.

This poem was first published in English with LitHub, and is republished with the original Arabic here with their permission.

Nima Hasan, a mother and single caretaker of seven children, is a writer, poet, and social worker from Rafah. Her published works in Arabic include the novels Where the Flames Danced and It Was Not a Death and the book Letters from a Perpetrator. Her poetry has been published and translated widely in print and online publications. She was awarded the Samira al-Khalil Prize in 2024 and a selection of her writings during the genocide were published bilingually, in Arabic and French translation by Souad Labbize, titled Be Gaza (Les Lisières, January 2025).

Huda Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge). Her translations include Jawdat Fakhreddine’s poetry collection Lighthouse for the Drowning (BOA Editions), The Universe, All at Once: Selections from Salim Barakat (Seagull Books), and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah (World Poetry). She is also the author of a book of creative nonfiction, Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun) and a poetry collection, Wa min thamma al-ālam (And Then the World). She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures.

The post Old Song: a New Poem by Nima Hasan appeared first on Mizna.

In this debut poetry publication by Syrian-American mathematician, musician, and writer M. Hakim, I am reminded of the ways grief acts on language in the most intimate details. In our exchange for editing the poem, Hakim described the ways punctuation is governed not by traditional grammar, but by associations of grief: sentences pairing with each other like ghosts to former inhabitations, spectral residues of once-restricted sites like Qasioun, the gifting of an oud, and the speculative resonances between this poem and Nizar Qabbani. With the fall of Assad opening more space for Syrians and the diaspora to return to their land, to tell the stories held hostage by regimes now past, it is with deep reverence that Mizna thanks Hakim for trusting us to publish this stunning poetry debut.

—George Abraham, Editor-at-Large

walls with ears
looking with eyes that aren’t mine
am i the enemy of the enemies of my father? 

—M. Hakim

the tart air from Damascus 

الهواء الرماني من الشام

i have dreamed of Damascus as long as i have dreamed

the rose
the jasmine and ful
 the stone black and white
memories of those who live only in my own memories

silence
walls with ears
looking with eyes that aren’t mine
am i the enemy of the enemies of my father? 

i have dreamed of Damascus as long as i have dreamed
the distorted dreams of exile and longing

will i hear the voices of an angel in the straight street
                                 was she carried away by the Barada when it flowed?
                                                if i sleepwalk up Qasioun
                                                               will she be there with the oud
                                                                                    she doesn’t remember bringing for me?
                                                                                                   will the storyteller start at last without fear?
                                                                                                                        will the cells of my blood become green?

what will you do to me, Damascus?

M. Hakim (b. 1991) is a Syrian-American mathematician and musician from Texas, now based in the northeast.

Cover photo from Wikimedia (Creative Commons)

The post “the tart air from Damascus”—New Syrian Poetry appeared first on Mizna.

Compiled and edited by Rania Jawad, translated by Malaka Shwaikh

On March 2, 2024 Nima Hasan wrote:

I believe there is some secret in the elements of Gaza that makes us cling to a life that was never a life. I have always tried to keep an eye on death, making plans to distract it, to make it wait, so that it would get bored and leave what remains of me, my remains. We are all remains here. It is only the angle from which the photograph is taken that determines whether we are above the rubble or under it.

Hasan speaks with an intimacy as she documents mass torture by a contemporary world order that sanctions the extermination of a people. It’s an intimacy that invites us to see what she sees and inhabit the spaces she creates through her words. It’s an intimacy that, seemingly, temporarily defies the weight of the genocidal violence and its documentary coverage. It’s an intimacy I believe that we must hold on to so that the slaughter and engineered mass torture does not become the lasting narration of Gaza and contemporary Palestinian experience, so that we continue to bind ourselves not to the camera lens nor to the words that reach us but to the lives that are brutally being erased.

The different modes of Hasan’s writings, while collected here in a chronological timeline, show that the genocide and war experience is not a single, ongoing event but an accumulation of seconds, days, months, and years of lives. And these are lives that Zionist warfare has always meant to disrupt, when seen through the longer trajectory across generations of Palestinians and lands occupied by the Zionist regime in its settler colonial project of ethnic cleansing. Hasan gives us the image of a young woman, waiting long hours in line for bread amid Israeli bombings and manufactured famine, who is trying to recall her femininity. In another moment following months of Israeli targeted destruction, Hasan writes: “we wanted to liberate the homeland, but now O grandmother, we cannot even find a street at its end.” And in another, she likens her body stiffened by lying on the damp concrete floor of a shelter to a utility pole struggling to stand upright in the darkness to “cast a shadow to prove it exists.” Hers is not a timeline of death and torture, but of intimate moments that are narrated with spontaneity and incisiveness, under indescribable circumstances. 

The following is a compilation of writings that Hasan shared publicly via social media over the course of the sixth month of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians that has now entered its twenty-first month. A combination of critique, poetry, captured dialogues, recollections, and real-time testimonial, they were written by Hasan—a mother and single caretaker of seven children, a writer, poet, and social worker from Rafah—from her forced displacement in a shelter and then a tent camp in Mawasi Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip in March 2024. I first began to collect her shared writings as part of a broader initiative to document women’s articulations from Gaza as a way of listening, which has been visceral as it has been about accountability. Although Hasan did not intend for these writings to be compiled and republished, with her permission, we offer them here, for she has given us a lens through which to see (and not forget) a glimpse of the world of March 2024. It is a lens that does not reductively stand in for one woman, or for the literary legacy of a writer, or for a depiction of the genocide. Nor are her words to be taken as evidence to declaim what we already know. Her words are situated simultaneously within the confines of a displacement tent at the ends of the besieged homeland during the sixth month of a genocide and in an intimacy that expands beyond the mechanics of confinement and obliteration.

As I write now in July 2025, today is not the world of March 2024. Not for Rania Abu Anza, whose husband and five-month old twins Wissam and Naeem were murdered in an Israeli airstrike on the home of their extended family in Rafah; the twins who were born at the start of the war on October 13, 2023 and were conceived after ten years of trying should now have been approaching their second birthday. Today is not the world when packages were being airdropped on a starved, besieged, and bombed population—airdrops that killed at least five Palestinians in their execution; deficient packages of declared “aid” that kill and humiliate during the month of Ramadan. Today is not the world when reports of Israeli soldiers using sexual torture as a form of warfare was at the very least being minimally reported. Today is not the world when civilians were used as human shields by an occupying settler army to invade Al-Shifa Hospital. Today is not the world when the US military was preparing to install a floating pier in Gaza’s sea in the name of a “humanitarianism” that was later revealed to enable a military incursion and massacre of Palestinians—a constructed pier emerging from the rubble and blood of bombed homes when the bodies of 8,000 Palestinian martyrs were still buried under the debris. Today is not the world when the Israeli army murders and takes hostage the bodies of Palestinian children. Today is not the world when UNICEF’s spokesperson said, “the depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it.” Today is a world that has exceeded that horror surpassing expression, that has exceeded the bruteness and barbarity of March 2024. 

The following English translation was produced by Gazan scholar Malaka Shwaikh. I want to thank Tony Alessandrini for his editorial eye on the translation and Hadeel Abu Arqoub for helping to compile Hasan’s writings over the course of a year. This work has been supported by a Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) grant. To Nima Hasan, she knows this is one of the many letters I am writing to and for her. A book publication of Hasan’s compiled writings over the first year of the genocidal war will be published in Arabic in 2025. An English translation by Malaka Shwaikh of the book is in the works.

—Rania Jawad, Assistant Professor of English, Birzeit University

“When the roads are blocked, draw a new map. Become Rome. Be Gaza.”

—Nima Hasan, March 26, 2024, 8:18 a.m.

March 2024

by Nima Hasan
translated from the Arabic by Malaka Shwaikh

March 1

12:40 p.m.

If you want passionate speeches
to satisfy your desire for heroism, go read novels
or watch the evening news

I write what we’re living through here: not much to entertain you, my heroic reader!

5:55 p.m.

In the line
waiting for the wheat to rest
the smile of the man dusted with flour
the loaf of bread falling freely on the battlefield

In the line
a young woman tries to recall the meaning of her femininity
a man sings to the oven
another tries to understand the screams of the burning street
I stand in the middle of the story
gathering birds in my head
fearing the flight of the trees

In the line
an old woman curses the fields and the ears of grain
as she lists the names of the great cities for you
She sews the rope of hunger
to make a large sack of flour
enough for the guards of the tents

In the line
you and I
a child bites her nails
a man spits on the war
a woman applies lipstick under her veil
No water in this city to wash away our sins
but we’ll defy hell to produce a fresh loaf of bread
a moment before death

March 2

7:41 a.m.

Don’t speak of victory or boast of glory before someone starving to death.

4:17 p.m. 

No streets
No houses
No walls
No trees
In this stricken country
where can we lean our exhausted bodies?

4:37 p.m. 

I am Nima Hasan from Gaza.

I keep putting off writing my will. I believe death is watching all of us here; I wait for my final confession to rush toward me. I have never tried to avoid confronting it out of fear, but that is just my own way of surviving.

It may sound strange amid all this crying and sorrow, but I savor the sweet taste of Gaza in my mouth. It makes me yearn for life with more of its salt, the salt that has become so precious here. As the old woman says: Salt is now sold in bride’s boxes. All of Gaza is now sold in a box buried under the rubble, and the bride has no voice, for they killed her in her white dress.

I believe there is some secret in the elements of Gaza that makes us cling to a life that was never a life. I have always tried to keep an eye on death, making plans to distract it, to make it wait, so that it would get bored and leave what remains of me, my remains. We are all remains here. It is only the angle from which the photograph is taken that determines whether we are above the rubble or under it.

I have learned from wars that in Gaza, everyone waits for everything. I may never reach the front of the line to get my share, but I have learned to stay in line so my children might get theirs. Now that we have to get in line to die, my turn will inevitably come. I have never tried to change my place in line, but I cannot just stand quietly. This damn system: I am a woman who does not believe in standing still to survive, so I am forced to scream, and I am forced to shut up. My children are pulling at my skirts so that I might find a way to live, while death insistently pushes me forward, toward it. 

I resist.

I hate death. I hate the system. I hate the line. I love life, but the dust from the fighter jets obscures my view.

My mother once told me how my grandmother was forced with her children to leave the homeland. She said: my mother dug a hole and put me and my sisters in it and then lay on top of us to protect us from death. The fighter jets have now made many holes in Gaza. But I cannot find a place to hide my children where death cannot reach them.

I forgot what I was going to say about my will.

I just want my children and I to experience life. I want to live like other people without fear of tomorrow. But tomorrow is a prisoner here, and every time it raises its head the war kills it. I do not know when wheat learned how to become a gun. I do not know how the world came to believe that we are all dead here. But I know very well that my children and I know how to live, and I will not leave a final image for the world to cry over and then forget. No: I will follow the spotlight wherever it goes and keep smiling for the camera.

Ever since I was little, I have loved hide-and-seek. I want my children to play hide-and-seek, but when they open their eyes, I want them to be able to find their friends without shrouds. I often sit and stare at my children’s fingers, at how long and elegant and beautiful they are. I never thought to write their names on their hands so that death wouldn’t notice them. Let death leave these limbs whole: I know them by heart.

I have always dreamed of sitting in a café on the other side of our homeland, hidden from the streetlight, smoking a cigarette. In my madness I might be driven to flirt with a strange man here where love is forbidden. So I bequeath a pack of cigarettes, to be distributed as alms for my soul. And I request a handsome man to lead my funeral prayer, and let no insinuations be made by those passing by.

I have never seen anything but warplanes in our skies. How pure the world must look from an airplane window, for a woman with the luxury to travel to satisfy her passion for adventure. I want my daughter to be able to travel so she can enjoy collecting souvenirs and sending them to homes that will not be destroyed in a moment of war. My youngest is learning to design clothes. What if there were a fashion show on al-Rimal Street that did not feature the fabric of shrouds? Or if the World Cup could be held in Gaza, a world event for all the amputated legs, the only ones that know the map of the country?

I hear the chorus in the square now, without the sound of drones. It is the homeland in all its finery preparing for the funeral.

I bequeath life to you.
For we die without life knowing us.
This is how I remain without fearing the gun,
And maybe I will learn to become one.

March 3

8:01 p.m.

The Abu Anza twins Wissam and Naim.
It took their parents eleven years to conceive them.
Rafah’s martyrs.

8:29 p.m.

Fighter jets accompany aid being airdropped.
Be well.

“No streets
No houses
No walls
No trees
In this stricken country
where can we lean our exhausted bodies?”

—Nima Hasan, March 2, 2024, 4:17 p.m.

March 4

7:30 a.m.

5 months
150 days
3,605 hours
216,300 minutes
standing in line for death

9:20 a.m.

There are women making do with some straw
to fool their little ones
as they sew sadness
into bulletproof suits
that no one buys

There are lovers waiting beneath the walls
a forbidden song
a lover who has died
and a street with no name
He was preparing for a rendezvous
I stare at the empty pictures

There are men who drink cheap wine
swallowing ripe anger
One jumps into a bombed-out café
another searches for his lost limbs
No one finds their favorite drink
No use trying to make the dead laugh

There are doors without holes
a nightclub behind them
fields that yield hunger
a railroad track
and a whistle that lost its sound
At departure time
the city won’t leave us here

Fear was created for us all
but it’s the trick of survival
convincing us not to confess
or not to die 

6:50 p.m.

I have always tried to emphasize the social aspect of our lives as Palestinians in my writing. I write about women in my novels, living their lives with all their psychological, material, and social crises—loving, hurting, and getting angry; betraying, cursing, and feeling weak; longing, neglecting, and killing.

I have wanted to say: we are human. We die as you do. We suffer as you do. 
We are impatient.
We are not superheroes who bare our chests to die.
We cannot just be guns, even on the battlefield.
We are not used to death, and we will not get used to it just so you can applaud us for our artificial fortitude.
We are human. Do not forget: heroes also die.

11:01 p.m.

They starved to death in 2024.
Record: I am from Gaza
and strike the world from the record.

March 5

8:27 a.m.

The war did not abate . . . We are the ones abased.

7:23 p.m.

Everything is negotiable except death.

7:54 p.m.

The poor stand in line for food rations
and by the time their turn comes
the distance they’ve traveled devours them.

March 7

11:53 a.m.

We watch prices rise in Egypt in lockstep with what’s happening here.
The blockade and the imports of outrageously priced commercial goods through Rafah will lead to an economic disaster for both Egyptians and Palestinians in Gaza alike.

12:52 p.m.

Not even a thousand wars can change you if you were not human from the start.
Humanity is always a constant within us. All that changes is how we deal with it all.

5:16 p.m.

The rest of the world prepares for Ramadan.
Here we prepare for the invasion of Rafah.
Be well.

11:55 p.m.

Biden announcing the opening of a waterway from Cyprus to Gaza signals the beginning of many years of war and displacement.
The road to war now opened will not soon be closed.

March 8

6:39 a.m.

On International Women’s Day:
O the pain of mothers! Avenge them.

8:01 a.m.

Gantz says: In order to get Khamas out of power, we  need to have periods of chaos in the Gaza Strip. This has already occurred, of course, and it’s escalating, making Gaza a very dangerous place. Gangs have begun to take charge and lawlessness is eating away at what’s left of people’s ability to survive. Cheap weapons are offered for sale on social media and brazenly available in the markets, contributing to the formation of gangs that spread chaos and theft. Drugs are spreading at a frightening rate and are cheaper than cigarettes, so people swap one out for the other. Quarrels between extended families are being escalated, and weapons are being used indiscriminately to kill and cause chaos. The people are being driven to genocide from all sides.

4:17 p.m.

Five martyrs killed by food airdrops dropped upon them from the sky.
May the “humanitarian” waterway not drown what’s left of Gaza!

5:13 p.m.

God seems to have decided to endow the women of Palestine with steadfastness. In this place, it’s not clear if that’s a blessing or a curse. Either we are beings who have the capacity to adapt to any environment—mind you, I do not believe anyone can really coexist with death, although I agree that’s what life here is now—or we are made from a different clay than other women, so that we can be molded according to the condition of our homeland.

As a woman from Gaza, here at the southernmost part of Palestine, I have had to become a seven-headed woman. In fact, I might have to grow more heads as a precaution for whatever in life might yet confront me.

Daily life, with all its ups and downs, is something women throughout the world have in common. Emotions, the sense of yourself as female, mood swings, down to the menstrual cycle and all its symptoms: common to us all. Love, abandonment, depression, rebellion, even suicide: surely these are fully human traits.

Now: let me explain what it means to be a Palestinian woman in Gaza today.

Your daily life consists of knowing how to recognize the sound of fighter jets and drones in our sky. To be a woman is to know whose house is about to be bombed, which direction the missile will come from. Conversations with my temporary neighbor here in our temporary shelter are about the date of the next ceasefire and how to find paper and wood to make a fire. We do not sit together over a cup of coffee; there is no coffee in this stricken country, nor time to sit. Standing is the perpetual state here for women who must be ready at every moment to receive death.

You do not talk about invitations to lunch with family or friends; you ask instead about how long the bread line is, or whether you can find a handful of flour to make a loaf of bread. You cannot speak reassuringly about your family’s whereabouts; you have no news, there’s no telecommunications in this stricken country that will let you hear a beloved voice saying: it is okay, I am fine.

You do not talk about brand names of the clothes and makeup you bought or discuss beauty or elegance or such concerns; you worry instead about how to get your hands on a small bottle of water so you can stand in a line for the bathroom along with two hundred women and children. Standing in the narrow corridor at the shelter, you wonder if there will be anything left to wash your hands with after you urinate.

You sleep fully clothed, and in a prayer garment to cover yourself—this is very important—to be prepared for death. That is, if you can get any sleep amid the sound of falling bombs. You do not brag to your neighbor about the great discount you got on your kids’ clothes and toys; there are no clothes to buy in a country completely burned out from bombing. So instead, you find yourself awash with pain, watching your child shiver right in front of you.

Your children invent a game: writing on their arms and legs. They compete to see who can write their name more beautifully. It is so their limbs won’t get lost when they die.

Have you bought a car recently? Here, I walk three hours a day, back and forth, to get what I need for my children. There is no transportation left in this stricken country. If I am lucky, I can catch a ride in the trunk of a car or on a donkey cart to take me part of the way.

Do you complain about your husband’s neglect? You feel that you are neglected, abandoned, unlucky when he doesn’t get you a bottle of perfume or flowers for your anniversary? Here, the husbands of Gaza don’t return from the war. They are swallowed up in bombed houses or while waiting in a line. Did your lover cheat on you with another woman? Here, the ultimate betrayal is when your loved ones die and you survive without saying goodbye. Another betrayal comes when you stubbornly sleep apart from your loved ones after a quarrel, while the missile comes speeding down upon you, oblivious to all in its path.

You cannot go for a walk to try and lift your spirits, to walk off the despair and abandonment. Why? There are no streets left in my city, no place left to meet loved ones. Your mood swings are a luxury you can’t afford. In fact, the only luxury left here, the only thing that might change a woman’s mood, is the chance to have a warm bath in private every two weeks. Singing in the shower is out of the question, and even warm water and privacy are a fantasy except for those with money and power; I have neither. And singing is a miracle here, not a luxury.

The idea of mood swings when you have your period, that those around you have to tolerate you and your hormones: that’s meaningless here. Women have no sanitary pads when they need them. There aren’t even extra clothes or rags to tear up in their place. My dear, the women here have to make do with torn pieces of tent flaps when the time comes.

Even when you give birth, there’s nothing to absorb your blood, nothing to dress your baby in. Your labor cries make you ashamed: the pain is nothing, after all, when death is all around you. You give birth in the middle of a landscape full of corpses; a new life in the midst of all this death. You feel ashamed to bring more pain to the scene. You look at your newborn for a long time, fearing that this first meeting will be the last.

The feeling of abandonment here is reserved for death, to not finding shelter for you and your children, to the cold that gnaws at your bones, to the sleep that abandons you; there are no blankets to cover your anxiety and fear. And suicide is a luxury. You may laugh, but this is what war’s jurisprudence has taught me. Suicide is a luxury, a sign of overindulgence in life. We never own our lives: death has full power here and there is no room for negotiation.

“On International Women’s Day:
O the pain of mothers! Avenge them.”

—Nima Hasan, March 8, 2024, 6:39 a.m.

March 9

8:56 a.m.

The waterway will be under US-Israeli control; aid will be under Israeli control; all to further humiliate Gaza. Israel spreads lawlessness and chaos and finds fertile ground in the starving and wounded Gaza Strip; it will exploit this chaos to its full measure in order to become the ruling power in Gaza. This makes it look like the Americans are the “humanitarians” working to control lawlessness and chaos in the eyes of the world, the US aiming to improve its image before the upcoming elections. There is an American-Zionist plan: destroy and empty Gaza by any means necessary, and then emerge as both the victim and the hero at once.

9:12 a.m.

We no longer speak about ourselves.
Just stuttering mixed with hunger and death.

March 10

10:39 a.m.

All my life I have envisioned owning a house with a backyard, a garden with a small bed of mint where truffles secretly grew. I would tend to a small olive tree out back, having the luxury of harvesting olives one by one as they ripened and the time to design the garden before planting.

I have known many houses but have never owned one. There was one I thought I owned, near the Egyptian border. But in the days before the Occupation forces withdrew their settlements from Gaza, whenever tanks approached, we would have to flee, leaving the house to face the enemy on its own. We moved around like Bedouins, but without tents. Once the tanks got tired of playing that game, they tore through its walls and parked in the middle of our living room. We were forced to exit barefoot with a white flag that announced our final departure.

That was when I came to understand: houses have to migrate when their owners do. I never had a fixed address again. I moved from one house to the next or to whatever resembles a home. Then the war brought me to this refugee shelter because I couldn’t even find a tent to make it through the rainy season. Longing for a home has become a habit for me. I remember a warm doll from my childhood that I still seem to hold in my arms as I turn over on the shelter’s damp floor, trying to console my bones that are stiff with cold. The cold straightens them, like a utility pole stubbornly struggling to stand upright in the dark street, trying to cast a shadow to prove it exists. 

8:12 p.m.

No mastery of rhetoric or declaiming of verses will feed the hungry or free the homeland.

March 12

10:55 a.m.

Dialysis in a time of war.
There was already a shortage of machines for those who needed them. Now most are no longer working; the kidney patient stands in a long line, one of many lines of death in my city.
He asks me: did you hear that they want to bring in new medical equipment along with the aid? 
O God, the line is long.

And my neighbor, Morsi Khalifa, reached the end, leaving a long line behind him, waiting.
May God have mercy on his soul.

March 13

3:46 a.m.

Did the boy eat the apple?
A sentence whose elements are death, no grammar to parse.
What’s the reward for fasting?
A bale of hay.
Do you love me?
I’m hungry.

3:30 p.m.

I write novels, but I do not believe in the myth of the hero who will save us all in the end.

8:53 p.m.

Sing to me to expand the world
make a path between the waves
and save the city from drowning like a prophet
Don’t grieve alone
Take me as an idea
a witness
or a guide
and open your arms
closing the wound with an embrace
The names of lovers all wiped out:
no walls
no trees
to prove that love exists
just the birds inside your head
retelling the tale

March 14

9:28 p.m.

It’s ironic that the most enduring moments
are those of annihilation or departure.

March 16

8:18 a.m.

When the roads are blocked, draw a new map. Become Rome. Be Gaza.

4:12 p.m.

We wanted to liberate the homeland
but now, O grandmother, we cannot even find a street at its end.

March 19

10:35 a.m.

When you’re surrounded by death, you don’t think about the end. Trying to survive, you drown, watching the brazenness of the cowards floating above you.

11:02 a.m.

Wind, rain, cold air, and tents that do not know the meaning of sumud.
Judge them for their betrayal.

11:28 a.m.

Final nap. 
Fathers alone can lull death with silent pain.

“When you’re surrounded by death, you don’t think about the end. Trying to survive, you drown, watching the brazenness of the cowards floating above you.”

—Nima Hasan, March 19, 2024, 10:35 a.m.

March 21

9:49 a.m.

They say the homeland is lost and we its mawawil
hyenas chasing hyenas
death is coming for you, for him
O mother, if time is cruel to the homeland
we have men to carry it when it is wounded
If you find the free man hungry
he has no one but God to complain to
The martyr sleeps in his grave
with only his mother to pray for him

1:00 p.m.

My mother was a homeland. The homeland does not die.

4:59 p.m.

Hunger is a verse
Displacement is a verse
The world does not bless
a tent made of cans

March 22

7:08 p.m.

At some point in your life, you come to understand that you are alone. Nothing and no one around you will be able to understand who you are. All the accumulations left behind by those who have passed through your life create a wall that grows by the year, cutting you off from making choices. I don’t see this as a psychological barrier that reflects a flaw, a failure in your responses to others. Rather, it’s a sign of maturity born out of your experiences and your ability to transcend them. You will encounter moments that are painful before you overcome them. You will inevitably return to them, but you will always know that you must persevere. It is ok to look back from time to time. We’re human beings who can be overcome by emotions even when we’re able to control them. Even if experience has led you to believe that you can’t build relationships with others, there is nothing wrong with you. Perhaps you simply expected reciprocity for your generosity and cannot just stand by when none is forthcoming.

The other is just an illusion at the beginning of the tale, so you can create yourself for your own story. You are the only truth, and even if you are surrounded by illusions, it is okay to be alone. Loneliness here is uniqueness, not helplessness.

March 23

5:49 p.m.

You have to believe in a god for the idea of rebellion to work inside you. We do not rebel against nothingness. An individual who does not rebel against the chemistry of the universe, even at the level of simple feelings, is a pale and sickly human being.

9:56 p.m.

Day (x) of war.
Waking up early here doesn’t mean you’re an energetic person ready to take in the fresh morning air with your arms outstretched to the coming day; it’s not the luxury of getting an early start that gives you the strength to rise. Tonight, the wind is so strong it seems determined to punish the tents for being in the middle of the street. My cold bed makes me check my children’s temperatures to see if they’re as cold as I am. Their faces are all turned toward me, their bodies curled into a close circle with me at the center, waiting for me to signal a new movement, as though I’m the leading dancer here. Perhaps it is their breath that makes the music. And the sound of a drone is put there by the director to attract the audience’s attention.

Mahmoud, my eldest son, starts a new job today. He’ll make pastries and sell them to those in the tents and the school shelters. Aid has started to come in and flour is a bit cheaper, so now it’s possible to buy some. Just days ago, we were searching for flour like miners, but yesterday, the city was carrying bags of wheat rather than the bodies of martyrs. This is a day that must be written about, but I won’t; I fear the flour seller stumbling, the city returning to where it was, without a loaf of bread to be found. At three in the morning, Mahmoud’s friends tap lightly on the door of the shelter to wake him up for work. They don’t realize that everyone is awake; we just pretend to sleep as a distraction from the darkness all around us. He goes out with his friends, a strange vigor in his step. I hear his jaw shaking from the cold as he walks out the door. I smile, knowing how he likes to exaggerate to make a hero out of himself. But there’s also a twinge of pain inside me that makes me face the darkness with open eyes.

The intermittent naps are over. No more conversations with anxiety: I have to get up. I have no space around me to stretch, to extend my arms, or even to lean on a hand to help me up. I hop up like a rabbit out of its cage. I dread the thought of finding a bathroom to use, so I’ll wait until it’s light enough to go to a relative’s house: I can’t compete with a hundred women and children for one bathroom. And as long as I have the luxury of an outhouse, it’s like having a golden ticket to the opera. I take my three little girls to do what’s natural in an unnatural way, walking through the cold to a far-off stranger’s door, carrying our water bottles like precious treasures, checking our grip upon them at each step. I do not care about the disapproving glances. It is my right to live. Access to a usable restroom: I will not relinquish that right.

Going back to wash our faces requires more water. The boys can handle themselves, although I know they’re more embarrassed than I am; still, they are men in a time of war. I made them each a water bottle for the bathroom and wrote their names on them. They laughed when we first walked down the street with bottles of water inscribed with our names, begging to enter a bathroom that we might find vacant somewhere. I spoil them by squeezing half a lemon into the bottles as a substitute for the soap that can no longer be found. We use one small bottle of water to wash all our faces, catching the water in a wide bowl so that we don’t waste a drop: we have to recycle it to wash our feet. We surround our meager space in the shelter with school desks and some old curtains that we’ve found for a bit of privacy.

To prepare breakfast for the children, I have to collect some small sticks that can light quickly. It’s sheer joy when the wood catches fire, like the joy of a child receiving a bag of chips as UNRWA’s generous gift to displaced children. I’ve been waiting to receive some biscuits. There’s a silent excitement I feel inside at the thought of a small piece of biscuit, a luxury that is not available even to those with money: money no longer has that power here. A lot of blank paper is needed to light a fire under a pot of water to make tea, and money won’t buy you the ingredients for that cup of tea in a city empty of everything except death. 

Water is also a luxury. I no longer remember the flow of water from a tap. The joyful sound of water clinking as it’s poured into a plastic bottle overshadows any image of civilization I have ever experienced. The line for water is a test of your fortitude. You have to stay on your feet without taking a step back or looking up at the sky, even if you are tempted by curiosity at the sound of the death drone, wanting to observe its movement. You have to keep your eyes on the water hose stretched out before you. It’s your connection to life.

Lunchtime
I forget we have lost the meaning of time; our appointments now stand in the line with us
Bread line
water line
fear line
time line
line of death
True steadfastness is returning from all these lines with every part of your body intact
Your soul is of course damaged. That’s okay.

In the line
waiting for the wheat to rest
the smile of the man dusted with flour
the loaf of bread falling freely on the battlefield

In the line
a young woman tries to recall the meaning of her femininity
a man sings to the oven
another tries to understand the screams of the burning street
I stand in the middle of the story
gathering birds in my head
fearing the flight of the trees

In the line
an old woman curses the fields and the ears of grain
as she lists the names of the great cities for you
She sews the rope of hunger
to make a large sack of flour
enough for the guards of the tents

In the line
you and I
a child bites her nails
a man spits on the war
a woman applies lipstick under her veil
No water in this city to wash away our sins
but we’ll defy hell to produce a fresh loaf of bread
a moment before death

Now strip all that away and start to understand the language of darkness, your companion for the hours to come. You have many tales to hear or to tell, depending on the mood of the fighter jets above you, the bombs always threatening to fall.

“You have to believe in a god for the idea of rebellion to work inside you. We do not rebel against nothingness. An individual who does not rebel against the chemistry of the universe, even at the level of simple feelings, is a pale and sickly human being.”

—Nima Hasan, March 23, 2024, 5:49 p.m.

March 24

8:29 a.m.

170 days of our lives gone as we wait for death in Rafah.
In Khan Yunis the shelling has not stopped since suhoor and the Nasser Hospital neighborhood is being burned by fire belts.
The genocide in Al-Shifa Hospital has lasted a week (a genocide on repeat).
Nuseirat is being bombarded by fighter jets and artillery.
The North is being starved to death.
We are fine.
Thanks for asking.
Be well.

11:57 a.m.

The void:
a rendezvous for our disappointments
Laughter:
a defining moment that will not be duplicated
Sleep:
a chance for silence
Reading:
a good excuse for obesity
Crying:
a moment of defeat
Song:
strangers sharing a heart
Love:
a translation of our true selves
Homeland:
a blank phone screen

2:00 p.m.

The thought of home is the warmest thing humankind has ever found.
All of Gaza trembles.

March 25

11:26 p.m.

A poet
paints an ear of wheat on his dead tree each day. The birds believe it.

March 26

9:24 a.m.

My daughter woke up asking:
How long will the war last?
I really miss our home.
I dreamt we returned.
She cried and I cried.

March 27

6:28 p.m.

Tell sorrow that we pardon it—ask it to release us!

March 28

10:35 a.m.

I once had a mute cat that came to me whenever it was hungry or wanted to relieve itself. With a movement of her head, she would move her food dish or scratch on the door to be let out. She did not jab me with a paw or rub herself against me when she wanted me to wake up; instead, she would stand by my head and stare intently at my sleeping face until I felt I was being watched. And I would get up and do what she wanted. Her unique way of expressing herself by just glancing at me made me feel like she was a part of me. I felt free with her, sharing a language that connected us.

The circle has closed around me like a cat forced into silence, scratching to try and reach a false sense of freedom. It has made my view of wars different from the prevailing ones. Some see me as disloyal to the resistance in a country that is forbidden to speak; others question my patriotism. You might be a traitor, a friend told me, while she drank cappuccino in front of her TV screen, watching the news and crying with great “integrity.”

I am trying to tell my story without jabbing you with a paw or clinging to anyone. I am just declaring my needs clearly and firmly, remaining myself, without meowing about it.

March 29

2:25 p.m.

We are not well.
We aren’t strong enough to see death, to wait for it day after day without having breakdown after breakdown. It is okay to reveal our weakness and to cry. Stubbornness in the face of sorrow and oppression is not a form of resistance but a denial of our humanity. That is why we are traumatized and collapse at the slightest glimpse of the future. The pictures and videos and news bulletins we see depict what we are living through, and they send a mixed message: we are all potential martyrs, and at the same time, we have to endure with patience until our turn comes and then welcome it with pride. I do not think our inner strength will be enough to welcome death, even if we can accept it. True steadfastness comes from expressing your feelings exactly as they are. Then you will never reach the point of collapse; you will keep a balance between the reality of your feelings and the reality of what you are facing. Talk to yourself, even to your mirror, and don’t be afraid of the fear you find there.

March 30

1:42 a.m.

At school

I want to hear the school bell ring
draw a line on an empty bread bag
clap loudly for the morning whistle

Put “water” in a sentence
before it runs out:
that’s what the teacher told us

Recite: Mawtini
though chanting can’t be heard in the tent

I have no books
I wanted to make a pot of tea
before winter comes
Words stir the fire’s embers

Where is my mother?
I’m old enough now 
to look for her in the rubble
That’s the first lesson

Stand up. Sit down.
Record: I am from Gaza
and strike the world from the record.

8:22 p.m.

Isaac Mukhaimir, a father and true leader, is dead.
When he came to the signing of my novel, he read it that same day.
He called me that evening to tell me: 
I am so proud: you are a true daughter of the camp. I have never read anyone who captures the realities of the camp, and its secrets, as you have. 

Nima Hasan, a mother and single caretaker of seven children, is a writer, poet, and social worker from Rafah. Her published works in Arabic include the novels Where the Flames Danced and It Was Not a Death and the book Letters from a Perpetrator. Her poetry has been published and translated widely in print and online publications. She was awarded the Samira al-Khalil Prize in 2024 and a selection of her writings during the genocide were published bilingually, in Arabic and French translation by Souad Labbize, titled Be Gaza (Les Lisières, January 2025).

Rania Jawad is an assistant professor in the Department of English Literature at Birzeit University, Palestine. Her recent publications and work focus on women’s writings from Gaza during the genocide, and the production and politics of testimonial writing.

Malaka Shwaikh is a scholar from Gaza. She is a lecturer in international relations at the University of St Andrews. She coauthored Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine: A Strategic Perspective (2023) with Rebecca Ruth Gould and has published articles and book chapters on the limitations of resilience and the question of Palestine, narratives of displacement, gendered realities of incarceration, and translation politics in Gaza.

The post “I Bequeath Life to You, for We Die without Life Knowing Us”—Nima Hasan Writing from the Ends of the Homeland appeared first on Mizna.

trans.  Huda Fakhreddine

In anticipation of Huda Fakhreddine’s forthcoming translation of Samer Abu Hawwash’s Ruins and Other Poems, Mizna presents this stunning new poem on the ways Zionist settler colonialism infiltrates Palestinian life even through mundane, ordinary objects. As with other works like “from the river to the sea,” Abu Hawwash’s poem haunts, and yet returns us impossibly to the land, in all the details.

—George Abraham, Editor-at-Large

“All but those hands,” my beloved says, “that is an obvious truth.”
“But ours is the memory of the hands,” I say,
“the hands that used to care and nurture and love,
the hands that bled their sweat into the sap, the trunk, the frond—
the hands that are that palm leaf
eternally waving to those departed.”

—Samer Abu Hawwash

A Box of Dates on the Kitchen Table

On the kitchen table 
is what’s left of dates in a box.
I don’t know why we keep it still,
there for us to see every morning, 
when we make our coffee,
every noon while we prepare lunch,
every time we go to get a glass of water,
every time we want to see it and every time we don’t,
there it stands among other things, sometimes hidden
and sometimes revealed, gleaming in the dark.

The box was not always here.
A few days ago, it was on another table
in the only Arab shop in this city.
And it was there that we missed everything.
We missed the brand name, “King David,” on the box,
the star and the name of the settlement on the back.
I can hear the pontificators now:
“Don’t you know the ABCs of boycott.
Carefully read the back side.
Look for the symbols and signs, the hidden and the visible.
Decode everything on the product. 
Did you consult the list?”

I look at my beloved and say,
“But aren’t these dates ours at the end of the day?
Each on one of them in this box
and in all the other boxes?
Isn’t all ours to begin with, 
the soil where they grew, ours.
the water that nourishes them, ours.
the shade they make, ours.
Maybe even those hands that grew them, 
those are probably ours too.”

“All but those hands,” my beloved says, “that is an obvious truth.”
“But ours is the memory of the hands,” I say,
“the hands that used to care and nurture and love,
the hands that bled their sweat into the sap, the trunk, the frond—
the hands that are that palm leaf
eternally waving to those departed.”

At home, I stand with my beloved, 
puzzled over the box,
as if it were a dead animal.
I tell her, “It’s just a box, a silly, miserable box,
nothing more than wrapping and a brand,
a made-up name, an advertisement.
Don’t you know, my love, that made-up names and ads
are nothing but lies? You know how deceiving a box can be.”

“But this box has become a country,” she says.
“It’s not really a country,” I say, “It’s just another box, a made-up name, a brand. 
Besides, didn’t you see the expiration date 
on the back of the box?”

Alone in the evening, I stare at the box abandoned on the table,
the box that became a grave, now expanding.
I remind myself: it’s just a box, a silly, miserable box.
O palm trees of Jericho,
palm trees of Khan Younis, of Deir al-Balah,
do you see me as I tear up the box and throw it in the trash bin?
Do you see how the trash bin keeps growing larger and larger,
until it can hold all the boxes from all the stores, in all the cities,
until nothing remains but a single date.
I peel off its pale, lifeless skin,
and reveal the gleaming stone at its heart.

And in the stone, I see all things,
past, present, and future:
the houses, the fields, the clouds, the waves,
all that we call home.
I will strip the stone of all the names
it has falsely claimed along the endless paths of absence.
I will return it to its first name—
and return it to my heart.

علبة تمر على طاولة المطبخ

على طاولة المطبخ، ما بقي من حبّات تمر في العلبة
لا أعرف لماذا ما زلنا نحتفظ بها
هنا حيث نراها كلّ صباح ونحن نعدّ قهوتنا
وكلّ ظهيرة ونحن نعدّ الغداء،
وكلما دخلنا لجلب كوب ماء، أو كلما
أردنا أن نراها ولا نراها
هنا، بين أشياء أخرى تحجبها حيناً
وتبديها حيناً ساطعة في الظلام

لم تكن دوماً هنا؛
قبل بضعة أيام، كانت على طاولة أخرى
في المتجر العربيّ الوحيد في هذه المدينة
حيث فاتتنا رؤية كلّ شيء،
فاتتنا رؤية العلامة—”الملك داود“—أعلى العلبة، 
مع النجمة واسم المستعمرة على ظهرها—
وأسمع الآن أصوات العالمين بالمسائل والأمور:
ألم تتعلّم ألف باء المقاطعة، أن تقرأ جيداً”
ما دوّن على ظهر العلبة،
أن تبحث عن الرموز والإشارات الخفيّة والظاهرة،
أن تفكك شفرة المنتجات،
“ألم تشاور ما جاء في القائمة؟

أنظر إلى حبيبتي، وأقول:
”لكنها، في نهاية الأمر، تبقى لنا، 
كلّ حبة تمر في هذه العلبة
وفي كل العلب،
هي في الأصل لنا،
التربة، حيث نبتت، لنا
والمياه التي روتها، 
والظلال التي صنعتها، 
وربما حتى الأيدي التي رعتها“ 
هي الأخرى لنا
”إلا الأيدي،“ تقول حبيبتي، ”إنها الحقيقة الواضحة،“
”إذن لنا ذاكرة الأيدي،“ أقول،
”الأيدي التي كانت تربّت، وتحنو، وتحبّ
وتحفر عَرَقها في النسغ والجذع والسعفة
الأيدي التي هي السعفة
في تلويحتها الأبدية للراحلين“

في البيت، أقف وحبيبتي حائرَين حول العلبة
كأنما حول جثّة حيوان نافق،
أقول لها: ”إنها علبة، مجرد علبة سخيفة بائسة،
غلاف لا أكثر، علامة تجارية، اسم مصطنع، لوحة إعلانية، 
ألم تري يا حبيبتي كم تكذب الأسماء المصطنعة واللوحات الإعلانية؟
ألم تري كم تخدع العلب؟“
”بيد أن هذه العلبة صارت بلداً،“ تقول 
”لكنه ليس بلداً حقاً،“ أقول، ”إنه مجرد علبة أخرى، اسم مصطنع، علامة تجارية، ثم ألم تري تاريخ الصلاحية 
على ظهر العلبة؟“

وحيداً في المساء أنظر إلى العلبة المهجورة على الطاولة،
العلبة التي صارت قبراً ما زال يتسع
وأذكّر نفسي: إنها مجرد علبة، علبة سخيفة بائسة،
فيا نخلات أريحا
ويا نخلات خان يونس
ويا نخلات دير البلح
أترينني وأنا أمزّق العلبة وأرميها في سلة القمامة
ثم كيف تكبر السلة أكثر فأكثر
حتى تصير تتسع لكلّ العلب في كل المتاجر، في كل المدن،
حتى لا يبقى سوى حبّة تمر واحدة
أنزع عنها قشرتها الشاحبة الميتة
وأكشف عن الحجر اللامع في قلبها

وفي الحجر أرى كلّ شيء:
ماضي الأشياء وحاضرها ومستقبلها،
البيوت والحقول والغيم والموج
وكل ما نسميه البلاد،
ثم أنزع عن الحجر ما انتحل له من أسماء
على دروب الغياب الطويلة،
وأعيده إلى اسمه الأول
وأعيد قلبي إليه.

Samer Abu Hawwash (b. 1972) is a Palestinian poet, novelist, editor, and translator, born in Lebanon. He is the author of 10 poetry collections including his debut collection Life is Printed in New York (1997), I’ll Kill You Death (2012), One Last Selfie with a Dying World (2015), Ruins (2020), and From the River to the Sea (2024). He is also the author of three works of fiction: The Journal of Photographed Niceties (2003), Valentine’s Day (2005), and Happiness or A Series of Explosions that Rocked the Capital (2007). Abu Hawwash is the translator of more than 20 volumes of poetry and prose from English including works by William Faulkner, J.G. Ballard, Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Langston Hughes, and many others. He lives in Barcelona, Spain where he currently works as the director of the Culture & Society section at Almajalla Magazine.

Huda Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge). Her translations include Jawdat Fakhreddine’s poetry collection Lighthouse for the Drowning (BOA Editions), The Universe, All at Once: Selections from Salim Barakat (Seagull Books), and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah (World Poetry). She is also the author of a book of creative nonfiction, Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun) and a poetry collection, Wa min thamma al-ālam (And Then the World). She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures.

The post A Box of Dates on the Kitchen Table appeared first on Mizna.

Today, Mizna is honoring the launch of beloved contributor and Palestinian performance artist Fargo Tbakhi’s debut poetry collection TERROR COUNTER. This ambitious, experimental collection is, at once, a battle cry, a love letter, a reminder that we will die and that we are not dead. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes: “Through a variety of invented forms and stirring unravelings, these poems tunnel, excavate, eulogize, exclaim, and most elegantly imagine where we might go once we reject the dehumanizing gaze and obsessions of a crumbling empire and return to ourselves and to each other.” Purchase a copy of TERROR COUNTER here.

—George Abraham, Editor-at-Large

I wander through what remains of You

In the holding

We are not repeated here

We traverse some space outside of narratability

We are somewhere nobody can see us

—Fargo Tbakhi

Palestinian Love Poem

Something in me wishes for a dead cell
tower.
I’m a little grime. I’m arterial clogging.
Blister
on the tongue on skin You weren’t aware
could
blister. I puked up a drone today
warm
and stillbreathing. Necrosis of the giver
give
to all the grimes a gift: cleanness.
Up
the throat and toward fresh air. My
goodness
what a pretty taste. The interrogatory lawyer
bends
me over and his briefcase touches my
soul.
I’m a little filth. Blood of a good man
catch
it in my cupped hands. To drink You is to
know
who I will become. I’m a little pest.
Warbling
my little deathsong like a king’s
bane.
I swear I can see through myself tonight,
all
the way through to You, my watcher, my
sweet
interlocutor, silently workshopping
all
of my lines.

Gazan Tunnels (Through Yehuda Amichai’s “Sonnet”)

from “In the Knowledge That You Will Die, and I Will Die”

for my baba

And we will walk

Into nowhere

You with Your smallness and me with my smallness

The beach where we froze—were frozen—together

When the patrol officer held You he held You

When You held me You held me close

I answer the video call and Your hair has become white

Thin and vanishing—poverty—wraithlike—

Some incontrovertibility inside of us

And our times

I answer the video call smoking and You say You smoke now? then light up with me

The two of us and our cigarettes and distance

Stumbling along toward death

When my poems disintegrate You will remain in the documents of the court

When the courts disintegrate You will slip with me into anonymity

Where we began and where we looked for love

The indictment text holding You still and frozen

Where You are defending Yourself against the being-told-of

And You are named Defendant Last Name First Name

And You are named for me and I for You

The pages typed by somebody’s hands

Who listened around You shapeless in the clear light

I keep telling You about time

And what we need it for

Though I do not believe—

We find ourselves this morning in our capitols

Farther than a ship from safety

On the horizon line

Its vagueness and its cruelty

I have told Your story and You in Your way

You have told mine

You have told it to me

We tell each other the temperature and find that the numbers match

And I look for You in the white of my own hair

Its unexpected entrances

To miss each other’s funerals because of our difference

To have lost, finally, our eachness

To be, finally, no discrete things to be legislated

I wander through the ghosts of Your hair

I wander through what remains of You

In the holding

We are not repeated here

We traverse some space outside of narratability

We are somewhere nobody can see us

And here You tell me I am whole and wholly Yours

And here I tell You I let You go, again and again, each day

And here we are sweetly entangled and disentangling

Somewhere beyond the electronics store and its robberies

Your hair is becoming its own memory of itself

And Your jacket resides on me like a welcome tick

Drawing from me my life

My somewhereness and my penchants-for-

I, begging some God for illegibility

You, forgotten dream of instability

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist and the author of TERROR COUNTER (Deep Vellum, 2025) and ANTIGONE. VELOCITY. SALT. (Deep Vellum, 2027). 

The post TERROR COUNTER—Excerpts appeared first on Mizna.

In the past few decades, as liberal cultural institutions have grown more dastardly effective at co-opting and defanging the political potential of writers and artists from historically marginalized backgrounds, the amorphous imperative to “witness” continuously re-emerges in the face of unceasing tragedy wrought about by the United States, its ruling class, and its ghastly allies across the globe. We are implored to “witness” atrocity after atrocity, but never as more than bystanders, contributing nothing beyond sympathy, and even then, only for the “perfect victim.” I am drawn to Sara Aziza’s stunning blending of form precisely because it refuses this hijacking, asking us instead to unravel the dangerous language with which we understand and articulate the victims of empire from within it.

– Hazem Fahmy, Uncrafted Column Editor

HAZEM FAHMY

Broadly speaking, how do you think about your relationship with craft as a term and a concept? And in what ways have you encountered it, institutionally or pedagogically? 

SARAH AZIZA

HF

I wanted to go back to your point about literature’s capacity for mystery and the undefinable. As vital as it is to center an unambiguously political critique of institutionalized ideas of craft, for me it is also a question of pleasure. For example, there’s been much conversation about the “MFA novel” or the “workshop poem,” these really formulaic ideas of what a sentence should look like, or how a project should be structured—the kinds of characters and concerns that a work can be fixated on. Of course, these are also very political choices, involving what you can and can’t criticize or forefront, but it’s also about narrowing down what is enjoyable. 

SA

HF

You mentioned earlier that initially your relationship to poetry—like that of many people, certainly mine—felt very distant, like something that couldn’t speak to you. When did it, to use Barthes’s term, puncture through for you? 

SA

HF

It seems to me like what you found in poetry during this period was the opposite of what had been pushed on you in journalism school. Journalism in the West in general, but particularly in the U.S., is obsessed with this idea of objectivity, which we’ve seen being put to particularly violent uses since October of last year. For you, to what degree was moving toward poetry moving away from journalism?

SA

HF

I’m assuming they were also asking you to translate very particular narratives that a liberal American audience would find palatable.

SA

Empire is really stupid because of how narrowly it defines legible knowledge. One source of hope for me is the continued refusal of empire to actually exhibit real interest in its own survival, like refusing to take cues from nature, indigenous people, or history itself. When thinking about writing against empire, I think about emergency, about “resistance” in its many forms. But I also think about the desire to preserve who we are in our wholeness and beauty, our desires and interests and curiosities and idiosyncrasies; our uniqueness in the midst of resisting. 

In thinking about my relationship with English and English education, I started taking apart my syntax. I would download declassified documents from the 1950s and redact or appropriate the language and mess with it. It felt like there were lots of ways to be insurgent. I’m thinking about Look by Solmaz Sharif, for example, and how she takes the military dictionary and uses it as a starting point to craft poems against the US military industrial complex. But her next book, Customs, was also very different. So as much as resistance is a really fruitful and important place for me, I never want my craft, art, humanity, or existence to just end there. That would allow for too much of my life to be shaped by oppression.

I want to write against, but I also want to write without. I always ask myself: what art would I create if I’m not even thinking about the oppressor? What can I write that the despots and fascists could never grasp or understand? 

I think a lot as well about Édouard Glissant and opacity when it comes to how stupid and limited imperial knowledge is. I love the moments where art, or even just human friendship, revel in themselves, in what the enemy can never know about us. I think that can be so beautiful, abundant, sustaining, and powerful. And it does work against empire because it begins to build, even if just on the page, or in a space, or for an evening, a different reality. It’s practicing, moving us toward the future that is the reason for our resistance. We resist in order to get to a place where we no longer need to resist. 

HF

Before we get into Mourid Barghouti’s work, as we planned for this conversation, I wanted to ask you about memoir writing more broadly. As the author of one yourself, are there particular considerations of craft for you when it comes to this form?

SA

For starters, I’m very suspicious of conventional notions of narrative, the idea that you have to have rising action and climax, or a beginning, middle, and end. That’s very dangerous to me, especially because I’ve been writing a memoir that has to do with trauma, the Nakba, and recovery. I wanted to be very careful. For instance,I didn’t want it to be a straightforward narrative of “resilience”—I’m very suspicious of this term as it’s packaged and sold in the mainstream, based on simplistic ideas of redemption and clear binaries. On the other hand, when I was talking to agents and editors, most of them fixated on  my female body and its experiences of ancestral and sexual trauma. Many wanted to lean into that in a very lurid sense. They looked for emotional, almost erotic descriptions of my fragility, my shrinking flesh. It’s a conscious choice to resist this  fetishizing appetite for the trauma of certain people; queer trauma and female trauma, but obviously also Palestinian trauma, or that of the colonized subject more broadly. 

When I started writing about my grandmother, I was very sensitive to these considerations. I wanted her suffering and loss to be reclaimed, to be thoughtfully, faithfully presented in language. On a personal level, too, this was so important for me—because her trauma also informs the story of who I became and what my struggles were. Yet, I didn’t want to write about her in a way that implied she, or those like her, are just destined to suffer. 

HF

To just be a perfect victim. 

SA

Yeah, like Mohamed el-Kurd talks about. It was important for me to show her rage, to show my own rage. A quote from el-Kurd that I really like is: “we have a right to contempt.” It’s a little spin on Glissant, who’d said: “we have the right to opacity.” In that same sense, we have a right to contempt, anger, and messy feelings. I didn’t want my book to just be a shallow valley of suffering, one trauma after another, and I didn’t want it to be tied up neatly in a bow of “resilience.” I wanted my grandmother—a brown, disabled woman—and all my people to be granted the complexity, fallibility, and nuance that has been afforded to white, male characters for centuries. And I wanted to begin and end in irresolution—because that is how I experience the world, and because our liberation is incomplete. 

I was also thinking a lot about the responsibility of handling another person’s story. I was writing a personal memoir, but also a family memoir, so I thought a lot about the privacy of my grandmother and father, whose stories I was trying to approach and tell. I wanted to know as much as I possibly could—from other relatives, from photo albums and family records—in order to render their stories faithfully. I learned a lot from Saidiya Hartman’s words about writing into the archive while also respecting the sovereignty of those characters’ stories. There were things that I gave myself license to render on the page, and others that I felt belonged to no one but my grandmother, so I kept them out. I wanted her to be understood, but I didn’t want her to be exposed.

HF

 This actually leads quite smoothly to another question I wanted to ask you, which is that of ethics in the memoir, especially as it’s one of the forms where this concern is most pressing. 

SA

It was central for me. Besides what I’ve just mentioned, I was thinking a lot about how to approach putting less flattering things in the book because some of the people who harmed me were fellow Arabs. My grandfather, as well, was a complicated character. But as we were saying earlier, I didn’t want to write a story in which we were perfect victims. Because of what Palestinians are currently facing, I often felt this pressure that because I have a mic I have to show the best of us. I really struggled with that sometimes because I just don’t want to give anyone any more reason to disparage Palestinians, or more specifically Palestinian or Muslim or Arab men. 

But then I realized that that’s also dehumanizing because that’s not allowing us to be human, i.e. inherently complicated, fallible, and often misguided. It’s also desecrating our love and relationality. Because in reality, love is always fucking up. We make mistakes and harm one another. I was trying to find a way to welcome in some of that messiness because that’s also our birthright. We deserve to be full.

Sara Ahmed talks about the risks of bringing up stories of trauma, specifically sexual trauma, perpetuated from within our own communities because white audiences are so primed to clutch to those things and say: “See? Look at these barbaric men!” But she also talks about the harm of rendering these things secrets—so it’s important to tell them with care. She’s another person I took ethical cues from when deciding to include certain things that ran the risk of being used against us. But in general, I just think it’s more important to write toward our fullness than to preemptively flatten and hollow ourselves out. That’s already done for us so much. 

HF

Agreed, and to that point, I think there’s also a huge difference between someone writing about the experience of patriarchy, misogyny, or gendered violence in the particular context in which they have experienced it versus writing about how a racialized group is exceptionally or inherently violent. Plus, there will simply always be racist who are just waiting for anything to cling to in order to justify their racism against Arabs, Muslims, or whoever else. 

HF

Something that strikes me about his book, which you alluded to earlier in yours, is that he seems uninterested in giving a linear account of his life, but is much more focused on these vignettes that tell a larger story of life in and outside of Palestine.

SA

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity and represents the first in a new interview series Hazem Fahmy is editing with Mizna Online titled Uncrafted, exploring intersections of literary craft and anti-imperial thought. 

Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer and translator. Her essays, journalism, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, Mizna, Jewish Currents, Lux Magazine, the Intercept, NPR, and the Nation, among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a 2022 resident at Tin House Books and a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Her book, The Hollow Half (April 2025), is a hybrid work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream.

Hazem Fahmy is a writer and critic from Cairo. A PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, he is the author of three chapbooks: Red//Jild//Prayer (2017) from Diode Editions, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo (2022) from Half-Mystic Press, and At the Gates (2023) from Akashik Books’ New-Generation African Poets series.  He is a Watering Hole Fellow, and his writing has appeared, or is forthcoming in The Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, Mubi Notebook, Reverse Shot, and Mizna.

The post Uncrafted #2: An Interview with Sarah Aziza appeared first on Mizna.

As we celebrate a ceasefire and renew our commitment to fighting alongside our Gazan kin toward a free Palestine, Mizna shares a new poem by Randa Jarrar that insists on a future of Palestinian aliveness. This piece will be published in Mizna’s forthcoming Futurity-themed issue, edited by Barrak Alzaid and Aram Kavoossi.

A Palestinian Tomorrow

after Jotamario Arbeláez

For us, all of us, part of our resistance to the erasure of genocide is to talk about tomorrow in Gaza, to plan for the healing of the wounds of Gaza tomorrow. We will own tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a Palestinian day.

—Ghassan Abu-Sitta

not the day after the war but a day after
the day after the war,
—that day—
the men will sleep for the first time 
without fearing death or its thefts
and for days after that day they will rest
but only a little bit after everyone else 
especially the children 
and the days after the day after the day 
after the war because there is always a war 
the mothers will sleep for two weeks
in shifts
and after that they will start a school
but only after the day that they lie
on the bare earth to say,
I will hold you and only you
in my lungs and heart one day, 
but thankfully not today.

Because today there is still a war and 
maybe after the war there will be a day,
if after the war I have a drum or even a mouth 
to fix to say that we will dance 
and laugh so hard a day 
after the day after the war
and after that we will sleep some more
if after the war there is more 
than a day if after the war
there is a ghost
of a heart or of a lung
if after the war we meet
by each other’s graves 
after we crawl out
on that day, the day
after the day after the
day after the war

Randa Jarrar is a Palestinian artist, author, professor, and actor based in Los Angeles.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post A Palestinian Tomorrow—A New Poem by Randa Jarrar appeared first on Mizna.

“The reality that it is the refugees, who lost their homes and land in 1948 and have been living under difficult conditions for 76 years, are the ones targeted the most in this murderous war, and are thus paying the highest price of all. It is difficult to accept that it is mostly the refugees who are willing to pick up the weapons and fight a nuclear army with their own blood, whether it is the refugees in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank.”

—Noora Said

During a few visits to Jenin Refugee camp in the north of the West Bank, Yousef Hammad documents a reality of destruction and resilience through a series of black and white photos. Leaving the role of contrast mainly to the shadows, this low-contrast series captures the stillness of life in the camp, as in the rest of Palestine; Palestinians await a bloody and unbalanced battle to determine their future. The camp is filled with bullet holes, relatively vacant streets, and destroyed houses, instead of its own people, whose lives have become impossible with the constant military invasions, which have only escalated since mid-May 2021. These photographs were captured from late May to early June of 2024, just a few months before the Israeli occupation’s largest recent military operation titled “Operation Summer Camps,” but after the second largest military invasion which happened in July 2023, a few months before the most recent Zionist genocidal escalation in Gaza. 

Driving through Jenin city to reach the camp, the rubble of the destroyed George Habash roundabout lies in the middle of the street. Habash, referred to as “the wise,” was a prominent Palestinian leader who founded the leftist political party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He worked as its secretary general from its founding in 1967 until 2000. As a revolutionary leader, Israel intentionally targeted the urban symbol commemorating his memory and crucial role in the Palestinian liberation struggle. In the current manic psyche of the Israeli state, the army has been strategically and relentlessly targeting material monuments that symbolize resistance. There are many examples from Jenin camp, but some of the most noteworthy are the repeated destructions of the memorial that marks the exact spot where the martyred journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot and killed in cold blood by the Zionist army. They also destroyed the camp’s stone-made entrance, which is called “The Arch of Victory;” it displays the camp’s name and photos of martyrs, and a metal horse sculpture was built from the ruins of the ambulances that Israel bombed during its 2002 large offensive.

Jenin Refugee camp is referred to by Palestinians as the “castle of the revolutionaries” or the “capital of resistance” because it has historically been a birthplace of resistance fighters, and has always witnessed intense battles between its refugees and the invading occupation forces. Subsequently, the Israeli military refers to the camp as the “wasp’s nest” due to their obsessive panic over potential operations by a growing militant brigade. Since 2021, Zionist military invasions of Jenin refugee camp have become a near-weekly occurrence. In the year 2022, according to a Palestinian data center, Mo’ta, Jenin witnessed 97 confrontation incidents, 58 shooting incidents, and 41 stone-throwing incidents. According to research conducted by Abd Albasit Khalaf and published by the Palestine Studies Institute, Jenin city, including all of its villages and refugee camps, has been invaded more than 1500 times in 2023. In another documentation by the Anadolou Agency, from the 7th of October 2023 through the 21st of May 2024, Jenin has been invaded 72 times. Long before the most recent and brutal “Summer Camp” military operation, the resilient Jenin refugee camp has been witnessing recurrent military invasions since mid-2021.

The uprising in 2021, which some refer to as the “unity uprising” and others refer to as the “dignity uprising,” is crucial to the ongoing war in Palestine and the genocide in Gaza. The year 2021 witnessed a re-ignition of Palestinian armed resistance and revived a sense of Palestinian nationalism. This occurred gradually after a series of escalating Zionist attacks on Palestinians. First was the struggle of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood residents, whom Israel is still attempting to forcefully evict out of their homes in Jerusalem. Palestinians came together from every city to participate in solidarity demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah and protest the potential expulsion of these families. It is noteworthy here to mention that the photographer, Yousef, and his family are among the families living in one of the houses threatened with eviction. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli police and army met these peaceful protestors with brutal force to completely and immediately dismantle the demonstrations that were taking place daily.

Second, in May, during Ramadan of that year, the occupation invaded al-Aqsa mosque multiple times, attacking Palestinian worshippers there with tear gas bombs and batons and arresting more than 300 people. Both the al-Aqsa mosque invasion and the Sheikh Jarrah solidarity protests sparked a smaller uprising, especially amongst the youth of Jerusalem, historic Palestine, and refugee camps in the West Bank. The mobilization coming from Palestinians with Israeli citizenship presented an unhappy surprise to the occupation state. It completely infuriated the occupation government and a large-scale arrest campaign was conducted as a result. Following al-Aqsa raids and as a stand of solidarity, the resistance in Gaza began firing missiles at the occupation state, marking the start of the 2021 war on Gaza, which Palestinians call the “Sword of Jerusalem” battle. On a military level, supposedly, the Palestinians have won. However, the broken hearts and limbs of the orphans and the parents without their children resonate forever. Finally, in September of that year, six prisoners managed to heroically escape Jalbou, one of the most secure Israeli prisons, by digging a tunnel to freedom, though they were all later found and re-arrested.

These intensifying aggressions by Israel caused the birth of many combatant battalions to re-form, especially in refugee camps across the West Bank, synchronizing with the new generation’s moment and experience. Jenin is no exception. The Jenin battalion re-emerged, uniting combatants belonging to different political parties. The last three years have been tough on the seven-decade-old refugee camp and its inhabitants. With every weekly invasion, Palestinians, including children, are killed, as houses are burnt and damaged. Nonetheless, collective punishment is central to the strategic policy of the Zionist army. As their bulldozers destroy the infrastructure in nearly every invasion, they are cutting off people’s water pipes, electricity, and transportation, causing an obstruction of the refugees’ everyday life. In July 2023, Israel conducted an aggression against the camp, the largest since 2002. Today, many of the camp’s residents have temporarily left because a normal daily life has been rendered impossible. Many of them are sheltering with families and friends who live in the city of Jenin. 

Looking at the destruction and death in Jenin’s Camp, I feel something similar to the pain I feel while looking at the destruction and death in Gaza, the pain of knowing that those who are suffering now were always in vain, even before this renewed pain, knowing that the water pipe and electricity cable, were fixed 365 times last year, knowing that so many loved ones were lost already, and before even reconciling with that, a new loved one is lost. They were all young, so young and full of life.  

Through a broken brick wall, a segment of a sign of an UNRWA project reads “Jenin camp rehabilitation project.” The moment several Western countries unjustly cut off their funding from UNRWA, they cut it off from 5.6 million Palestinian refugees, including the roughly 2 million refugees in Gaza. That politically motivated decision, defying the orders of the International Court of Justice regarding the genocide case raised by South Africa, is an unnegotiable act of collective punishment that extends geographically to the remaining Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Indeed, this biased act that submits to an Israeli historical strategy to eliminate the Palestinian refugee and their right of return; one that has an immeasurable impact on Palestinian refugees everywhere, including refugees of Jenin camp that depend on the aid for their survival. 

It is difficult to accept today’s reality that keeps resurfacing amidst the genocide. The reality that it is the refugees, who lost their homes and land in 1948 and have been living under difficult conditions for 76 years, are the ones targeted the most in this murderous war, and are thus paying the highest price of all. It is difficult to accept that it is mostly the refugees who are willing to pick up the weapons and fight a nuclear army with their own blood, whether it is the refugees in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank. 

The slogan in all Palestinian refugee camps remains: “One day, we will return.”

Noora Said is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. Said is also a co-founder of an audiovisual production house, Sirdab Studio. With an MA in Artist Film and Moving Image from Goldsmiths College University of London, and a BA in Film and Media Arts and Sociology, Said’s work delves into contested spaces, identities, and narratives, through socio- and geo-political lenses.

Yousef Hammad is a professional and self-taught Director of Photography and filmmaker from Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem. With a distinct filming and visual identity, Hammad has worked with prominent Palestinian, Arab, and international directors, artists, and cultural and human rights organizations. Hammad is also the co-founder of an audiovisual production house, Sirdab studio.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post 1500 Invasions Later: Photos of Destruction and Resilience from the Jenin Refugee Camp appeared first on Mizna.

For the first time in recent memory, since Naomi Shihab Nye’s nomination for 19 Varieties of Gazelle in 2002, the 2024 National Book Award finalist list was graced with the presence of Palestinian American poetry: the books of Fady Joudah and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. Unsurprisingly, especially contextualized within a broader literary cultural sphere of Palestinians claiming that mere representational wins within the US can never be enough as the Zionist-American genocide spirals on, both Joudah and Tuffaha used their NBA platforms to call out American complacency and inspire further direct action to end this genocide and work toward a free Palestine. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, who was the winner of the National Book Award in Poetry for her collection Something about Living, began her acceptance speech by reorienting us in space-time, translating a good evening in the US into a good morning to “beloved Gaza,” translating an annual ceremony in ordinary time in the US into the 411th day of genocidal escalation for Gaza. 

The night before this historic win, at the finalists reading, Fady Joudah and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha were the only authors who used their platforms explicitly to bring Palestine into the space of the National Book Awards. There, Joudah performed a devastating new poem which was written  for the occasion, turning toward the complicit US audience and daring to ask, “Wouldn’t you agree that Palestine today is the empire of the human heart?” Tuffaha read excerpts from Something about Living that connect today’s moment to other events in our ongoing Nakba, such as the great March of Return and the Zionist invasion of Lebanon, during which June Jordan’s “Moving towards Home” was written. 

I sincerely hope that this NBA recognition inspires further critical attention to the lifelong bodies of work by these two brilliant poets. I am a longtime lover of Fady Joudah’s work, not merely for his capacity to expertly translate Palestinians living and dead, but also for his own poetry. The lyric momentum of the NBA-nominated collection […] is not a linear progression through our ongoing Nakba, but is instead a circular arc of returning. Traces and echoes from his earlier The Earth in the Attic and Alight appear recast through the Nakba of now—for it is and always was that same Nakba—in ways which ask the reader, if even implicitly, where have you been in all of this? Similarly, Something about Living, which was drafted and under contract before the Zionist entity’s 2023 genocidal escalations, embodies a line from Tuffaha’s Kaan and Her Sisters, “repetition is a Nakba,” as it creates un/knowable spectral rhymes between the current genocidal assault on journalists in Gaza and repetitions in recent history such as the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh (allah yerhamha) and the broader question of, per Edward Said, Palestinian permission to narrate. The nonmetaphorical nature of our permission to narrate can be seen in the details of the post-National Book Award Nomination trajectory for both poets, with NPR censoring words such as “genocide” in their coverage.

I dream of one day assigning these two books together to future poetry students as they provide different models of lyric form and relationality through Nakba. Whereas Joudah’s […] embodies a generative formlessness, with poems liberated from titles and pronouns, that flow like water, undermining violent Western desires for self-explanation and qualification in such a poetics, Tuffaha’s Something about Living builds on her last book’s project of radicalizing Western poetic forms through sonnet crowns that grow thorns, centos composed entirely of Darwish lines, and poems riffing on intellectuals such as Edward Said alongside poets such as Myung Mi Kim and June Jordan.

Although the Western lyric is, at its essence, understood to be defined as the genre which directs its mimesis toward the performance of the mind in solitary thought (see these useful theses from Wendy Lotterman), the lyric “I” of Joudah’s […] directs its mimesis toward becoming an anti/mirror of sorts, refracting and reflecting the many ways that Western living’s unspoken assumptions are predicated on the annihilation of Palestinians. To be a “you” here, is to be not merely an annihilation of the “I” but to be unable to imagine, let alone build, an otherwise. Never have I seen a book so unapologetically unafraid to love Palestinians on our own terms, however il/legible to this world, from the river to the sea. Similarly, Tuffaha’s book, which ends with the lines, “I have no idea what hope is, but our people have taught me a million ways to love,” lingers in the details of our land, our love, and the space between. Here, “love is paying attention,” and also “the father who plants an olive tree for every newborn,” and also “a story we never tire of telling.” Whereas Joudah’s lyric “I” made generative space of the unexplained and unqualified, Tuffaha’s makes generative space of every act of naming: every poem made me research histories of Palestine I had never known, through names that cut through every settler mythos like a vector I never knew I needed. Here, to read Tuffaha’s work is, itself, to return to Palestine, however im/possibly. 

To commemorate this historic moment for our community and hold its grief alongside anger at the failures of the US publishing industry, we are honored to publish these works, in hopes that they may inspire and embolden our community in this impossible hour. With this, echoing the words of Abdelrahman ElGendy, we offer our heartfelt congratulations to the National Book Foundation for being lucky enough to carry the names of Palestinian poets in a time like this.

—George Abraham, Mizna Executive Editor

Are you in solitude with market or in solidarity 
with spectacle? Which part of you 
isn’t a human shield? Whose body parts
are mine? Do you understand that I am 
a national liberation movement?

—Fady Joudah

What is upon us
will require mercy. Let the plural be
a return of us.

— Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Letter to June Jordan in September

by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

I cannot pass the anniversary of that first news event of childhood without returning to your poem. How from my house I watched. And watching, watched my grief-stricken parents unable to speak. How I leaned into the screen, the chords of the cries, searching for what was recognizable of fingers and thighs, of bracelets and moustaches. Macabre arrangement of bodies with names like our own. I cannot pass without your words. Something about witnessing twice removed. About distances magnified by the shift into language. Of dailyness and my own children’s vernacular and the machine. Grinding us all in its jaws. I met a girl from the camp at a reading in Beirut. She asked if we could talk about the life of poetry. Our families are hauled off to the world of the dead, and every day it is on screen. In Gaza, we’re watching Ferguson, and in Atlanta we’re watching Jerusalem watching Minneapolis watching. Their weapons and their training programs indistinguishable. The word almost flickers for a nanosecond. Here I note the shelf-life of self-censorship, legacy of our era. Some days poems are scrawled on pieces of cardboard and carried on our shoulders at the protest like martyrs. Here I should say something about hope. Here I should say something about living.

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals

by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

At the border, a flock of journalists.
A sacrifice of tires burned behind us.
Beneath the picnic tents, a funeral of families.
What else will we become in Gaza if we gather,
if we carry our voices to the razored edge?
We were met by a gallop of prayers,
clamoring recitatives puncturing the shroud
of humid air. We were met by a delirium

of greetings, peace-be-upon-us surreal
between embraces, the horizon locked
and loaded. What is upon us
will require mercy. Let the plural be
a return of us. A carnage of blessings—
bodies freed from broken promises,
from the incumbrances of waiting.

Inimitable

by Fady Joudah

Is this the banality of evil reconvened?
Are you gen G?
Did you vote to make it great again 
or was genocide never genocide to you?
Is there a light inside you dying 
to go out? Who will you mine 
to keep your night bright? How are you
always unprecedented 
even as echo? Am I, a Palestinian, ever not 
an analogy whose progenitor you are? What  
makes your common decency heroic?
Why are you so often the baby 
and I’m the bathwater? 
Will you judge me if I reply Allahu akbar?
And when you forever hold my peace at your altar
is it with or without Salamu alaikum? 
Or, if I say Free, free, will you fill in the blank 
from the river to the sea? 
What do you remember
of Iraqi memory? What if Palestinians 
love their freedom more
than you love their unfreedom?
Did you know this about the way you love?
Did you convert my ashes to your gold dust?
“Horror beyond the reach of psychology,”
have you heard this expression before? 
Are you in solitude with market or in solidarity 
with spectacle? Which part of you 
isn’t a human shield? Whose body parts
are mine? Do you understand that I am 
a national liberation movement? 
Can we hear it for tiny Lebanon 
fighting off the mother of all crimes 
as the laws that made you king said 
one should? Have you been to Yemen 
or just bombed it? How full of emissions 
are you about your emissions?
When did you first export your wisdom
to those you destroy? 
Do you really think I’ll forgive you 
without you asking for forgiveness?
Why should you wait 
until asking is synonymous with your defeat?
Wasn’t tragedy always there 
before you sequenced it?
Is your methylated double helix 
an individual or a corporation? 
For example, when I say, “Horror 
beyond the reach of genetics,”
will you give me or yourself a standing ovation? 
Does Gaza come to mind? 
Wouldn’t you agree 
that Palestine today
is the empire of the human heart?
Have you thanked me or are you worried 
I’ll charge you interest?
What about Sudan? Congo? 
What have you done to the earth?
When were you in love last?
Was it any good?
What have you done to the remainder of my life?
Has it occurred to you 
that you are a childhood robber?
Do you remember that game? 
Was it ever a game? 

Fady Joudah is the author of […] and six other collections of poems. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received the Jackson Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of Water & Salt which won the 2018 Washington State Book Award; Kaan and Her Sisters, a finalist for the Firecracker Award; and Something about Living, winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry and the National Book Awards 2024 for Poetry. Her writing has been published in journals including the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, Poets.org, Protean Magazine, and Prairie Schooner, and in anthologies including The Long Devotion and We Call to the Eye & the Night. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series Poems from Palestine at The Baffler. She is currently curating a series on Palestinian writers for Words Without Borders entitled Against Silence.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post Honoring Palestinian Poets in a Time of Genocide: Poems from National Book Award Winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha + Finalist Fady Joudah appeared first on Mizna.

They say the father refused
to be a collaborator. And the mother,
a physician, a specific kind of witness,
had looked at her killers the wrong way.

— Fady Joudah

How Is Your Devastation Today?

Did a particular morning birdsong visit it?
Did innocent grumbling
about a meaningless desire
that has become the meaning of all desire
from one of your kids distract you from it?
Is your espresso machine working fine?
Did a photo or video
of a father sculpting
the rigor mortis of his murdered twins
and their mother sink you?
They say some NGO had helped
throughout her high risk
pregnancy during a war of extermination.
They say the killers had been following
her progress to eliminate her
ninety six hours after C section,
on the day the birth certificates were issued,
a day after the twins were given names.
They say the father refused
to be a collaborator. And the mother,
a physician, a specific kind of witness,
had looked at her killers the wrong way.
She thought they were shit.
They say she hails from my hometown
as does her mother who was also killed.
They say the twins were fraternal.
And the building had sixteen apartments
but only theirs on the top floor was hit.
They say the killers are unconcerned
with your forensic evidence
since they made partner in the archive.
And when my mind drifts
to the Burghers of Calais, they say,
at least those had their lives spared
after guns to their heads
fired blanks. Which changes nothing
of what has become of their faces.

Fady Joudah is the author of […] and six other collections of poems. He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received the Jackson Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arab American Book Award. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post How Is Your Devastation Today? appeared first on Mizna.