Gaza, sculpted by the sea,

is a song in humanity’s perpetual consciousness.

She is an old lady; martyrs form her wrinkles;

her exile is never to be forsaken.

The sea tells her, “for your lacerations,

all my tears are not sufficient”.

You watch her, severed by shells,

yet, she pleads for no statement from any body.

She just says, “my wounded heart is bearable,

if it creates a tide of compassion in others’ hearts.

Women’s flowing tears are justifiable,

when they water the land’s trees”.

She mutters very little;

and masked puppets ashamedly look at one another.

She asks editors of news media,

“So what’s new?

How many mothers did homes have to leave?

and how much longing was left in their ruins?

As if all this enormous funeral is just a news item;

as if all the memories of homes is only a statistic”.

She asks her children,

“is this flour or froth on the seashore?”

Then she is bewildered, and there is no answer, “why is a child weeping on the sand”?

Gaza doesn’t ask us to hear a reply, but it is the eternal within us, that wonders endlessly, where is our humanity?

As if the little girl, buried alive, says: “who is more cruel to me: my father or my country”?

The little girl asks for peace, and for compassion in the heart of her killer.

Perhaps the silence can slash this question’s sword?

Perhaps the night bleeds a dawn?

Perhaps…

All the while, yonder, on the horizon, warplanes gather to spray flour for the hungry, and throw bombs; death traps the famished, in a “loving” heart, with deadly fangs.

Gaza asks “since when do people plant clouds and not their fields?

And since when sickles cut crops, and reap people from their homes?

As they climb their Golgothas, are people gathering around for bread, or in hell?”

Gaza doesn’t mean to ask, but only searches for our humanity.

She wants us to reclaim the land,

and who doesn’t try dies an eternal death.

Translated from the Arabic by Saadeh-Byreet (2024).