Ahlam Bsharat & Umar Timol & Anne Galbraith
Ahlam Bsharat
The poem in untitled
67 children
67 braided loofahs
67 plastic buckets for water
67 blue washtubs
*
67 mothers calling:
Come here boy, let’s give you a wash
Come here girl, let’s give you a wash
*
67 hoarse voices
67 loud yelps
67 little ones crying
*
67 little pairs of panties
with strawberries on them
67 little undershirts
with frogs on them
*
67 running through all the rooms in the house
67 hiding under old sofas in the salon
67 checking behind doors
*
67 found:
Caught you, boy
Caught you, girl
*
67 mothers sitting with nothing to do
this morning
*
67 deaths
and the game has vanished
forever
from Friday afternoons
*
-Ahlam Bsharat
Translated by M Lynx Qualey
Poet Ahlam Bsharat explains that Friday is a traditional day for bathing children, and this Friday 67 Palestinian children are gone, having been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza that started May 10: The poem is untitled.
أحلام بشارات
Taken from ArabLit, May 28, 2021, https://arablit.org/2021/05/28/67-children-a-friday-poem-by-ahlam-bsharat/, accessed 1st March 2024.
Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s author, as well as a teacher of creative writing. She is a prominent and highly regarded author of YA novels in the Arab world, and her books have met with great success at the local and international levels. They have been included in IBBY lists, shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award (UK) and Etisalat Award for Children’s Literature (UAE). She has presented twice and run creative writing workshops at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai, and participated in numerous creative writing forums in Europe.
Two of her novels, Code Name: Butterfly and Trees for the Absentees, have been translated into English and her most celebrated recent Arabic YA novels are: “مريم سيدة الإسطرلاب ” Maryam Sayida al-Astrolab ,“جنجر” Ginger and “مصنع الذكريات ” Masna’ adh-dhikariyat. Her latest publication, “اسم الطائر ” Ism aT-Taa’ir, is a collection of poetry rooted in her peasant origins. She tells of village life with a rawness and directness in these poems, and without the usual romanticization of this subject matter. Her next book to be published, “طعم فمي” Ta’m fami, tells of her evocative memories of food whilst growing up in the Palestinian valleys. She is currently working on a book that chronicles her personal experience living in the region.
Taken from Palestine Writes
Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s author, as well as a teacher of creative writing. She is a prominent and highly regarded author of YA novels in the Arab world, and her books have met with great success at the local and international levels. They have been included in IBBY lists, shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award (UK) and Etisalat Award for Children’s Literature (UAE). She has presented twice and run creative writing workshops at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai, and participated in numerous creative writing forums in Europe.
Two of her novels, Code Name: Butterfly and Trees for the Absentees, have been translated into English and her most celebrated recent Arabic YA novels are: “مريم سيدة الإسطرلاب ” Maryam Sayida al-Astrolab ,“جنجر” Ginger and “مصنع الذكريات ” Masna’ adh-dhikariyat. Her latest publication, “اسم الطائر ” Ism aT-Taa’ir, is a collection of poetry rooted in her peasant origins. She tells of village life with a rawness and directness in these poems, and without the usual romanticization of this subject matter. Her next book to be published, “طعم فمي” Ta’m fami, tells of her evocative memories of food whilst growing up in the Palestinian valleys. She is currently working on a book that chronicles her personal experience living in the region.
Taken from Palestine Writes
Umar Timol
To Reem* – Martyred Palestinian Little Girl
Reem, you are not dead. You are in another world as peaceful as your dreams, gentle as your eyes, with thousands other Palestinian children, killed by monsters. You are having fun, laughing, and you have wings, magnificent wings. You fly far, far up in the sky, and you are happy, not with the transient kind of happiness, but of the eternal kind, that is bestowed upon martyrs. For you, Reem, are a martyr.
Reem, you are not dead. Those who have lost their humanity, those who say that you are animals, while they are even lesser than animals, have tried to kill you, the human. But the human cannot be obliterated, s/he is indestructible as s/he is made of the light of innocence, of childish giddiness, of the journey of love and generosity. S/he is the repository of genuine faith.
In trying to destroy the humanity in you, they have in fact annihilated theirs.
Who are these creatures, Reem?
They lie as they breathe. They butcher your people as well as theirs. Every day, they push the limits of the inhumane.
Who are these creatures, Reem?
Tell me what they are.
Are they made of flesh or shadows?
Your humaneness will perdure Reem, as a star that will shine its brightest during these blood-soaked nights.
Reem, you are not dead. But those who are alive are dead. They breathe, eat, drink, they believe that they are alive, but they no longer are. Those who bomb children, who spew hateful speech, who support your People’s genocide, who celebrate your death, who remain quiet, who find excuses for barbarity, who torture your supporters; the powerful in their huge palaces, the subservient in the kingdoms of cowardice, liars, hypocrites, traitors, they are all dead.
They are hollow, abysses, precipices. Dead during their lifetime.
But you, Reem, are not.
Reem, you are not dead. For you live in the land of your ancestors. They have used half-baked pretexts to steal your land. They have colonised it and built flats, towers, military infrastructure, monuments of their transient glory. They are powerful, possess weapons, they are supported by the powers that be, thousands of propaganda puppets, and, today, they want to annihilate the very last of your people. However, they lack one kind of power, the only power that matters: that of love. Love of the land which comes not from hate, ethnic superiority, racism, deadly nationalism, bloodlust and genocide, but that love which is founded on sharing, irrespective of who one may be, whose faith is in love.
Reem, you are not dead. Your light forever glows across these lands.
And, one day, your people will return by the force of faith and love. It is only a question of time.
Reem, you are not dead. You live in us, in the folds of our breath. We, who are capable of next to nothing, who possess neither your courage nor your bravery, who are at the school of life, your life, and who have in you, Reem and your people, such heroic teachers. You have taught us the essence of life: gratitude, courage, humanity, humour, resilience and, above all, this faith that teaches us that we are but mere mortals, that everything has a purpose, that we need to die before our death so that we can be immersed in divine light.
Each moment is a miracle, and a blessing bestowed by the One who has created us.
Your teachings will never be forgotten.
Reem, you are not dead.
And one day, Reem, we will meet, in that place, as peaceful as your dreams, gentle as your eyes. And we will fly far, far up in the sky with thousands other Palestinian children.
Reem, you are not dead. You live. You are the heart that fuels the roars of revolution and liberation.
Palestine will be free and it will free the world. It will liberate us. It has already liberated us.
Free, finally free.
Reem, you are not dead. You are not. You are the promise of our afterlife. Reem.
-Umar Timol
Translated from French by Saffiyah Chady Edoo
*https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231126-grandfather-in-gaza-laments-no-birthday-without-reem/
Umar Timol is a Mauritian author and poet, who has published four collections of poetry and two novels and other miscellaneous articles in national and international journals. He contributed to numerous collective anthologies in Mauritius and abroad. His voice is regularly heard in the local media, where he contributes opinion pieces on current societal issues. His opinion pieces have also been published in Jeune Afrique and Africa Report. He has attended many poetry festivals around the world ( Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, Medellin international poetry festival, Festival international de la poésie de Trois-Rivières ) In 2018 he attended the International Writing Programme ( IWP ) at the University of Iowa. . He is also a portrait photographer. His portrait work has been widely published ( Instagram : @umar_timol ). His exhibition of photographic portraits of Mauritian writers was held at the Blue Penny Museum in 2019.
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/umar_timol/
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/phjotopoesie
Anne Galbraith
Beloved, watercolour on paper.
Anne Galbraith is a visual artist, illustrator and facilitator and designer of therapeutic gardening. She was born of Scottish settlers in the land of the Waveroo people and now lives in the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung. Her work has been exhibited and published in Naarm.
