I Want a Room, God. Do You Hear Me?
“Even writing, even a warm home—I am afraid of losing them at any moment, of becoming homeless again, of searching for a language that resembles me.”
Gaza
On Waiting for Things That Won’t Come
“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. “
‘I Don’t Start from Zero— I Return to It’: New Poetry by Fatena Abu Mostafa
Last week, we ran Fatena Abu Mostafa’s “A Life That Doesn’t Know How to Live”; this week, we have another poem that opens: “I’m not okay / but I say it politely, / so no one thinks I’m asking for help.”
‘A Life That Doesn’t Know How to Live’: New Poetry by Fatena Abu Mostafa
In this poem, by Fatena Mostafa, the narrator endures, “not out of strength, / but because even collapse has grown dull.”
Baraa’h Qandeel on Finding Her Next Words
Baraa’h Qandeel was one of the 16 emerging literary translators accepted to our Summer 2025 Gaza Literary Translation Workshop, supported by Palestine Writes. One of her self-translated poems, “Suffocation,” appeared in ArabLit this summer, and you can read more of her work at We Are Not Numbers. Now, she is working to raise money for graduate school.
Isn’t It Our Time to Take a Break from Death?
While gasping for breath, I write. While my heart is panting, I count all my organs. Who will delete this wound from memory? Who will draw the hardships from my heart? Who will calm it?
From a Palestinian Love Story: ‘This Stone is Mine’
This excerpt comes from pages 34–37 of Saga Hamdan’s 2024 debut novel This Stone is Mine (هذا الحجر لي), a story of love and loss between Gaza and Jenin.
‘I Bequeath Life to You, for We Die without Life Knowing Us’
“I have always tried to keep an eye on death, making plans to distract it, to make it wait, so that it would get bored and leave what remains of me, my remains. We are all remains here.” -Nima Hasan
How Do I Leave the Prison of Gaza?
“The world is small,” they say. But Gaza taught me that the world is too big to be shaken by the small tragedies that happen here. Too big to care about a starving human being who only dreams of crossing a crossing.