Three Poems by Nima Hasan

Three Poems

By Nima Hasan

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine

“A Poem”

Evening waits for me
as if I were a projection screen.

You cannot see the colors.
A red victory signal
and then everything halts
until the funeral rites are over.

This is how the homeland returns to rest.

I don’t cry. I line my eyes with kohl
and leave the seduction of stories
to the dark.

Women have secret pockets
they will never show you.

I have enough stories and songs
to build an entire city
out of illusion.

The crowds applaud.
I light a fire and stand back.

This is how winter passes.

“A Poem”

This country plays hide-and-seek,

and I don’t get the trick.

Everyone is gone.

Alone, I stumble

through the performance,

and the light escapes me.

The voices in my head

look for a chimney to come out.

I am hungry but no longer

feel the burning.

Hold me before the game ends.

Like everything else,

grief needs time

to become a language.

TikTokers only applaud

when the video ends.

After all, the audience

is part of the performance, too.

“A Poem”

I committed no sin
and yet they carved out of my flesh,
out of my life:
a loaf of bread,
a spoonful of sugar,
a homeland that once knew how to sing.

Nima Hasan, a mother and single caretaker of seven children, is a writer, poet, and social worker from Rafah. Her published works in Arabic include the novels Where the Flames Danced and It Was Not a Death and the book Letters from a Perpetrator. Her poetry has been published and translated widely in print and online publications. She was awarded the Samira al-Khalil Prize in 2024 and a selection of her writings during the genocide were published bilingually, in Arabic and French translation by Souad Labbize, titled Be Gaza (Les Lisières, January 2025).

Huda Fakhreddine is a translator and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.