Mosab Abu Toha - Sriharan Ganeshan
Mosab Abu Toha
We deserve a better death
We Deserve a Better Death
Our bodies are disfigured and twisted,
Embroidered with bullets and shrapnel.
Our names are pronounced incorrectly
On the radio and TV.
Our photos, plastered onto the walls of our buildings,
Fade and grow pale.
The inscriptions on our gravestones disappear,
Covered in the faeces of birds and reptiles.
No one waters the trees that give shade
To our graves.
The blazing sun has overwhelmed
Our rotting bodies
Taken from Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
by Mosab Abu Toha
ISBN : 9780872868601.
Publisher : City Lights Publishers.
Imprint : City Lights Publishers.
Publication date : August 2022.
Sriharan Ganeshan chose to foreground this poem by Mosab Abu Toha.
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, essayist, fiction writer, scholar, and librarian from Gaza. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems. The collection won an American Book Award, a 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, as well as the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize. He was a Visiting Poet in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Abu Toha is a columnist for Arrowsmith Press, and his writings from Gaza have also appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, New Arab and the New York Review of Books, among others.
Follow Mosab Abu Toha on Instagram mosab_abutoha
Sri chose to foreground Mosan Abu Toha's work above.
Sriharan Ganeshan
என் பேனா முனையில் விழும்
ஒவ்வொரு மை துளிகளுக்குள்ளும்
ஒரு இனம் புரியாத கதற
சொல்ல முடியாத வார்த்தைகள்
சொல்ல வர முன் இறந்து போகும் உணர்வு
மறு உணர்வு வந்து கொள்ளும் பழைய உணர்வு
காரணம் என்ன?
சொல்லுவதுக்குள் மழலைகள் முடிகின்றது
அது சொல்ல முன் மீண்டும்
வேறு முகங்கள் மடிகிறது
முற்று இல்லை காசா முற்றம்
முத்தத்தோடு மௌனிக்கின்றது மழலைகள்
அங்கே ! எங்கே ?
அடா ஏலம் எடுக்கும் சந்தை
அடா ! UN திடலில் குவிந்து கிடைக்கும்
காகித பிணங்கள் பேச மறுக்கின்றது.
வெற்று காகிதத்தை மூலதனமாக வைத்து
வியாபாரம் செய்யும் சந்தையிலே
காசா குழந்தைகளின் மௌன சிரிப்பு விற்கப்படுகின்றது
ஈழத்து குழந்தைகளை விற்று வரு நிரப்பியவர்களே
சொல் ஆடலில் வல்லவர் நாயகர்கள்
உண்டது போதாதா ? உன்னை அதிகார நாயகனாக காண்பிக்க
நாசி கதை பேசி வந்தவரே!
UN சந்தையில் நீதி தேவதையை கற்பழிப்பவரே !
நாசி கதைக்கு முற்று புள்ளி ஈடு .
மழலை சிரிப்பு அழகில் பேய் கூட இரங்கு
உன்னை என் என்று அழைப்பது
உன்னை என்ன என்று அழைப்பது
காசா மழலைகள் காகித பூக்கள் அல்ல
கசக்கி எறிந்து வீரம்பேசும் கழுகுகளே !
நீங்கள் புலம்பி தெரிந்தே நாசி புராணவாதிகளே
நிறுத்து உன் நாசி கொடுமையை
கொன்று ஒழி நாசி குணத்தை
இன்றே இழிவு செயல் நின்று
பாரில் பாலர் வாழவிடுங்கள்
Translated to English in conversation with Margaret Mayhew
My pen falls off the tip
Within each drop of ink
An unintelligible scream
Unspeakable words
The feeling of dying before speaking
An old feeling returns
What is the reason?
In the time it takes for me to remember the face of a dead child
Another child has been murdered.
Every second my feelings change
The present goes too quickly – there is no time
Every second many kids die
The kids are already dead before we can say it.
So many faces dissolving into the earth in Gaza
Silence falls with each missile,
The children make no noise
As their final breath kisses the earth
The stirred land shakes our hearts.
The children lie quiet like buried seeds.
The United Nations gather for an auction on human rights
Pundits bet on the value of some human lives
Choosing which deaths are valuable currency
But paper corpses do not speak
The UN banks on the blank paper of the dead
Reciting paper laws about human rights
As people keep dying
The silenced laughter of the children of Gaza
Is sold in the market of war crimes
Fourteen years of UN reports has only served
to further bury the murdered children
of (Tamil) Eelam
How will the UN bury the children of Gaza?
UN representatives advocates paint themselves as heroes
Using wordplay to show their power
Words cloak their murderous actions
How many children have to die for them to be satisfied?
Is there not enough to eat?
How much pain do these people need
to feel they have enough authority and power?
The rapist of the angel of justice in the UN market
Repeating stories of the Nazi Holocaust
Stop talking.
Listen
Even ghosts are moved by the beauty of a kid's smile,
Gaza kids are not paper flowers
To be crumpled and thrown to the air like falling birds
The endless tears of self pity
Of those monsters who mythologise the Nazis
While themselves repeating the Nazi tortures
Stop your Nazi actions
They need to destroy the Nazi’s inside of them
Today, the genocide must stopped
Let the kids live in our world of the living
Sriharan Ganeshan was a film photographer and journalist in Sri Lanka before fleeing the war. Sri arrived in Australia by boat and spent six years in detention before his release in 2015. His writing has been published in Overland, Peril Magazine, Writing Through Fences, the Key of Sea Journal and Writing From Below. He has produced recordings of his poetry in Tamil which have been broadcast in France and and participated in The Whirling at the 2018 NGV Triennale, and at Eltham Library in 2021. He is working on his volume of poetry and stories called I See The Moon and The Moon Sees Me.
margaret mayhew: Al Huriya (acrylic yarn) I chose this poem because it reminds me of sumud; the quality of steadfastness that is needed to maintain hope amidst despair. The horrors of the israelI attacks on gaza, the horrors of the invasion of Palestine, chafe against the forces of hope and love that I see on the streets when tens of thousands of people gather in protest. I have spent countless hours to create an object on unceded WurundjerI land to gather words and hope together. By crocheting the text of ‘Al Huriya’ or freedom in arabic script into a Palestinian flag, it reminds people of the strength and beauty of feminised craft and maternal care.
Olive leaves cast shadows against a blue surface
