On Waiting for Things That Won’t  Come

This essay, “On Waiting for Things That Won’t Come,” originally appeared in Al-Araby al-Jadeed. It is a companion to “Isn’t It Our Time to Take a Break from Death?,” also translated by Batool Abu Akleen.

On Waiting for Things That Won’t  Come

by Haidar Al Ghazali 

Translated by Batool Abu Akleen

 

Oh, Seductive Life. Tomorrow, with two hearts eternally embracing, we will reach the green fields and the fragrance of flowers. We will laugh, even though we’re stuffed with a grief that broke us, and broken things cannot be mended. Defeated, sad, and overflowing with love, I walk toward you. In my eyes, there are snipers on the hunt for joy and radiance. They didn’t try their rifles yet; they haven’t even run in the wilderness.

Tomorrow, Life, we will come to you. Completely naked. Bare from the tops of our souls to their little toes. We won’t ignore our shadows and our hearts, which have experienced enough sorrow to recognize life.

Tomorrow, my flirt, we will head to your field, starving, but we won’t eat. We will come across your rivers, thirsty, but we won’t drink. Because in our hearts, there are goddesses who dance and show love for us. They will approach our hearts, satisfying our hunger. They will cross our names, plucking from them distress and exhaustion.

Seductive Life, tomorrow we will come, after we bury our children and wipe dust and blood from their bodies. On their skin, we will inscribe stories they would have liked, about the crimson love, about the wounds they suffered because they succeeded in school, about their fossilized tears that decayed their skin, about their torn clothes. They got these clothes because they had big dreams.  This is life’s way of making jokes.

We, Life… We fear loneliness and darkness. But we put our children in narrow, gloomy rooms. We closed the doors after we pressed the heavy marble down on their chests, locking them in. Why does this happen to the hearts that hope hurt the most? Why don’t you answer me?

We will come to you, my flirt; we will plant in you a life no one ever heard of, no one ever experienced. People living there will be painting the sky and harvesting the clouds. Out of joy, they will create songs, orchards, homes, gardens, casual sorrow, and a glassy boredom women’s perfumes and tender lips would break.

For you, my flirt, our hearts are tired out by wars. They weigh our graceful bodies. So can you fly to us, like birds or clouds? Like grief? Wouldn’t you immigrate, leave your home? Aren’t you light in the hearts to be carried by the wind? Aren’t you slim enough to run toward us like a gazelle dodging arrows and stones?

There are times when mountains rest. To the rivers and wadis, they throw their stones, from which water slips out and trees grow. And my heart, oh, you flirt… its windows are wide open, but neither morning nor threads of sunlight visit it. Come like a song or more. Come and teach the plants how to climb our arms. Come and let your watery waist drown our palms. Will you come?

We will come to you, you flirt. Wait for us, now we are sweeping up the gunpowder and the bullets. We’re collecting the flesh from the rubble and the trees. We are still crying. Our tears take the shape of joy and fall. They take the shape of love and fall. They melt, then disappear.

You might have come to us once, accidentally, I think. You passed over a bird’s wing or a cloud. You glanced at us while we were pulling our heavy days toward their tomorrows. Didn’t it cross your mind to land and ask about our grief? Didn’t it cross your mind to climb our shoulders to see the horizon more clearly? Or did you know we have no bread, no food, no homes, no cafes, no streets, no joy, not even deserts to offer when you come? Didn’t you know we would knead our hearts for you? We would build colored walls and offer you our resistance to dwell in.

Seductive Life, don’t disguise yourself. We know you too well. We see you in the airports, embracing the newborns and the newdeads. You carry their pain and plant bewilderment inside them.

We see you clearly from behind those high walls, from behind the tanks, the soldiers, and the barricades. You are walking, planting the land with affection, crystal, cypress, and love. You wipe the chairs, wash the countries’ faces, clean their teeth, and put kohl and lipstick on them. You guide the children to schools and gardens, and the lovers to embrace. I am not asking you to settle here, but I owe you answers. I am still looking for them. Why did I allow myself to fall in love while I knew you were far off? Why did I fill my heart with longing, while I knew you wouldn’t come?

Oh, Seductive Life, I am waiting for you under a plane that knows nothing except killing and bloodshed. I am still waiting. Oh, Life. I am running out of time.

Haidar Al Ghazali (@haidar.ghazali) writes poetry from Gaza.

Batool Abu Akleen (@batool_abu_akleen) is a poet and translator in Gaza. Her debut bilingual poetry collection 48Kg was published by Tenement Press in June 2025. She is a winner of the London Magazine Poetry Prize, 2025. She is a co-author of Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide, and extracts from her diaries were performed at the Belgrade Theatre.

This short essay originally appeared in Al-Araby al-Jadeed. You can read it here.