questions are borrowed from what gaza’s children asked the staff of the palestine trauma centre (uk)
ليش دايما بقصفونا ؟
why do they always bomb us?
because they forgot your face.
because they do not see a face at all.
because war is not personal
until it names your teeth,
counts your toys,
calls your kneecaps collateral.
i think the word i am searching for is
ownership.
ليش الولد مغطين وجهه وفي دم ؟
why is the boy’s face covered in blood?
because the window unstitched itself into his cheek.
because the roof fell mouth-first.
because he didn’t duck—
just turned toward the sound
as familiar as his name.
the blood crawled across his collar,
soaked the buttons, settled
its shadows in his jaw
where breath was once catalogued.
someone covered him with a curtain,
one side still hemmed,
the other torn from the nail.
in this genocide, the occupier desires a
mutilated body with no evidence of a self.
the body becomes a witness—wearing
what you wore, marked and
fallen, attesting only to a strained continuation
of life.
i now remember the details of
the picture i saw in al jazeera:
they covered his face because it was too complete
to ignore, but not enough to save.
– كل يوم بتحكوا بكرة راح تخلص الحرب .
every day you say that tomorrow the war will end.
tomorrow, too, was shelled.
it died with today.
no one has told the clocks.
هل للطياريين الذين يقصفون الأطفال أطفال؟
do the israeli pilots who bomb children have children?
yes.
and their children dip fingers into trays of tempera paint,
smear the sky across butcher paper, blue as the space between sirens.
they are taught to name clouds without being told
what passes through them.
at home, the fathers fold their uniforms over the backs of chairs,
rinsing their hands in silence without flinching.
they lift their daughters with the same arms
that steadied the strike. and later—
in rooms with a century-old carpet,
doors suspended in ache—
they speak gently,
as if gentleness could not also be a form of aim.
الكلاب التي أكلت جثث الشهداء هل ستتحول إلى إنسان
will the dogs that ate the dead bodies of the martyrs turn into humans?
no.
but humans, daily, eat the living.
and they do not gnaw nor bark.
they sign executive orders.
they sleep in white sheets and dream of borders.
men have always envied beasts,
their guiltless hunger.
بدي أروح على الجنة عشان هناك ما في خوف و لا حرب و فيها كل الحاجات.
i want to go to heaven because there is no fear or war, and it has everything.
that’s what i said to the nurse once.
january snow colliding against the hospital window.
mouth still bitter from activated charcoal.
valley of death underneath my tongue, value of life on the debris of my lips.
my desire for [ ] nearly killed me.
i found my language struck by a single arrow of impulse.
in heaven, they say no one gets called martyr before they lose their childhood.
but what if heaven smells like disinfectant?
what if it’s clean in the way absence is clean and vague, like the silver of a new blade?
what if the angels don’t speak the language of suffering, and no one knows how to respond to this is where it hurts?
what if heaven is just one long waiting room with no one left to call your name?
متي بدنا نستقر بغرفتنا ويرجعو النازحين علي بيوتهم
when will we have our room back and the displaced people return to their homes?
the moon lies in a trench.
children used to vanish into it, unafraid—
into the pure and clear, into a womb that saw and
held many faces in her vessel, the womb
of the relentless imagination.
now the moon witnesses. and those near death
do not look at what is ending
but at what keeps widening—
a brightness large enough, it’ll forget them,
remember some other body.
and near death, one does not look at what is ending
but at what continues regardless—
a light that keeps its distance.
the sea is severed from the beach.
she combs through the remains of her people
in her waves, whilst herself broken,
mangled by this detachment, this lingering absence.
the floor still startles at the sound of boots.
your mattress remembers other bodies.
light touches your toys
as if it isn’t sure they’re still yours.
ownership.
that was the word i uttered before.
the door creaks for everyone now.
وقتيش بدها تخلص الحرب؟؟
when will the war end?
when the last child
asks the last question,
and no one
has to answer.
متى ينتهي الدمار و الموت
when will death and destruction end?
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
not in this poem.
but perhaps in the one you write
from the other side.
