This list is not meant to be comprehensive. However, we’ll note that — while there are surely many more poets and writers who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire in Gaza — most of the deaths that have gone on record happened in 2023, before the infrastructure for documentation was destroyed.
February
Poet and children’s book author Magdy Naguibwas born in Cairo in May, 1936, and his poetry played an important role in the mid-century music scene in Egypt, as he wrote the lyrics for many popular songs, including Abdel Halim Hafiz’s “كامل الأوصاف” (Flawless) and Mohamed Mounir’s “شبابيك” (Windows). There’s a translation of the latter on the “Smoking Duck” blog.
April
Palestinian author Walid Daqqa was born in the town of Baqa Al Gharbiyeh in 1961. When he was 23 years old, in 1986, Daqqa helped plan an operation that resulted in the kidnapping and death of an Israeli soldier. Two years later, at the age of 25, he was sentenced to life in prison. While in in prison, Daqqa got married and published several books, including one about his life in prison, A Parallel Time, which was adapted to a play by Bashar Murkus, and The Oil’s Secret, an award-winning YA novel.
Sami Michael
Iraqi-Israeli novelist and translator Sami Michael died in April at the age of 97. Among other works, he translated Naguib Mahfouz into Hebrew.
May
If a poet’s passing moves nations, then the most celebrated Saudi poet, Badr Bin Abdulmohsin, has shown us that it can do so with reverence, grandeur, and eloquence, like metaphors in verse. Loss has cast its shadow over the Arabian Peninsula, and Badr Bin Abdulmohsin’s passing on Saturday, May 4, 2024, will be long remembered.
August
Born in Basra in 1954, Shubbar began her career writing in Iraqi newspapers in the 1960s, when she was still in school, and worked as a teacher between Kuwait and Iraq in the 1970s and early 1980s before leaving in 1986 for Morocco because of increasing repression. She wrote under the pseudonym Noura Mohammed until she left for Morocco in 1986.
Ramadan, who was born in Cairo in 1951, didn’t publish her first novel, Leaves of Narcissus, until 2001, at the age of 50. The novel, which received both praise and a storm of criticism, won that year’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature and was translated to English by Marilyn Booth. There is also a French translation by Stéphanie Dujols.
September
Author of the acclaimed Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury was one of the most celebrated novelists of his generation.
Zahir al-Ghafri was born in 1956 in Oman. He is part of the avant-garde prose poetry movement in Oman. Following studies in Baghdad and Rabat, and in 1982 a BA in Philosophy, al-Ghafri published several volumes of verse including Azlaf bayda’ [White Hooves] Paris, 1985, al-Samt ya’ti li al-I ‘tiraf [Silence Comes to Confess], 1991, and Azhar fi bi’r [Flowers in a Well], 2000, the latter two being published in Cologne, Germany.
Born in El-Obied, North Kordofan, in 1939, Mohammed El-Makki Ibrahim earned a B.A. in law from Khartoum University and an M.A. in political science from the Sorbonne. A former diplomat and global citizen, El-Makki was recognized for his significant contributions to literature, political discourse, and social activism.
November
Poet and playwright Hashim Siddig was a powerful voice, eloquently capturing the Sudanese people’s aspirations for peace and democracy.