I won’t be the same
might become a closet or a bed
a gas canister, a rug
a library
a giant lap, one long embrace.
When the war parts
I won’t find a grave to visit
for the road itself will be the graveyard
There will be no flowers to lay
as they too will have died.
No palms on graves, and no graves either.
I will stumble on a head here, a foot there, a friend’s face
on the ground, his bag carrying crumbs for the little ones.
Scattered eyes, I’ll see them everywhere
and a heart that has gotten lost, panting
will settle on my shoulder
and I´ll walk it through the rubble
this broken stone with which we were killed.
No history book said how
to prepare for the long war
no class taught to pitch a tent
on the side of the road
no math teacher said that the corner
fits ten people
no religion class revealed:
children also die
also rise
as a butterfly, a bird, a star.
I hated chalk once
and the morning lineup too
but loved to pause in an opening line
stroll through the Eastern line
lose myself in the city perched on twin trees
But I am outside any city I know
outside all place and ejected from time
to the dimension of Gaza, to ask
what has happened what is happening
What is the name of our street?
Have any of you seen our street, our house?
Do the neighborhoods still know each other?
Can the city recognize us?
Can my mother?
Is the sea counting the victims?
Does the sun rise to shield the bodies in the streets?
Can the merchants afford heaven?
Will these bodies sprout tall buildings that bear their names?
Their names, will we know them all?
My aunts, will they fathom the catastrophe?
The house, was it really our house?
Does the soldier sleep a night?
My throat is swollen
from words
without remedy
but bayt: this line, home.
Translator’s note: This poem was first published in Arabic on February 8, 2024 on Heba Al-Agha’s Telegram channel and later the same day on the website gazastory.com: https://gazastory.com/archives/5335. Since October 22, 2023, the author has been sharing her diary from Gaza through these two channels. The entries include poetry, freeform narration, descriptions, and visuals, as she is forced to move with her children from her home in Khan Younis to Rafah, where this poem was written. Her work has not been translated to English, except for a short text that will appear in a forthcoming issue of ArabLit Quarterly(translated also by Julia Choucair Vizoso). Heba and Julia have been communicating through WhatsApp, through a family member of Heba, intermittently, whenever communication is possible.
Heba Al-Agha is a mother, amateur writer, and creative writing educator at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Gaza City. She does not belong to any writers’ unions and has not published any literary books, but works with an army of young writers training them in freedom and the power of writing. She writes at t.me/hebalaghatalkwarandhttps://gazastory.com/archives/author/hebaaga.
Julia Choucair Vizoso is an independent scholar and seasonal translator. She hopes Heba Al-Agha’s words move you to refuse and resist the Israel-US genocide of the Palestinian people and destruction of Lebanon, wherever and however you can.
Simply beautiful and mature more than should be, truth and nothing but truth…