لا تصالح..
إلى أن يعود الوجود لدورته الدائرة:
النجوم.. لميقاتها
والطيور.. لأصواتها
والرمال.. لذراتها
والقتيل لطفلته الناظرة
—أمل دنقل
Over the past year and a half of U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli occupation, we have watched the world avert its gaze as tens of thousands of lives were erased in real time—each an echo, an unfinished conversation, a dream severed mid-sentence. Beyond Gaza—Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, and more—our entire region trembles under colonial violence and local dictatorships, crushing our people’s bodies by proxy.
In this online extension of our GRIEF issue, we invoke the apostrophic form of rithā’, the classical Arabic poetry of grief, inviting our community to call out to the lost. The responses floored us—unspoken words to incarcerated loved ones; exiled elegies for cities distant and dear; love letters to strangers whose final words flickered across a screen; a fleeting glimpse of a child in a photograph, smile askew and frozen; an assassinated poet whose last lines still haunt us.
We consider grief not as a final act or resolution, but an opening. We invite you to enter these letters, inspired by Amal Dunqul’s Do Not Reconcile—a rithā’ where the martyred address the living, yet one where rithā’ becomes a springboard not only into lament, but into fury.
These letters are not merely an archive, but a call: to not normalize, to not reconcile. To steep in the loss, and let it sharpen us. Let them rest on your tongue and settle in your throat.
May what we mourn propel us toward our collective liberation.
—Abdelrahman ElGendy
Copies of the magazine are available at Gumroad, our ArabLit shop, and elsewhere.
I write this knowing you will never read it, knowing that words are helpless against the vast absence you’ve left behind. And yet, I write. Because I cannot let the silence win. Because I refuse to let them erase you, to reduce you to just another name in the endless lists of the dead. You were never just a name. You were a warmth, a presence, a light too feral to be contained.
Yaba, a letter from Carmel Delshad
I’m trying to replace the image of you on your deathbed. The oxygen mask fogging up your glasses. The fluorescent lighting casting a white shadow upon your once-tan skin. Your gray hair curling up at the ends by your ears.
ya khalo bishir, a letter from Melody Cheikhali
ya khalo bishir,
it’s been fourteen years and mama still calls Ali by your name instead. i watch as she
shakes her head for a split second, realizing it is not her brother sitting across the table,
but her son.
Dear Angelic Lost Soul, a letter from E.M.J.
I write to you from a world that continues to turn, even though yours came to a halt on the day of that tragic explosion. I know you will never receive this letter, but I feel compelled to write to you nonetheless. Your name was a mystery to me until I discovered it carved in stone, and your face only became familiar through the haunting images of destruction that filled the news. Your absence resonates like a sorrowful melody in the heart of this city—Beirut—with its weathered walls and resilient jasmine, which now carries your memory like a deep, unhealed wound. Your presence, though fleeting, has left an indelible mark on my soul.
To Anthony Shadid, to Our Houses of Stone, a letter from Julia Choucair Vizoso
As you were rebuilding your family home after the 2006 war, my uncle Ahmad was building his. I admit, I was envious of your restoration project, of there being something to restore, bones to fill in, traces of tile to follow, family trees to be populated. All Ahmad had was the spot he chose. As close as he could get to the border, as close to the land on the other side that belonged to my grandfather until 1948. So close that we would eventually hear Israeli soldiers calling to my cousin’s dog. So close that they knew his name.
Sonnet for Sidra from America, from Katherine Shehadeh
Dear Sidra, what could possibly be more
unfair to you than having the chances
of dance ripped like stars in the dark,
Dear Dr Adnan al-Bursh, a letter from Felicity Callard
Your hands have lived with me for months. After Israel tortured you to death, I searched for them in every photo or video they showed of you. I glimpsed one photo of you that your children and wife were looking at on their phone as they grieve. Your arms greet the camera and they are outstretched. Your hands offer the camera an even larger smile than your mouth.
Dear………….,
we buried………today
in an empty grave
They did not permit
the………body
Dear Shaimaa Al Sabbagh, a letter from Salma Ahmed
I think of you often. You visited me in my dreams several times despite the fact that I never met you in person. I met you through the photos of your death. The day I saw the well-known picture of you, I remember crying. It wasn’t the first time I cried for a stranger, but it was the time that impacted me the most.
Dear Dad, a letter from Amany Al-Sayyed
Dear Dad,
I have a story to tell you.
It’s about something that happened to me in Lebanon after I left a very happy life in Canada; after you worked so hard to bring us peace and a passport. I still think I let you down by leaving it all and moving back to your place, your city, Beirut.
Dear Child, a letter from Ismat Ara Mahmoud
Yes you, the one in the pink frilly dress they pulled out, still clutching Barbie with frozen fingers.
In Mourning a Brother… a letter from Anonymous
I wonder— Is there such a thing as a bad eulogy?
I don’t think so.
Grief is an act of love—and that, on its own, is enough.
أتساءل، هل يوجد “رثاء سيئ؟”
أظن لا، فالرثاء فعل حب، وهذا يكفي.
Dear Unknown, a letter and painting from Matthew Elia
You posted a picture to twitter, and I saved it to my phone, and in the time since then, I’ve spent hours looking at it, hours painting it, and now, I can’t find on the internet any trace it ever existed.
Dear Khaltoo Safaa, a letter from a fellow Safa
You don’t know me, but I know of you. When the Gaza Ministry of Health released the names of the martyrs, I was so overwhelmed with the sheer numbers that I felt a part of me had been killed. So naturally, I looked up our name and I found fifty of us.
Ode to the Gazan Child, by Palestinian writer Najwa Juma
My beautiful child with thick, straight hair, whose eye popped out and whose jaw clenched onto his tongue after the treacherous explosion caused by an Israeli F-16 missile on his house in Gaza.
A Palestinian in the Diaspora Writes a Letter to Gaza, by Shurouq Ibrahim
My Dear Reader,
How am I to tell you this with pitiful nouns and verbs—
Elegy for the faceless Palestinian girl
I wonder about you and your life/death
after this horror scene.
Did you stop screaming?
Dr. Hammam Alloh, a letter from Aicha Bint Yusif
Al Shifa means healing in Arabic. I think that’s such a beautiful name to give to a hospital: a place where people are treated and healed. They say that you were the only nephrologist there, is that true? How could you have done that? I’m doing my nephrology rotation this semester, and I think of you often: How you cared for your patients; how you dreamt of a better future for your kids; how you sought knowledge and excellence in your field.
To the child who came out of the rubble, a letter from Olivia Arigho-Stiles
You asked, am I going to the graveyard? Your face is chalky white, powdered with dust, your eyes dazed and wide. Surrounded by white ashen rubble, the buildings around you are half-pulverized, like giant tombs.
Dear My Heart, a letter from Rita Murad Maalouf
I miss you. Nobody around me seems to mention you anymore; they are worried. Worried for what, I don’t really know.
To My Syrian Great-Grandmother / إلى جدة أمي السورية, a letter from Melanie Partamian
At first, I wasn’t sure which language to write this letter in. I feel more comfortable in English, but I thought Arabic would be more honest… You would understand me better in it, even if you never read this letter.
أريدك أن تعرفي أني لم أنسكِ، صدمت حين تلقيت خبر القبض عليك في أبريل 2020* ولازمني القلق، ولا أصدق أنكِ اليوم، بعد مرور خمس سنوات، مازلت في السجن بعيدة عن ابنتك الصغيرة التي حُرمتِ منها وهي في عمر العامين. وأنا آسفة يا مروة، آسفة لأني عجزت عن فعل شيء أو قول شيء طوال هذه المدة، ليست لدي أي مبررات، ولكني أريدك أن تعرفي أنكِ كنت دائماً على بالي، أنتِ وابنتك ووالدتك، وأني صرت أماً، ولا أؤمن إنه ثمة شيء أقسى من حرمان أم من طفلتها في هذه السن الصغيرة، بل لا يتحمل قلبي تصور ما تمرين به.
To Marwa, a letter from Reem Gehad
I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten you. I was shocked when I heard the news of your arrest back in April 2020. Since then, worry hasn’t left me. And now, five years on, I still can’t believe you’re in prison—still torn from your little girl, who was just two years old when they took you away.
I’m sorry, Marwa. Sorry that I haven’t done anything. Sorry I stayed silent. I have no excuses. But I need you to know—you have always been in my heart. You, your daughter, your mother.
I’m a mother now. And I can’t believe anything could be more brutal than separating a mother from her child at that tender age. My heart can’t bear to imagine what you’re going through.
“ما هو أهمّ من دموعي”: من الكاتب يسر برّو إلى أبيه صلاح برّو
أبي يا أبي،
ما الذي حصل؟
ليس عليك أن تجيب، هذا السؤال لا يبحث عن جواب، بل يبحث عنك.
What Matters More Than My Tears From the writer Yeser Berro to his father Salah Berro
Father, oh my father,
What happened?
You don’t need to answer. This question isn’t looking for a reply—it’s looking for you.
إلى الطفلة الفلسطينية التي فقدت أطرافها الأربعة في المذبحة، قصيدة للشاعرة هبة مصطفى
لا أعرف اسمك
أعتذر
لم أنسه
لكن، للأسف، لم يذكره أحد،
Uncle, I’m sorry I don’t know you. Uncle, I’m sorry I don’t know your name. You, whose life stopped in an instant as your body kept going. You, who poured your love into a body gone still in your arms. Uncle, I see the tether of your love, I see it tie you to your child. And I see the severed end where their love should be pouring back into you. I see the severed end from which nothing comes.
My Father Would Want You to See His Chili Peppers: A Letter to Medo Halimy by Putri Prihatini
You never met my father, but I knew he would’ve liked you and your mint plants.
To a nameless stranger in Gaza, whom I love, a letter from Minho
No one was left to tell us your name, but I know you had one.
My Little Layla, I Cannot Let Go, a poem from Yogendra Shakya
In cold blood
in plain sight
you let the monstrous genociders murder my little Layla
I cannot let go, I cannot let go.
Dear Grandmother Aicha, a letter from Aicha Belabbes
I feel silly writing this letter, because you couldn’t even read it anyway, even if you were alive. After all, you couldn’t read, and even if you could read, it wouldn’t be in a language you would understand.
Dear Habibi, a letter from Jackie Honsig-Erlenburg
Late one night in the month of December 2024, I see you on the screen of my phone, lying in a hospital bed after an operation to remove your leg. You are so small, only one year old. So sweet. So vulnerable. You are in shock. One arm in a bandage, the other raised in a show of uncertainty and resignation. There is a kind doctor, Dr Tamir, stroking your forehead, calming you down, watching over you, sitting with you while you lay there, quiet and not moving, eyes open staring into space.
Yours, Cicily Kutty: A letter to Ichaya
I made your favourite puttu and kadala for breakfast today. The kadala curry was a little bland. Yes, I forgot to add chilli powder. If you were around, you would have tasted it during the preparation and helped me correct it. I kept the puttu in the steamer and was busy sautéing onions in the kadai when Simi’s call came. And you know how it is. She had to narrate all the Sharjah stories without omitting a word. I ended up doing the rest of the cooking with the mobile attached to my ear. Ayyo! My left ear is burning even now. She wants me to go there and spend a few weeks with her. I told her I could not travel to foreign lands in this old age, that too with this ailing leg. First of all, who will take me there?
Do not reconcile…
Not until existence returns to its turning rhythm:
The stars—to their appointed hour,
The birds—to their songs,
The sands—to their scattered grains,
And the slain—to his daughter’s gaze.
-Amal Dunqul
Where not otherwise noted, translations by Alaa Alqaisi.