We Love What We Have

We love what we have, no matter how little,
because if we don’t, everything will be gone. If we don’t
we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.
What’s here is something that we are still
building. It’s something we cannot yet see,
because we are part
of it.
Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,
we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce
wind, the trees that will give shade
to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

--- Mosab Abu Toha

A Country Called Song

I lived in a country called Song:
Countless singing women made me
a citizen,
and musicians from the four corners
composed cities for me with mornings and nights,
and I roamed through my country
like a man roams through the world.

My country is a song,
and as soon as it ends, I go back
to being a refugee

--- Najwan Darwish, 

Tr. by Kareem J. Abu-Zeid

I grant you refuge

1.
I grant you refuge
in invocation and prayer.
I bless the neighborhood and the minaret
to guard them
from the rocket

from the moment
it is a general’s command
until it becomes
a raid.

I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones who
change the rocket’s course
before it lands
with their smiles.

2.
I grant you and the little ones refuge,
the little ones now asleep like chicks in a nest.

They don’t walk in their sleep toward dreams.
They know death lurks outside the house.

Their mothers’ tears are now doves
following them, trailing behind
every coffin.

3.
I grant the father refuge,
the little ones’ father who holds the house upright
when it tilts after the bombs.
He implores the moment of death:
“Have mercy. Spare me a little while.
For their sake, I’ve learned to love my life.
Grant them a death
as beautiful as they are.”

4.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and death,
refuge in the glory of our siege,
here in the belly of the whale.

Our streets exalt God with every bomb.
They pray for the mosques and the houses.
And every time the bombing begins in the North,
our supplications rise in the South.

5.
I grant you refuge
from hurt and suffering.

With words of sacred scripture
I shield the oranges from the sting of phosphorous
and the shades of cloud from the smog.

I grant you refuge in knowing
that the dust will clear,
and they who fell in love and died together
will one day laugh.

---  Hiba Abu Nada

(trans. Huda Fakhreddine)

Source: Protean Magazine

INTERPRETATIONS

A poet sits in a coffee shop, writing.
The old lady
thinks he is writing a letter to his mother,
the young woman
thinks he is writing a letter to his girlfriend,
the child
thinks he is drawing,
the businessman
thinks he is considering a deal,
the tourist
thinks he is writing a postcard,
the employee
thinks he is calculating his debts.
The secret policeman
walks, slowly, towards him.

- Mourid Barghouti

Oh rascal children of gaza

Oh rascal children of gaza,
You who constantly disturbed me 

with your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning 

with rush and chaos,
You who broke my vase

and stole the lonely flower on my balcony.
Come back –
and scream as you want and break all the vases.
Steal all the flowers,
Come back,
Just come back…

--- Khaled Juma

Leaving Childhood Behind

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag.

I left without looking at the clock

I forget whether it was noon or evening.

Our horse spent the night alone,

no water, no grains for dinner. 

It must have thought we'd left to cook a meal

for late guests or to 

for late guests or make a cake
for my sister's tenth birthday.

I walked with my sister towards our road with no end point.
We sang a birthday song.
The hovering warplanes echoed across the heaven.

My tired parents strolled behind,
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable.

We arrived at a rescue station.
News of ceaseless strikes roared on the radio.
I hated death, but I hated life, too,
when we had to walk to our prolonged death,
reciting our never-ending ode.

- Mosab Abu Toha

“Think of Others”

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon’s food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
(those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”).

--- Mahmoud Darwish

We deserve a better death.

We deserve a better death.
Our bodies are disfigured and twisted,
embroidered with bullets and shrapnel.
Our names are pronounced incorrectly
on the radio and TV
Our photos, plastered onto the walls of our buildings,
fade and grow pale.
The inscriptions on our gravestones disappear,
covered in the feces of birds and reptiles.
No one waters the trees that give shade
to our graves.
The blazing sun has overwhelmed
our rotting bodies.

---Mosab Abu Toha

You and I

You’re beautiful like a liberated homeland

I’m exhausted like a colonized one.

You’re sad as a forsaken person, fighting on

I’m agitated as a war near at hand.

You’re desired like the end of a raid

I’m terrified as if I’m searching the debris.

You’re brave like a trainee pilot

I’m as proud as his grandmother may be.

You’re anxious like a patient’s dad,

I’m as calm as his nurse.

You’re as sweet as dew

And to grow, I need you.

We’re both as wild as vengeance

We’re both as gentle as forgiveness.

You’re strong like the court’s pillars

I’m bewildered like I’ve endured prejudice.

And whenever we meet

We talk, without pause, like two lawyers

Defending

The world…


--- Mourid Barghouti (Translator: Dina Al-Mahdy)

Without Mercy

There is a sweet music,
but its sweetness fails to console you.
This is what the days have taught you:
in every long war
there is a soldier, with a distracted face and ordinary teeth,
who sits outside his tent
holding his bright-sounding harmonica
which he has carefully protected from the dust and blood,
and like a bird
uninvolved in the conflict,
he sings to himself
a love song
that does not lie.

For a moment,
he feels embarrassed at what the moonlight might think:
what’s the use of a harmonica in hell?

A shadow approaches,
then more shadows.
His fellow soldiers, one after the other,
join him in his song.
The singer takes the whole regiment with him
to Romeo’s balcony,
and from there,
without thinking,
without mercy,
without doubt,
they will resume the killing!

--- Mourid Barghouti (translation: Radwa Ashour)

Two Poems by Mourid Barghouti

PRISON

Man said:
blessed are the birds in their cages
for they, at least,
know the limits
of their prisons.

SILENCE

Silence said:
truth needs no eloquence,
After the death of the horseman,
the homeward-bound horse
says everything
without saying anything.

--- Mourid Barghouti (translated by Radwa Ashour)

“In Jerusalem”

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.

I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly

then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.

I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:

Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die.

--- Mahmoud Darwish

“To Our Land”

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds

To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence

To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon ... and a hidden chasm

To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books ... and an identity wound

To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past

To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it ...

As for us, inside,
we suffocate more

---Mahmoud Darwish

Mimesis

My daughter
wouldn't hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord

If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking

She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?

--- Fady Joudah

The Impossible

It is much easier for you
To push an elephant through a needle’s eye,
Catch fried fish in galaxy,
Blow out the sun,
Imprison the wind,
Or make a crocodile speak,
Than to destroy by persecution
The shimmering glow of a belief
Or check our march
Towards our cause
One single step…

---Tawfiq Zayyad (1929-1994)

Ever Alive

My beloved homeland
No matter how long the millstone
Of pain and agony churns you
In the wilderness of tyranny,
They will never be able
To pluck your eyes
Or kill your hopes and dreams
Or crucify your will to rise
Or steel the smiles of our children
Or destroy and burn,
Because out from our deep sorrows,
Out from the freshness of our spilled blood
Out from the quivering of life and death
Life will be reborn in you again………

---Fadwa Tuqan

शब्द

मेरे शब्द जब गेहूँ थे
मैं था धरती.
मेरे शब्द जब रोष थे
मैं था तूफ़ान.
मेरे शब्द जब चट्टान थे
मैं था नदी.
जब मेरे शब्द बन गए शहद
मक्खियों ने मेरे होंठ ढँक लिए.

---महमूद दरवेश
अंग्रेज़ी से हिन्दी अनुवाद - अपूर्वानंद

Running Orders

They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think "Do I know any Davids in Gaza?"
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

--- Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Freedom

The Arab Revolt 2011

The story begins
with a song—
it’s stubborn,
breaks air
into history;
for a minute
it’s quiet
to allow everyone in,
and then it raises
to celebrate voices,
clears its throat,
says:
We will bury the smoke that blinds us,
plant our soul on every page,
we will divide our pain into towers
and fill our hands with rain,
we will arrive on time every day
to chase you away,
we will no longer be afraid
of what makes us shiver under the sun,
we will leave our names in every teahouse,
our messages at the bottom of every cup.

Light will no longer be illegal
nor will hope—
even the guards will count
the scars on their tongue
and prepare to heal,
even the children will keep
homeland in the mirror
and prepare to see,
even the women will turn
the fire inside the door
off, and prepare to live.

We will never whisper again.
There is evidence, there is evidence,
that now we can hear
the sounds that lift freedom
across a continent,
and say, Salaam to you,
welcome to my country.

--- Nathalie Handal (May 2011)

Listen to Nathalie Handal read "Freedom"

With the Land

The land comes near me
drinks from me
leaves its orchards with me
to become a beautiful weapon
defending me

Even when I sleep
the land comes near me
in my dream.
I smuggle its wild thyme
between exiles
I sing its stones
I will even sweat blood
from my veins
to drink its news
so the land comes near me
leaves a stone of love with me
to defend it
and defend me

When I repay it
I will embrace it a thousand times
I will worship it a thousand times
I will celebrate its wedding on my forehead
on the rubble of exiles
and the ruins of prisons

I will drink from it
It will drink from me
So that the Galilee would remain
beauty, struggle, and love
defending it
defending me

I see the land;
a morning that will come
---Rashid Hussein
* Translated by Sinan Antoon. The poem appear in Al-A`mal al-Shi`riyya (al-Taybe: Markaz Ihya’ al-Turath al-`Arabi, 1990)