By Saed, Gaza Strip, Palestine, August 5, 2025
This is the first of a series of posts by a poet in Gaza, Saed, who wrote these entries in the darkest years of genocide, a genocide which is ongoing. All of these posts will be marked [Saed] in the series so readers can identify which posts belong in this series.
Perhaps the reason for the continuation of the war is the severe lack of poetry among those negotiating on our behalf.
Whoever reads the poetry collection “Like Almond Blossoms or Beyond” will inevitably have a heart as beautiful as the hearts of their people, and will join the ranks of patience, compassion, and the anemones in the fields near Shuja’iyya and Hur al-Deek.
But do you think any of those negotiators ever reached the almond blossoms, or beyond?
Did they acquire a poetry collection by Lorca or Yannis Ritsos?
Did they read “The Blue Light” by Hussein Barghouti?
Do you think they did?
The negotiator will truly be negotiating on our behalf if it is proven that he drinks coffee and, between each sip, listens to his inner self in the blue clouds.
He will be trustworthy in his heart if he listens to Fairuz, Marcel Khalifeh, and Reem al-Banna,
and if his aesthetic taste is not besieged by a sectarian identity.
Poetry will not repel a plane, nor will it bring a truck of flour into Gaza.
But it does develop the intelligence of the heart,
and creates a negotiator who smells the salt of Gaza’s sea from Doha,
and whose taste mixes with the salt of his tears when he sees a child yearning for a loaf of bread but cannot find it.
However, they likely memorize much of Jarir’s and Al-Farazdaq’s poetry of pride and satire,
and perhaps the entire poem of Ibn al-Qayyim, which is excessively long and boring.
The broken minarets of Gaza, and the slashed palm groves,
don’t forget the face of the child who embraced his martyred father’s shoe during the funeral prayer,
squeezing it tightly as if he were healing a deep wound in his heart.
But they do not understand—and will never understand—the metaphor of loss,
when the dead man’s shoe becomes equivalent to the entire world.
Do they hear—like mothers—the children’s crying at night, and their laughter when the sun rises,
while there is nothing in bed but absence?
Do they understand the language of the leaves when they tremble at night, as if listening to the voices of dead friends?
A little poetry is necessary
to restore the similarity between us, to become one people.
“Wouldn’t you memorize a little poetry to stop the massacre?”