Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha processes the war in Gaza through his art

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Palestinian poet, teacher, and writer Mosab Abu Toha was born in Gaza, and that’s where many of the poems in his new collection called “Forest of Noise” were written amidst the chaos and uncertainty of war.

We recently met at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C., just hours after more than a dozen of his family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. This weekend, he says another 22 were believed to be killed.

This story is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. And a warning: Some of the images are disturbing.

I don’t know if you can answer this question, but how are you? How are you doing?

Mosab Abu Toha, Poet, “Forest of Noise”: I don’t know how to answer the question when every day I wake up and I go to sleep watching my people being killed.

And yesterday morning, I woke up to the news that the family of my aunt and her relatives were killed in an airstrike when Israel bombed the house. One of the kids was killed. Her name is Sama (ph). She’s 7 years old. So I don’t know how to answer this question, except to say that I’m alive. That’s the only word that I can say.

Amna Nawaz: At just 31, Mosab Abu Toha is a leading voice of a new generation of poets and one of Gaza’s best known writers.

His first book, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” won the American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. His new book of poetry, “Forest of Noise,” completed over the last year of war, begins with these words.

Mosab Abu Toha: “Every child in Gaza is me. Every mother and father is me. Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. Every plant is my arm. Every flower is my eye. Every hole in the earth is my wound.”

Amna Nawaz: So what led you to start writing these poems in the first place? Where did you write them? What kept you writing?

Mosab Abu Toha: As a human being, what I have been seeing and what I have been living is more than I can explain to people, more than my language can express. So I tend to escape to poetry in order to try and express myself.

I try to — sometimes, through poetry, I try to understand better what happened in an airstrike, what happened to the baby who died in the airstrike, not because of the shrapnel, but because of the suffocation after the bombing, because this child could be my child. This father could be me. That mother could be my mother or my wife.

Amna Nawaz: Along with his wife and three children, Abu Toha fled Gaza in December. As they left, he was detained by Israeli forces, separated from his family, stripped, beaten and interrogated for days.

He was released only after an international outcry. He documents his detention in a poem called “On Your Knees.”

Mosab Abu Toha: That was the only word that I kept hearing from the Israeli soldiers. Every time I tried to speak to them, even in English, they would say, “On your knees. Don’t move. On your knees, on your knees, on your knees.”

Amna Nawaz: Left behind in Gaza were friends, family and two branches of the library he founded, Gaza’s only English libraries, named after the late Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said. Both libraries were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.

He writes about them in this collection.

Mosab Abu Toha: “My Library.”

“My books remain on the shelves as I left them last year, but all the words have died. I search for my favorite book out of place. I find it lying lonely in a drawer, next to the photo album and my old Nokia phone. The pen inside the book is still intact, but some ink drops have leaked. Some words breathe its ink, the pen like a ventilator for a dozen patients.”

You know, the loss of the library is not only about the loss of the books, but also the loss of the readers, many of whom were killed, I mean, children who lived in the refugee camps, in a shelter refugee camp, in Jabalia refugee camp, many of whom were either killed or they lost their family members.

The thing is that this world failed us, failed the children in Gaza. So why would someone — I mean, if I were a child, why would I come and read a work by an English writer or an American writer whose country has killed my family? Why would I learn from them? Who are they? What morality do they have? What lessons do they have to teach me and share with me?

Amna Nawaz: Were you able to save any part of your library when you left?

Mosab Abu Toha: Yes. I mean, I was lucky because I brought with me when — I left my house on October 12 last year, I was able to only pick this book with me, which is my debut poetry book. This is the same copy that I had with me for about three years.

Amna Nawaz: This is the only book?

Mosab Abu Toha: This is the only book that survived with me.

Amna Nawaz: Abu Toha is now in the U.S., but he carries Gaza wherever he goes. In a neighboring Middle Eastern bookstore, a piece of pottery reminds him of a friends artwork.

Mosab Abu Toha: She was asking me if I could share her work with others who would be interested in buying her work.

Amna Nawaz: A friend who was killed, along with her two children, in an Israeli airstrike.

Mosab, there is so much war and loss and pain in a lot of the poetry in the book, but there’s also these moments of beauty and a Gaza that you love and miss and adore. There’s descriptions of fishermen out on the glittering sea and trees blossoming with apricots and oranges.

And I just wonder, when you close your eyes and you think of home, what is it that you see?

Mosab Abu Toha: Yes, I see the beach. I see the sunset. I see the strawberry farms, the cornfields. I see the trees in the streets. I see my grandmother picking oranges from the orange tree or guava, or my father watering the plants or caring for the pigeons and the hens.

I see the children of the neighborhood playing marbles together, hide and seek. So, I think about this life full of life in Gaza, but there is always the drones buzzing sound.

Amna Nawaz: Do you hope to go back one day?

Mosab Abu Toha: Of course, 100 percent.

But I hope that I will have people to return to. This is more important because, I mean, if Israel continues to bomb and kill people like this, no one will remain.

Amna Nawaz: Abu Toha’s “Letters From Gaza” columns for “The New Yorker” were recently honored with an Overseas Press Club Award. And his social feeds are an unyielding stream of devastation back in Gaza and calls to action, often dozens of posts a day to his more than 150,000 followers online.

Mosab Abu Toha: People in Gaza are not numbers. I’m not posting numbers. I’m posting stories of real people who not only were killed, but also were killed with their families. So if I don’t post about these people, no one will.

And because I have access to many news channels and I can translate these pieces of news, I have the duty to send the messages. I have access to Internet, so I can post and I can share.

Amna Nawaz: Mosab, there are some who say that poetry in and of itself is an act of hope, that you take the time to wrestle with the thoughts and to put pen to paper and to try to craft words to convey what it is that you’re feeling, so that others may understand that there is hope in that process.

Do you agree with that?

Mosab Abu Toha: I think hope is a very abstract word. I mean, the only hope that I see in poetry is that I share the stories of people who are no longer with us.

I mean, my hope is that I’m making the survivors of the stories that I tell to people. This is the only hope. And the other hope would be moving people to act and to stop the poems from happening again and again, because poems for me are not only a piece of writing. They are something that is happening.

I mean, maybe the people who sold that poetry is — could bring hope are people who are not writing about genocides, especially when it never stops.

Amna Nawaz: The book is a collection of poetry called “Forest of Noise,” and the author is Mosab Abu Toha.

Mosab, thank you for taking the time.

Mosab Abu Toha: Thank you, Amna. Appreciate it.