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Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
Winner of the 2022 Palestine Book Awards Creative Award
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
These poems emerge directly from the experience of growing up and living one’s entire life in Gaza, making a life for one’s family and raising a family in constant lockdown, and often under direct attack.
In this poetry debut, conceived during the Israeli bombing campaign of May 2021, Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a profoundly universal humanity.
In direct, vivid language, Abu Toha tells of being wounded by shrapnel at the age of 16 and, a few years later, watching his home and his university get hit by IDF warplanes in a bombing campaign that killed two of his closest friends. These poems are filled with rubble and the ever-present menace of surveillance drones policing a people unwelcome in their own land, and they are also suffused with the smell of tea, roses in bloom, and the view of the sea at sunset. Children are born, families continue traditions, students attend university, and libraries rise from the ruins as Palestinians go on about their lives, creating beauty and finding new ways to survive.
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
These poems emerge directly from the experience of growing up and living one’s entire life in Gaza, making a life for one’s family and raising a family in constant lockdown, and often under direct attack.
In this poetry debut, conceived during the Israeli bombing campaign of May 2021, Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a profoundly universal humanity.
In direct, vivid language, Abu Toha tells of being wounded by shrapnel at the age of 16 and, a few years later, watching his home and his university get hit by IDF warplanes in a bombing campaign that killed two of his closest friends. These poems are filled with rubble and the ever-present menace of surveillance drones policing a people unwelcome in their own land, and they are also suffused with the smell of tea, roses in bloom, and the view of the sea at sunset. Children are born, families continue traditions, students attend university, and libraries rise from the ruins as Palestinians go on about their lives, creating beauty and finding new ways to survive.
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 2022
About the author
Mosab Abu Toha
10 books328 followersMosab Abu Toha is the winner of a Palestine Book Award, an American Book Award, Walcott Poetry Prize, and also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
He is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. It won a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily, among others.
He is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. It won a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry.
In 2019-2020, Abu Toha was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily, among others.
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January 27, 2024It doesn't feel right to rate a book like this, so instead I'll share quotes I highlighted:
Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards. A country that exists only in my mind. Its flag has no room to fly freely, but there is space on the coffins of my countrymen.
My son's name is Yazzan. He was born in 2015, or a year after the 2014 war. This is how we date things. Once he saw a swarm of clouds. He shouted, "Dad, some bombs. Watch out!" He thought the clouds were bomb smoke. Even nature confuses us.
Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing.
Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards. A country that exists only in my mind. Its flag has no room to fly freely, but there is space on the coffins of my countrymen.
My son's name is Yazzan. He was born in 2015, or a year after the 2014 war. This is how we date things. Once he saw a swarm of clouds. He shouted, "Dad, some bombs. Watch out!" He thought the clouds were bomb smoke. Even nature confuses us.
Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing.
January 29, 2024
Across a lifetime of bombings and violence, yet through a prose of beauty and grace, Mosab Abu Toha examines life in Palestine in his debut collection Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. These poems chronicle the destruction of his country, the mass murdering of innocents, and hones in on the omnipresent fears of bombings and soldier-fire amidst a landscape that still arrives in striking beauty in contrast to smoldering wreckage around it. Abu Toha also provides an extraordinary interview after the poems which is worth picking the book up even if just for that, where he discusses his life, art and hopes. There is a resiliency that keeps this harrowing collection afloat, and for all the ways it continuously makes us confront the devastation and violence, it also champions the spirit of survival in the Palestinian people. ‘Don’t ever be surprised / to see a rose shoulder up / among the ruins of the house: / This is how we survived,’ he writes, and that is precisely how this collection feels: a brilliant rose rising up amongst the violence, reminding us to listen, to not turn away and to cherish human life.
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.
Following in the footsteps of Mahmoud Darwish, the “national poet” of Palestine and a major influence on Abu Toha, this collection makes Palestine a land of poetry above all things. He writes in a direct and accessible style bursting forth with arresting imagery and playful language, using his pen to transform indelible tragedies into monuments of prose for all of us to witness and learn from them. His poetry primarily is written in a collective consciousness, using we or us instead of I in many of the poems, creating a landscape of stories. ‘Though we all have very different stories, as Palestineans our stories are the same in many ways,’ he says in the interview at the end of the collection:
Contradictions are a playful aspect of his poetry, and this statement is reminiscent of the conclusion of his poem My City After What Happened Some Time Ago where a people who are already ‘living in a grave’ have a will to survive that cannot be killed and the sound of bombs can wake the dead:
In Gaze, some of us cannot completely die.
every time a bomb falls, every time shrapnel hits our graves,
every time the rubble piles up on our heads,
We are awakened from our temporary death.
Yet still ‘the fear of dying before living / haunts us while we are still / in our mother’s wombs.’ Abu Toha never lets us go long without reminding us how often it is the children who are killed in the blasts, children that don’t know there is any other life other than living between bombardments. ‘I never realized I was born in a refugee camp because that was just my world,’ he tells us, ‘A fish doesn’t ask its mother why a shark is running after them.’ We are reminded that in war it is the innocent who do the most of the suffering. In The Wound, he recalls seeing the limbless body of a child pulled from a home and writes ‘The houses were not Hamas / The kids were not Hamas / Their clothes and toys were not Hamas / the neighborhood was not Hamas,’ and yet ‘the one who ordered the killing / the one who pressed the button thought / only of Hamas.’
He tells us these stories because those who do not tell of the horrors they witness find them returning forver as nightmares. ‘One function of poetry is to heal the wounds,’ he says, and he does so in a way that will certainly stick with you always. Remembering is important, especially when not only are people are being erased by genocide, but also their memory is being erased politically. Even their own country is denied existing by others, such as when he mentions his application for his US Visa claims his homeland doesn’t exist. ‘Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets,’ he writes. In this way his poems often hold space for what is absent, be it places or people: ‘a child who was shot by an Israeli sniper / or killed during an air raid en route to school. / Her picture stares at the blackboard / while the air sits in her chair.’ As William Hazlitt said ‘Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life,’ and Abu Toha keeps that memory alive.
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.
There is still a playfulness to these poems despite all the sadness. ‘Come on, it’s my first time being wounded,’ he quips in The Wound, less bravado and more a jab at the absurdity of bravado and war. He writes of F-16s massacring an innocent neighborhood writing ‘They descended from the inferno. Dante hadn’t mentioned them,’ and in another poem talks about pilots adding rubble after a bombing ‘to increase the pilot’s salary’ because ‘on the scale, stones and rebars are heavier / than souls.’ Not that he makes a laughing matter of anything, but what else can one do but laugh in the face of absurdity in death when the alternative is to hear ‘silent walls / and people sobbing / without sound.’
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is a collection that will certainly haunt you, but you will be better for it. Abu Toha writes many poems to or in the vein of his predecessors, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, and even Audre Lorde, and chronicles the horrors wrought on Gaza to ensure they are remembered and as a method of processing. This is a wonderful little collection, complete with photographs from the author and an interview, and while it will break your heart it will still cast a beautiful glow all the same.
5/5
‘The words fly out.
The poem is free.’
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.
Following in the footsteps of Mahmoud Darwish, the “national poet” of Palestine and a major influence on Abu Toha, this collection makes Palestine a land of poetry above all things. He writes in a direct and accessible style bursting forth with arresting imagery and playful language, using his pen to transform indelible tragedies into monuments of prose for all of us to witness and learn from them. His poetry primarily is written in a collective consciousness, using we or us instead of I in many of the poems, creating a landscape of stories. ‘Though we all have very different stories, as Palestineans our stories are the same in many ways,’ he says in the interview at the end of the collection:
’I think it’s like we are living in a grave: we are not dead, we are going about our daily business, but in a grave. We are living in place of a dead person. I know that’s contradictory.’
Contradictions are a playful aspect of his poetry, and this statement is reminiscent of the conclusion of his poem My City After What Happened Some Time Ago where a people who are already ‘living in a grave’ have a will to survive that cannot be killed and the sound of bombs can wake the dead:
In Gaze, some of us cannot completely die.
every time a bomb falls, every time shrapnel hits our graves,
every time the rubble piles up on our heads,
We are awakened from our temporary death.
Yet still ‘the fear of dying before living / haunts us while we are still / in our mother’s wombs.’ Abu Toha never lets us go long without reminding us how often it is the children who are killed in the blasts, children that don’t know there is any other life other than living between bombardments. ‘I never realized I was born in a refugee camp because that was just my world,’ he tells us, ‘A fish doesn’t ask its mother why a shark is running after them.’ We are reminded that in war it is the innocent who do the most of the suffering. In The Wound, he recalls seeing the limbless body of a child pulled from a home and writes ‘The houses were not Hamas / The kids were not Hamas / Their clothes and toys were not Hamas / the neighborhood was not Hamas,’ and yet ‘the one who ordered the killing / the one who pressed the button thought / only of Hamas.’
He tells us these stories because those who do not tell of the horrors they witness find them returning forver as nightmares. ‘One function of poetry is to heal the wounds,’ he says, and he does so in a way that will certainly stick with you always. Remembering is important, especially when not only are people are being erased by genocide, but also their memory is being erased politically. Even their own country is denied existing by others, such as when he mentions his application for his US Visa claims his homeland doesn’t exist. ‘Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets,’ he writes. In this way his poems often hold space for what is absent, be it places or people: ‘a child who was shot by an Israeli sniper / or killed during an air raid en route to school. / Her picture stares at the blackboard / while the air sits in her chair.’ As William Hazlitt said ‘Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life,’ and Abu Toha keeps that memory alive.
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.
There is still a playfulness to these poems despite all the sadness. ‘Come on, it’s my first time being wounded,’ he quips in The Wound, less bravado and more a jab at the absurdity of bravado and war. He writes of F-16s massacring an innocent neighborhood writing ‘They descended from the inferno. Dante hadn’t mentioned them,’ and in another poem talks about pilots adding rubble after a bombing ‘to increase the pilot’s salary’ because ‘on the scale, stones and rebars are heavier / than souls.’ Not that he makes a laughing matter of anything, but what else can one do but laugh in the face of absurdity in death when the alternative is to hear ‘silent walls / and people sobbing / without sound.’
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is a collection that will certainly haunt you, but you will be better for it. Abu Toha writes many poems to or in the vein of his predecessors, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said, and even Audre Lorde, and chronicles the horrors wrought on Gaza to ensure they are remembered and as a method of processing. This is a wonderful little collection, complete with photographs from the author and an interview, and while it will break your heart it will still cast a beautiful glow all the same.
5/5
‘The words fly out.
The poem is free.’
March 24, 2024
heartrending, horrifying, at times tender and so observant it brought tears to my eyes, here are just a fraction of the most hard-hitting excerpts from this collection:
—
—
—
—
In Gaza you don’t know what you’re guilty of. It feels like living in a Kafka novel.
—
My son’s name is Yazzan. He was born in 2015, or a year after the 2014 war. This is how we date things. Once he saw a swarm of clouds. He shouted, “Dad, some bombs! Watch out!” He thought the clouds were bomb smoke. Even nature confuses us.
—
The scent of coffee still hangs in the air. But where is the kitchen?
—
The Israelis had used a nail bomb in the attack. / As a child, I never knew nails could kill people. / I thought they were only used in construction. / I was fooled.
—
Why is it when I dream of Palestine, / that I see it in black and white?
July 8, 2022
"Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards." With stark honesty, Mosab Abu Toha shares stories of death and destruction inflicted on him and his family, who were first evicted from their land as happened to many Palestinians, and then indiscriminately bombarded ever after by the right-wing Israeli decision-makers. There is a death and a victim in most poems here, and these are only a few victims among the thousands. A must read.
December 5, 2023
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR
For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD
I When you open my ear, touch it gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps me recover equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.
You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.
When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order, as you would do with the books on your shelf.
II
The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my tiny ear canal of them all.
Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance,
with yours,
my doctor, day and night.
For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD
I When you open my ear, touch it gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps me recover equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.
You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.
When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order, as you would do with the books on your shelf.
II
The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my tiny ear canal of them all.
Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance,
with yours,
my doctor, day and night.
October 11, 2023
Definitely a must-read if you're interested in works by Palestinian writers about the Gazan experience, especially with the recent decolonization efforts on the part of Palestine. This is quick, accessible, and infused with emotion.
March 9, 2024
These poems are beautiful and is so important, that need to be read now more than ever. Would highly recommend.
Free Palestine until Palestine is free.
Review written on 10th March, 2024
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DISCLAIMER-All opinions on books I’ve read and reviewed are my own, and are with no intention to offend anyone. If you feel offended by my reviews, let me know how I can fix it.
How I Rate-
1 star- Hardly liked anything/was disappointed
2 star- Had potential but did not deliver/was disappointed
3 stars- Was ok but could have been better/was average/Enjoyed a lot but something was missing
4 stars- Loved a lot but something was missing
5 stars- Loved it/new favourite
Free Palestine until Palestine is free.
Review written on 10th March, 2024
Storygraph. Spotify. Youtube. Pinterest. Twitter. Instagram. Linktree.
DISCLAIMER-All opinions on books I’ve read and reviewed are my own, and are with no intention to offend anyone. If you feel offended by my reviews, let me know how I can fix it.
How I Rate-
1 star- Hardly liked anything/was disappointed
2 star- Had potential but did not deliver/was disappointed
3 stars- Was ok but could have been better/was average/Enjoyed a lot but something was missing
4 stars- Loved a lot but something was missing
5 stars- Loved it/new favourite
April 17, 2022
Your words touched my heart and soul. As a palestinian refugee myself, I can identify with the stories told in these poems. I couldn’t have imagined the atrocities of this war could have been described so beautifully. I await desperately for the next book!
December 8, 2023
“Why is it when I dream of Palestine,
that I see it in black and white?”
that I see it in black and white?”
Read
January 24, 2024This is a hard one to review. I had to read the poems in small doses because it was utterly emotionally devastating, the interview part at the end was really interesting too (although also often quite heartbreaking). It's not just heartbreak though, there's beauty in there too, such as when Abu Toha speaks about how different the meaning of Sha'ir (poet) is in Arabic.
This isn't strictly speaking a memoir, but I honestly don't feel like it's the kind of book I can put a star rating on.
This isn't strictly speaking a memoir, but I honestly don't feel like it's the kind of book I can put a star rating on.
Read
February 2, 2022In his searing and unflinching debut, Mosab Abu Toha writes of his beloved Gaza and the torments it continues to endure. These poems speak with palpable urgency. Nevertheless underneath the terror, there’s a lingering sense of optimism and survival: “Through it all, the strawberries have never stopped growing.”
October 16, 2022
Mosab Abu Toha’s poetry follows the steps of others before him, such as Mahmoud Darwish and the work of Said. His poems speak for the ones who are no longer here and for the ones who are still part of the genocidal Sionist crimes against Palestine. When he speaks for himself he does it as a we, as us, the other, the one who belongs to an in between place.
April 14, 2023
There is a point in this collection where you will feel inundated with the same themes and images--drones and F-16s interrupting briefs moments of solace--again and again and again, taking over even the briefest of poems. Then you will realize that is the point, and that is what makes this collection masterful: its unflinching repetition of horror made mundane, of monstrosity turned typical, of the feeling of perpetual estrangement from one's ancestry, one's rightful land, one's own organs, one's own death. From the river to the sea, Palestine should belong to Palestinians: may we all work toward ending the apartheid state.
May 18, 2022
What a beautiful collection of poems and short stories written by a talented young gazan Mosab M. Abu-Toha . Although written in a language that is so easy to read, but the reality of these stories is so hard to understand and digest. How life can be so fragile living in such difficult and unfair circumstances.
Mosab is the founder of Edward Saeed library in Gaza.
Mosab is the founder of Edward Saeed library in Gaza.
January 26, 2024
I was almost finished reading Mosab Abu Toha's impactful book of poetry November 2023 when in disbelief and dismay, read about his unlawful arrest at an Israeli checkpoint as he was trying to leave Gaza with his family. The family's passports and documents were confiscated, he was beaten while in jail and only released under international pressure. Another Palestinian author, Dr Refaat Alareer, has been killed under Israeli's relentless bombing of Gaza, while I was in the middle of reading the anthology edited by him - Gaza Unsilenced.
This genocide is happening before our very eyes. As of today, the death toll is above 25,000 with the majority women and children. There are still others unaccounted for buried under rubble. Famine, cold, preventable diseases and repeated displacement not to mention ongoing bombardment and now straight-up shootings by Israeli soldiers are a lethal threat to the Palestinian survivors.
These Gaza poems allow a vulnerable window glimpse into the experience of living under continuous Israeli control and siege prior to this current massacre. The afterword interview with Abu Toha is also illuminating.
Content Warnings: Death, Colonisation, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Violence, War, Grief, Genocide, Hate crime, Police brutality
I join countless others around the world raising our voices: Ceasefire! Stop impeding delivery of humanitarian aid.
Free 🇵🇸
This genocide is happening before our very eyes. As of today, the death toll is above 25,000 with the majority women and children. There are still others unaccounted for buried under rubble. Famine, cold, preventable diseases and repeated displacement not to mention ongoing bombardment and now straight-up shootings by Israeli soldiers are a lethal threat to the Palestinian survivors.
These Gaza poems allow a vulnerable window glimpse into the experience of living under continuous Israeli control and siege prior to this current massacre. The afterword interview with Abu Toha is also illuminating.
Content Warnings: Death, Colonisation, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Violence, War, Grief, Genocide, Hate crime, Police brutality
I join countless others around the world raising our voices: Ceasefire! Stop impeding delivery of humanitarian aid.
Free 🇵🇸
Read
February 19, 2024𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱
𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗽
𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲:
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱.
- A ROSE SHOULDERS UP
~
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘔��𝘺 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘺 𝘌𝘢𝘳 is the epitome and affirmation of the saying, “Poetry is the mirror of life.” However, life, as depicted in these poems, is not one that is marked by normalcy. In fact, for the last 76 years since the Nakba, Palestinians have been subject to daily Israeli settler violence, dispossession, and displacement. The Nakba is still happening. It is commonplace, but it is absolutely not normal. In his debut poetry collection, Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha put his and Gazans’ lived experiences into words. Since the start of the Israeli blockade in 2006 following Hamas’ victory in the 2006 election and Israeli’s disengagement from Gaza, the Zionist entity has on numerous occasions revealed itself as a cruel, monstrous killing machine that tests weapons on Gazans, with the ongoing siege and genocide being the most outrageous and catastrophic of all. Houses and buildings destroyed lives lost families friends lovers torn apart ruins and graves mushroomed.
In Mosab Abu Toha’s poems, we hear voices of Gazans, from their doubts about possibilities and frustration to their resistance and yearning for life in the midst of hardship and desolation. His poems, characterized by strikingly heartbreaking imagery, serve to inform the world and wake us all up. Together they are more than the writing of suffering. The collection also explores the relationship between Gazans and their land, and how resistance is always possible because the land remembers its people (‘A Litany for “One Land”’); the affirmation of one’s identity and existence in the face of all-time severance (‘Palestinian Sonnet’); the necessity to lament for and remember those who are long gone and have left behind a precious well of literary legacy (‘To Mahmoud Darwish’, ‘To Ghassan Kanafani’, and ‘Displaced’).
Essentially, 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘺 𝘌𝘢𝘳 is a literary endeavor to illustrate and shed light on the liminality of Gazans from having lived in the never-ending Israeli siege and military aggression. Can we even call it beautiful? Perhaps so. Because it is an unapologetic blend of the personal and the political. Because it is timely. Because it is real. It is what is happening in Gaza.
𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗽
𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲:
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱.
- A ROSE SHOULDERS UP
~
𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘔��𝘺 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘺 𝘌𝘢𝘳 is the epitome and affirmation of the saying, “Poetry is the mirror of life.” However, life, as depicted in these poems, is not one that is marked by normalcy. In fact, for the last 76 years since the Nakba, Palestinians have been subject to daily Israeli settler violence, dispossession, and displacement. The Nakba is still happening. It is commonplace, but it is absolutely not normal. In his debut poetry collection, Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha put his and Gazans’ lived experiences into words. Since the start of the Israeli blockade in 2006 following Hamas’ victory in the 2006 election and Israeli’s disengagement from Gaza, the Zionist entity has on numerous occasions revealed itself as a cruel, monstrous killing machine that tests weapons on Gazans, with the ongoing siege and genocide being the most outrageous and catastrophic of all. Houses and buildings destroyed lives lost families friends lovers torn apart ruins and graves mushroomed.
In Mosab Abu Toha’s poems, we hear voices of Gazans, from their doubts about possibilities and frustration to their resistance and yearning for life in the midst of hardship and desolation. His poems, characterized by strikingly heartbreaking imagery, serve to inform the world and wake us all up. Together they are more than the writing of suffering. The collection also explores the relationship between Gazans and their land, and how resistance is always possible because the land remembers its people (‘A Litany for “One Land”’); the affirmation of one’s identity and existence in the face of all-time severance (‘Palestinian Sonnet’); the necessity to lament for and remember those who are long gone and have left behind a precious well of literary legacy (‘To Mahmoud Darwish’, ‘To Ghassan Kanafani’, and ‘Displaced’).
Essentially, 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘺 𝘌𝘢𝘳 is a literary endeavor to illustrate and shed light on the liminality of Gazans from having lived in the never-ending Israeli siege and military aggression. Can we even call it beautiful? Perhaps so. Because it is an unapologetic blend of the personal and the political. Because it is timely. Because it is real. It is what is happening in Gaza.
October 16, 2023
City Lights Books has shared a free digital copy of this collection, which includes an interview with the author at the end.
Words fail me when trying to say something about the poems, but as Mosab says the important thing is feeling:
"The word for poetry in Arabic, sha’ir, doesn’t refer to a particular form, it only has to do with feeling. So you have to be an expert in showing your feelings on paper or reciting your poetry to people so that they can feel what you’re feeling. It can be an image but it does have to leave an impact on the reader. And if you can make them cry or smile, then you are a poet; if you can make them shiver, then you are a poet."
The most important thing we can do right now is to uphold Palestinian voices and let them be heard, not let anyone forget they exist.
"People say silence is a sign of consent.
What if I’m not allowed to speak,
my tongue severed,
my mouth sewn shut"
Words fail me when trying to say something about the poems, but as Mosab says the important thing is feeling:
"The word for poetry in Arabic, sha’ir, doesn’t refer to a particular form, it only has to do with feeling. So you have to be an expert in showing your feelings on paper or reciting your poetry to people so that they can feel what you’re feeling. It can be an image but it does have to leave an impact on the reader. And if you can make them cry or smile, then you are a poet; if you can make them shiver, then you are a poet."
The most important thing we can do right now is to uphold Palestinian voices and let them be heard, not let anyone forget they exist.
"People say silence is a sign of consent.
What if I’m not allowed to speak,
my tongue severed,
my mouth sewn shut"
August 3, 2022
Beautiful collection of poems written by a young poet from Gaza Strip. With flagrant honesty, Mosab Abu Toha shares his past growing up during the violent conflicts in his land. In an interview in the back of the book, he speaks about how when growing up, no one ever told him what the situation was, rather it was just his world. His poems speak so casually of death and bombing:
"One day, we were sleeping in our house. A bomb fell on a nearby farm at 6am, like an alarm clock waking us up early for school".
His writing is brutal but truthful and told so well that you are able to get a clear picture of what he's describing. He also includes pictures of the bombs' destructions and the last picture is of a plate of strawberries and the line, "Through it all the strawberries have never stopped growing", which leaves us with his story is that of survival and hope.
"One day, we were sleeping in our house. A bomb fell on a nearby farm at 6am, like an alarm clock waking us up early for school".
His writing is brutal but truthful and told so well that you are able to get a clear picture of what he's describing. He also includes pictures of the bombs' destructions and the last picture is of a plate of strawberries and the line, "Through it all the strawberries have never stopped growing", which leaves us with his story is that of survival and hope.
December 10, 2023
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is a collection of poems written by Mosab Abu Toha. These poems highlight his experience living and growing up in Gaza.
Mosab Abu Toha's words are stark, raw, and blunt in his honesty. I took my time with each poem so I could properly digest every single word.
Amidst all the videos and photos coming out of Gaza, reading these poems felt like I was experiencing a sense of déjà vu. It feels like the author is writing these poems right now and I'm reading them live as the Gaza genocide unfolds. Mosab Abu Toha's writing gets right to the heart of the matter and it echoes the agonizing cries of Palestinians in Gaza right now.
I highly recommend this book, especially right now.
Mosab Abu Toha's words are stark, raw, and blunt in his honesty. I took my time with each poem so I could properly digest every single word.
Amidst all the videos and photos coming out of Gaza, reading these poems felt like I was experiencing a sense of déjà vu. It feels like the author is writing these poems right now and I'm reading them live as the Gaza genocide unfolds. Mosab Abu Toha's writing gets right to the heart of the matter and it echoes the agonizing cries of Palestinians in Gaza right now.
I highly recommend this book, especially right now.
May 30, 2024
I’m not quite sure how to review this but once I started reading I couldn’t put it down, and poetry is not usually my favorite format. Mosab so eloquently shares his experience growing up in Gaza and the fear and devastation that he experienced. As this was published in 2022, reading it now, it’s impossible to comprehend the level of despair in Gaza today.
September 5, 2022
A heartbreaking collection of spare, elegant poems. The real heart of this collection is how the idea of a home that is traumatized and ripped apart can be personified. The poet brings to life the landscapes described. An important representation of a voice from Palestine.
Read
December 9, 2023“for us, the fear of dying before living haunts us while we are still in our mothers’ wombs.”
___
so many beautiful and heartbreaking poems on such an important topic.
___
so many beautiful and heartbreaking poems on such an important topic.
November 20, 2023
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.
Αφιερωμένο στον δύσκολο γιο του Τοχα
Μπαίνω κάθε μέρα να δω
αν ανέβασες κάτι
Μια φωτογραφία
Ένα κείμενο
Μια μνήμη της παλιάς σου ζωής
Βλέπω τις φωτογραφίες από τη βιβλιοθήκη
που είχες φτιάξει
με τόσο κόπο
Πως κατάφερες
Μέσα από τα χαλάσματα
να μαζέψεις βιβλία στο όνομα του Darwish
και ντρέπομαι
Εγώ που τα έχω όλα πεταμένα και αδιάβαστα και α��οράζω το ίδιο βιβλίο γιατί ξεχνάω πως το έχω ήδη,
πεταμένο και αδιάβαστο.
Μπαίνω κάθε μέρα
αλλά είναι τώρα μέρες που δεν μπαίνεις εσύ
Ελπίζω να σου έχει χαλάσει το κινητό
να μην έχεις ίντερνετ
κάποιο μικρό γεγονός να σε χωρίζει από τον κόσμο
Πέντε μέρες βουβός σε ένα μέρος που ουρλιάζει
ανέβασε κάτι,
σε παρακαλώ,
έχω ανάγκη να ξέρω ότι ζεις.
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.
Αφιερωμένο στον δύσκολο γιο του Τοχα
Μπαίνω κάθε μέρα να δω
αν ανέβασες κάτι
Μια φωτογραφία
Ένα κείμενο
Μια μνήμη της παλιάς σου ζωής
Βλέπω τις φωτογραφίες από τη βιβλιοθήκη
που είχες φτιάξει
με τόσο κόπο
Πως κατάφερες
Μέσα από τα χαλάσματα
να μαζέψεις βιβλία στο όνομα του Darwish
και ντρέπομαι
Εγώ που τα έχω όλα πεταμένα και αδιάβαστα και α��οράζω το ίδιο βιβλίο γιατί ξεχνάω πως το έχω ήδη,
πεταμένο και αδιάβαστο.
Μπαίνω κάθε μέρα
αλλά είναι τώρα μέρες που δεν μπαίνεις εσύ
Ελπίζω να σου έχει χαλάσει το κινητό
να μην έχεις ίντερνετ
κάποιο μικρό γεγονός να σε χωρίζει από τον κόσμο
Πέντε μέρες βουβός σε ένα μέρος που ουρλιάζει
ανέβασε κάτι,
σε παρακαλώ,
έχω ανάγκη να ξέρω ότι ζεις.
May 17, 2024
"Why is it when I dream of Palestine, that I see it in black and white?"
"Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards."
"They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?"
no words to say, except: free palestine.
"Gaza is a city where tourists gather to take photos next to destroyed buildings or graveyards."
"They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?"
no words to say, except: free palestine.
February 19, 2024
And when we die, our bones will continue to grow, to reach and intertwine with the roots of the olive and orange trees, to bathe in the sweet Yaffa sea. One day, we will be born again when you’re not there. Because this land knows us. She is our mother. When we die, we’re just resting in her womb until the darkness is cleared.
🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉
🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉
January 25, 2024
A book I think everyone should take the time to read. Doesn’t take more than an hour, two at most. It is a collection of beautiful and insightful poems about Palestinians and their lives in Gaza. Discussing the attacks Israel has launched on them, the bombings, bodies trapped under rumble, losing homes, losing friends and families, being wounded, etc.
This gave me such an insight about what was going on that I didn’t before. My heart grows even heavier for the people of Palestine. They never deserved such horrific things to happen to them. May one day Palestine be liberated.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free 🇵🇸
This gave me such an insight about what was going on that I didn’t before. My heart grows even heavier for the people of Palestine. They never deserved such horrific things to happen to them. May one day Palestine be liberated.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free 🇵🇸
August 5, 2024
An incredibly powerful book of poems about what it means to be Palestinian and live in Gaza. There’s also a very interesting interview with the author at the end. This book helped me understand more about the Palestinian experience than any news article has, highly recommend.
July 6, 2024
Incredible poetry, and an incredible must-read interview with the poet at the end. Certain lines will stick with me for a very long time.
March 7, 2024
How could one write a review of a poetry volume written from the middle of colonial occupation, bombardments and displacement? What is there to review? I don't think it's possible to look from a dissective distance on books like this - maybe not on any, though.
Abu Toha honestly and painfully writes down the realities of the Zionist occupation, blockade and attacks: "In Gaza, breathing is a task, / smiling is performing / plastic surgery / on one's own face, / and rising in the morning, / trying to survive / another day, is coming back / from the dead" (Hard Exercise, p. 27). And Abu Toha comes back with radical hope and light, even when the electricity is cut or only available 2 hours per day: "Don't ever be surprised / to see a rose shoulder up / among the ruins of the house: This is how we survived." (A Rose Shoulder Up, p. 99). And this is the last poem of the book that starts with a long poem,"Palestine A-Z", to get the reader accustomed of the context, then takes you through the injustices suffered by the poet and his family and friends and neighbours, and through their hopes and dreames and every day life and memories, to end with the ever rising survival - until Palestine will be free.
Many many lines of this book will stay with me or I will come back to them: "They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?" (Palestine A-Z, p. 8) or: "Children learn their numbers best / when they can count how many homes or schools / were destroyed, how many mothers and fathers / were wounded or thrown to jail." (Palestinian streets, p. 19); or: People die. / Others are born. / For us / the fear of dying before living / haunts us while we are still / in our mother's wombs." [Death Before Birth (DBB), p. 29]; or: "The city no longer exists except in craters. / I have nowhere to go except down a new, untrodden road." (My City After What Happened Some Time Ago, p. 38); or: "Which is vaster in the night, the desert or the dark? / Which is heavier on the sand, your feet or your fear?" (Desert and Exile, p. 65); or: "During the night airstrikes, all of us turned / into stone." and "Raindrops slip into the frying pan / through a hole in a tin roof." (Notebook, pp. 86 & 88); or: "Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we / we will be the trees that protect if from the fierce / wind, the trees that will give shade / to children sleeping inside or playing on swings." (We Love What We Have, p. 49).
I must mention that I wanted to choose quotes from the poem called "The Wounds", but I cannot choose, cause all the verses of this 10-paged poem I would want to quote, everyone should read it!
Everyone should read the whole book to witness in writing life and death in Gaza.
PS. And the book ends with and interview with the author, which I think is a wonderful idea, it makes the whole work even more contextualized and you get to know the author from another perspective as well.
Abu Toha honestly and painfully writes down the realities of the Zionist occupation, blockade and attacks: "In Gaza, breathing is a task, / smiling is performing / plastic surgery / on one's own face, / and rising in the morning, / trying to survive / another day, is coming back / from the dead" (Hard Exercise, p. 27). And Abu Toha comes back with radical hope and light, even when the electricity is cut or only available 2 hours per day: "Don't ever be surprised / to see a rose shoulder up / among the ruins of the house: This is how we survived." (A Rose Shoulder Up, p. 99). And this is the last poem of the book that starts with a long poem,"Palestine A-Z", to get the reader accustomed of the context, then takes you through the injustices suffered by the poet and his family and friends and neighbours, and through their hopes and dreames and every day life and memories, to end with the ever rising survival - until Palestine will be free.
Many many lines of this book will stay with me or I will come back to them: "They once said Palestine will be free tomorrow. When is tomorrow? What is freedom? How long does it last?" (Palestine A-Z, p. 8) or: "Children learn their numbers best / when they can count how many homes or schools / were destroyed, how many mothers and fathers / were wounded or thrown to jail." (Palestinian streets, p. 19); or: People die. / Others are born. / For us / the fear of dying before living / haunts us while we are still / in our mother's wombs." [Death Before Birth (DBB), p. 29]; or: "The city no longer exists except in craters. / I have nowhere to go except down a new, untrodden road." (My City After What Happened Some Time Ago, p. 38); or: "Which is vaster in the night, the desert or the dark? / Which is heavier on the sand, your feet or your fear?" (Desert and Exile, p. 65); or: "During the night airstrikes, all of us turned / into stone." and "Raindrops slip into the frying pan / through a hole in a tin roof." (Notebook, pp. 86 & 88); or: "Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we / we will be the trees that protect if from the fierce / wind, the trees that will give shade / to children sleeping inside or playing on swings." (We Love What We Have, p. 49).
I must mention that I wanted to choose quotes from the poem called "The Wounds", but I cannot choose, cause all the verses of this 10-paged poem I would want to quote, everyone should read it!
Everyone should read the whole book to witness in writing life and death in Gaza.
PS. And the book ends with and interview with the author, which I think is a wonderful idea, it makes the whole work even more contextualized and you get to know the author from another perspective as well.
January 13, 2024
“My grandfather was a terrorist—
He departed his house, leaving it for the coming guests,
left some water on the table, his best,
lest the guests die of thirst after their conquest.”
“On the scale, stones and rebars are heavier
than souls.”
“One day, we will be born again when you’re not there.
Because this land knows us. She is our mother.”
“When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.”
He departed his house, leaving it for the coming guests,
left some water on the table, his best,
lest the guests die of thirst after their conquest.”
“On the scale, stones and rebars are heavier
than souls.”
“One day, we will be born again when you’re not there.
Because this land knows us. She is our mother.”
“When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.”
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