From ‘My Butterfly That Does Not Die’

Refaat Al Areer had set the scene, declaring, “If I must die,” and Alaa Al Qatarawi’s sorrow metamorphosed into a butterfly that perseveres. She writes, “If I die, my butterfly does not die.”

My Butterfly That Does Not Die is the first collection of poems in a series that puts Alaa’s grief into verse. Written from a mystical, philosophical, almost transcendent point of view, it speaks to the inevitable reality of anyone born in Palestine since 1948: loss is always one breath away.

The collection does not mourn lost life, but meditates on the natural progression of affairs after love loses its container. Each poem pays tribute to a precious element in the poet’s life, beginning with family, then moving to symbolic echoes of the self, such as water, earth, animals. The poems are almost Sufi in nature yet are also poems of the body. The poems bring together the embodiment of Ama Ata Aidoo, Audre Lorde, or Marianne Moore—or, more recently, Lale Müldür or Kim Hyesoon—with Rumi and Ibn Arabi. –Sahar Othmani

If I Die

By Alaa Al Qatarawi

Translated by Sahar Othmani

If I die

and you walk by the shore,

take off your shoes

and feel, with your soles,

a beach swaying within you.

Set up the altars for my tears, make sacred

the trail of your steps in the sand.

Awaken me from my slumber

as a fishing boat, or as

sails that embrace only winds

that had, once, kissed your lids.

Take a deep breath:

this is how nature tests the love

living in your lungs.

Rise against the wrath of storms

with the kiss that survived

between your lips.

Open your arms and reach

beyond the sky and horizon:

the seagulls are lost to the vastness of the ocean.

Your palms are their ports.

My heart, there, within their feathers,

how it steers a fevered yearning for you

The winds taught me not to fear for you—

for you have sculpted your shoulders into

cradles, tamed them to sleep.

Dr Alaa Al Qatarawi is a Palestinian poet and writer. Rendered Al Khansaa’ of Gaza, she was a finalist on Amir A’Shua’ra (The Prince of Poets) in 2017, and has published over 5 collections of poetry since 2011. She holds a PhD in Arabic Literature from the Islamic University of Gaza. Alaa won several literary awards in the Arab world such as The Souad Al-Sabah Award for Palestinian Creativity for her poetry collection entitled “A Tent in the Sky” (2025), The Saoud Al-Babtain award for poetic creativity for her poetry collection entitled “A Creek Attempts to Sing” (2022), the Fadoua Touqan Category award from the Palestine International Institute and the  Date Palm International Poetry award held by the Khalifa Institute in 2025. Her poetry collection, My Butterfly Does Not Die has been translated into French and is due for publication in March 2026 by Le Temp de Cerises.

Sahar Othmani is a translator and poet from Tunisia with a PhD in literary translation and interpreting from Queen’s University Belfast. Her debut poem, Out of Place (2023) nominated her for the Pushcart Award for poetry in the same year. She is published in a multitude of UK-based journals, such as The Other Side of Hope, The Birmingham Journal for Literature, The Apiary and Trumpet: Poetry Ireland. Sahar is the Arabic language editor of a poetry anthology entitled “Over Land, Over Sea: Journeys of Refugee Poetry” (Five Leaves, 2026), and the Arabic language Reviewer for The Other Mother Tongue.  She writes in English, French, Korean, and in Arabic. Samples of her writing can be found in her Substack, Semantically Satiated.