Fresh Air - Palestinian Poet Reflects On A Life Of Loss

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Mosab Abu Toha was able to escape Gaza, along with his wife and three young children. The award-winning poet talks about being detained at a check-point, parenting in war, and the devastation of leaving his family and friends behind. His new book of poetry is Forest of Noise.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. It's remarkable that my guest is still alive, but you could say that about so many Palestinians who live in Gaza. Perhaps you've read Mossab Abu Toha's personal essays in The New Yorker, which have been published under the title Letter from Gaza. They won an Overseas Press Club Award. Abu Toha was able to get out of Gaza last year on December 3rd. What enabled him, his wife, and their three young children to leave is that he was a 2019 scholar at risk at Harvard's Department of Comparative Literature, and one of his sons was born in Boston, making him an American citizen. The U.S. State Department

was helpful. Abu Toha is a great poet and essayist and had writers and scholars advocating for him too. In Gaza, five days after the October 7th attack on Israel, Abu Toha, along with his wife and their children, fled to a refugee camp after leaflets were dropped by Israelis ordering the area where they lived to be evacuated. Two weeks later, their home was bombed, leaving it in rubble. They had to flee again after the refugee camp was bombed. They stayed in a school turned into a shelter by UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. He was able to get passports for himself and his family. At a checkpoint on their way to the crossing into Egypt, he was taken out of the line by Israeli soldiers who claimed he was

a member of Hamas. He was detained and beaten. About two days later, an Israeli soldier told him he'd be released and apologized for the mistake. Abu Toha's personal essays in The New Yorker are gripping. His poems about life in Gaza during the war are devastating. His new book of poems, Forest of Noise, has just been published. His first collection of poems, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and won a Palestine Book Award, an American Book Award, and the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.

Abu Toha founded the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza, the only English-language library in Gaza. Of the library's two branches, one was totally destroyed, the other damaged. He hopes to return to Gaza after the war and rebuild them. He's been taking refuge in Syracuse, New York, where he got his MFA from the University of Syracuse and is now a fellow there. Last week, we heard from Israeli writer Edgar Carrot. Musab Abu-Toha, welcome to Fresh Air. I really love your writing. Let me start by asking you, how is your family that's still in Gaza? Thank you so much, Teri. My family in Gaza has been devastated by just like about 400,000 Palestinians who are now under siege in North Gaza.

Not to say that they were not under siege before, since October 7th, but I say this because the Israeli army has divided the northern part of Gaza into two parts. My father and two of my siblings moved from North Gaza to Gaza City, while another sister of mine with her three children are still in North Gaza. And in one voice message that my sister managed to send me seven days after I lost contact with her, I could hear the Israeli gunfire. I could hear the airstrikes. I could hear the artillery shelling. They are just trying to move from that place. But there is something that Israelis are using, which is called quadcopters, which is a kind of an armed drone that shoots at anyone in the street. So people are unable.

I mean, people do not people do not feel safe when while they are inside their houses because they could bomb could be bombed any moment, just like what happened to our house last October. But also they can't even leave the house to look for food and look for medicine and look for water. This is the case of not a family or two. It's about hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of families. Your shelter, you're taking refuge in Syracuse now. Are you there because that's where you got your master's degree and you're familiar with the city? Yeah, I'm so grateful to Syracuse University for offering me a fellowship to come to Syracuse and to be here with my wife and kids. Yeah, so I'm here on an affiliation with the university. I see. I'm wondering what

kind of reaction you're getting in Syracuse. Is there anger at you because you're Palestinian and you're from Gaza? Or empathy because of the horror you and your family and most Palestinians in Gaza have faced. And there's also so much kind of anti-immigrant feeling in America right now. And Donald Trump is helping to stir that up. So tell me about how you are being received. Well, first of all, I'm not here as an immigrant. I'm a non-immigrant. I'm on an immigrant visa.

So I came here to work at the university. And second of all, I don't believe that anyone who calls themselves human beings would look at me or other Palestinians as a burden or as a source of disturbance to the American community, because America is made up of refugees. It's made up of people who were not here 200 years ago. So this country was made up of people who were coming to live here. It was not made up of totally of native people, as we know. I feel like I'm living in a safe place. People are open when it comes to hearing stories about what's happening in Gaza. I would like you to read a poem from your new collection, Forest of Noise, and it's called

After Allen Ginsberg. And before you read it, I want to say that the reference to Allen Ginsberg is a reference to his poem Howl. And the most famous line from that poem is the opening line. And the opening line from Allen Ginsberg's Howl is, I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked. Please read your poem. After Allen Ginsberg. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed in a tent, looking for water and diapers for kids, destroyed by bombs, a generation under the rubble of their bombed houses. I saw the best brains of my generation protruding from their slashed heads. That last line is devastating. Have you lost a lot of friends and family? Oh, I wish I had not lost a lot of friends and family members.

My loss started the day I was born. I was born in a refugee camp. I lost my childhood. I didn't live a normal childhood. So I lost my childhood as a Palestinian. During this war, I have one poem called One Art, where I say it was written three years ago. And I said in that poem, I lost three friends to war, a city to darkness, and a language to fear. If I were to write this poem

today, I would say I lost more than 300 friends to war. I would say I have lost 31 members of my extended family. Three of them, first cousins. Two of the three cousins were killed with their husbands and their children. I did not only lose people. I lost the tangible evidence of my memory. When I was a child, when I was growing up, now I as a man. I can't think, I don't know what I will be passing to my children as a father. You know, things that I kept for a long time, so I would pass it to my children, so they would be passing it to their children, my grandchildren.

You lost all that when you lost your home. Yeah, I mean, there is nothing left in my house. I say that I am houseless, but I am not homeless. I have a home to return to, which is Palestine. The house could be destroyed, but the home is there, waiting for every one of us, not me as a Palestinian, not me as a Gazan, but everyone in the world who really have a conscience to rebuild whatever their taxes contributed to destroying.

And I forgot to mention that I also lost my last grandfather. I had one grandfather for the past 23 years and he was, he passed away. He felt ill, but he, there was no, that was in April this year. There were no ambulances. There was no healthcare. There was, there wasn't even electricity for him to walk out and look for someone to help him. So he passed away. He was 71. I mean, compared to the people who are living here in this country, I mean, 71 is still young. But I lost my last grandfather because of this war. And this really tells us that the Lancet report, the medical journal that says that more than 200,000 people have been killed or they died because of the ongoing genocide.

It's not about the people who were killed by pieces of shrapnel or who are still buried under the rubble of their houses. It's also the people who died because there was no medicine, because Israel made nearly all of Gaza's hospitals unfunctional. So I just want to ask you about one word that you used, which is genocide, which is a very controversial word in the context right now. And I know so many Palestinians have been killed, and there's no place for them to escape to. You are the rare person who is able to escape with your family. But I wonder if you think it's like genocide implies an intentionality to kill,

to wipe out a whole type of person, a whole ethnicity or religion. And I'm wondering if you think it's genocide in that use of the word, or if you see it more as indifference to the lives that are being lost in this war? Yeah. Yeah. I know that it is a controversial term, but it's not controversial when we see, especially now with what's happening in North Gaza, where Israel separated Gaza City from North Gaza, where they are bombing people right now. So I think the word Holocaust started to be used, I think, 20 years after the Holocaust happened. So why do we really have to wait until the genocide has all that it needs to be called a genocide in order to call it that term?

And I'm wondering whether the word really is lacking here, because what Israel has been doing, and this is found in the rhetoric of the Israeli officials, and they want to exterminate people in Gaza. They cut off electricity. I mean, what do you call it when you cut off electricity, when you cut off food, when you cut off water, when you target ambulances. I mean, what do you call this? I mean, do we really have all to die in order for them to call it genocide? I mean, it's enough the way they are killing us in Gaza. I want you to read another poem from your new book, Forest of Noise. And this poem is called Younger Than War. Our kids hide in the basement, backs against concrete pillars, heads between knees, parents silent. Humid down there and the heat of burning bombs adds to the slow death of survival.

In September 2000, I bought bread for dinner. I saw a helicopter fire a rocket into a tower. Concrete and glass fell from high. So you were young. You were young when you witnessed this. Now you're a parent of three young children. How do you try to comfort your children and make them less afraid when you know that the whole family is really in mortal danger? I was able to leave Gaza in December last year. And we lived in Egypt for about six months before we came

to the States. And the first few days after we left Gaza, the children kept asking about their grandparents, about their cousins, and about every relative they knew. Sometimes they would bring up the names of their friends. And by the way, one of my children lost a very close friend of hers, and I didn't tell her about that. It's really horrific when my brother sent me a picture of my daughter's friend's foot, which fell on the door to our house in Beit Lahia. That was, I mean, they used to live, the house where they used to live, that friend of my daughter. They used to live about 200s away from us. So their house was bombed. And because of that explosion, she was killed. And her foot, one of her feet, fell in front of the door to our house before it was bombed. So I didn't tell my daughter about that.

And I'm not sure if we go back to Gaza one day, she will ask about this friend of hers from kindergarten. So when we came here to the States, I noticed that my children stopped asking a lot of questions about what's happening in Gaza. And I think this is good and bad at the same time. Why is it good and bad? Well, it's good because the children can live their childhood away from the war, away from the videos and the photos that I keep seeing. Sometimes when I look at the phone, I ask my son not to look at the screen, you know, because I'm watching a video, for example, of the 30 tents that were burned by an Israeli airstrike. Sometimes when I'm talking on the phone with my

sister, when I get the luck to talk to her on the phone, when I say, Hi, Aya, so my eldest sister's name is Aya. So when I say, Hi, Aya, one of my children would hear me say the name, and they thought that she was killed because I mentioned the name. Because

we usually say the names of the people who were killed, etc. So he would ask me, oh, was Aunt Aya killed? And I said, no, no, I'm just chatting with her, asking about her and her children. And by the way, my eldest sister is pregnant now, and she is about to give birth. And now she is in a place where there is no health care. There is no access to any ambulances or any medicine even. What about the hospitals? Are they all bombed out? So there is only one hospital, and there are just lots of wounded people that are getting every day there.

And it's far because, as I mentioned, Israel is bombing usually every vehicle that's moving on the street. So it's very dangerous for my sister to move from the place where she is to the hospital. And even if she goes to the hospital, there is not enough medicine because Israel is not allowing not only food, not only water, but also medicine. It's very difficult. How much do you think that the fear that you lived with as a child shaped your outlook on life and who you are today? I'm someone who has never lived in peace in Gaza. I mean, the only sound I could hear was the drone's buzzing sound. When I go to the sea to swim with friends or even to have a picnic there, I could see the gunboats.

Everything in Gaza reminds me of the occupation, whether it's the farms, because I could see the Israeli border, I could see the Israeli jeeps. And by the way, I've never seen an Israeli soldier in my life. The first time I saw Israeli soldiers was when I was kidnapped in November last year. So my frightening childhood shaped me, and I'm still traumatized from childhood, and I'm also traumatized as a father who could barely protect his children in Gaza. I was taken away from my children.

And I mean, I could see myself in the eyes of my children when they scream each time they hear an airstrike, each time they get hungry because there is not enough food. So, I mean, by the way, I mean, the starvation started early on after October 7th. I spent a lot of time in the street looking for food, looking for water for my children. So it is terrible to be a child in Gaza. Was it a hard choice deciding whether to leave, in part for your children's sake, or to stay with your parents and siblings?

You were able to leave and they were not. You have a son who's an American citizen and was born in Boston. So you had a way to get out. But was it a hard choice to get out? Because on the one hand, you're pulled toward your children's future. On the other hand, I'm sure you're pulled to being with your family, your siblings, your parents. Yeah, it is one of the hardest choices one can make. So one of the things that haunt me is that I cannot get in touch with my family every day. So what if sometimes I travel, last time I traveled to South Africa and returned to the States and it was a 16 hour trip and I opened my phone

once I landed in the States I opened my phone you know what not to look at what time it was but to look at the names of the people who were killed in the past 16 hours so it is a harder choice because you are away from your family

I mean I'm not saying that if I was with them, I would be protecting them. I mean, no one can protect themselves. No one can stay safe when they are under occupation and under the bombardment from the Israelis. But at least you could be close to them. You know, you can know whether they are alive, whether they are not. But if there was one reason why I left Gaza, it was just to save my children. Because I couldn't provide food to everyone

in Gaza, not to save my three children. So I had that opportunity to leave Gaza to rescue my kids, to rescue my wife, and to try as helpful as possible when I'm outside. Because if I'm inside, it's true that I could be close to my parents and my siblings and my relatives and my students too. But I can't do anything when I'm there, except just to stay close to them, to die with them, to suffer with them. Yeah. Well, let me reintroduce you again, because we have to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Palestinian writer Mossab Abu Toha. His personal essays about life in Gaza are published in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. His new book of poems is called Forest of Noise. Abutoha, his wife and three children,

are now in Syracuse, New York, where he has a fellowship at Syracuse University, which is where he got his MFA. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.

It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply.

This election season, you can expect to hear a lot of news, some of it meaningful, much of it not. Give the Up First podcast 15 minutes, sometimes a little less, and we'll help you sort it out, what's going on around the world and at home. Three stories, 15 minutes, up first every day. Listen every morning wherever you get your podcasts. When voters talk during an election season, we listen. We ask questions, we follow up, and we bring you along to hear what we learned. Get closer to the issues, the people, and your vote at the NPR Elections Hub. Visit npr.org slash elections.

It's a high-stakes election year, so it's not enough to just follow along. You need to understand what's happening so you are fully informed come November. Every weekday on the NPR Politics Podcast, our political reporters break down important stories and backstories from the campaign trail so you understand why it matters to you. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Palestinian writer Mossab Abu-Toha. His personal essays about life in Gaza are published in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. Those essays won an overseas press club award. His new book

of poems is called Forest of Noise. Abutoha and his family are taking refuge in Syracuse, New York, where he earlier received his MFA from Syracuse University and now has a fellowship there. He and his wife and three children got out of Gaza December 3rd, but only after he was detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers who mistakenly claimed he was a member of Hamas. Abutoha and his family are taking refuge in Syracuse, New York, where he earlier received his MFA from Syracuse University. He now has a fellowship there. In 2019, he was a scholar at Risk Fellow at Harvard's Department of Comparative Literature. Last week, we heard from Israeli writer Edgar Carrot. When you got out of Gaza, when you were on your way out, you were stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and accused of being a member of Hamas.

You were detained, you were jailed, you were beaten, you were badly beaten. You have a poem about that that I'd like you to read an excerpt of from your new collection, Forest of Noise. So I should mention that at the time you were teaching at a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. Would you read it for us? Sure. So this poem alternates between Abu Taha speaking and the Israeli soldier or soldiers speaking. Onra, on your knees. Yes, I'm a teacher, I say. On your knees.

But I won't reach the blackboard when on my knees. I'm handcuffed, blindfolded. I'm shoved from the back of my neck. On your knees, terrorist. On your knees. Show me a proof, I ask. A slap across my face. You get us proof.

On your knees. It begins to rain. My teeth chatter. On your knees. Someone next to me weeps. I need to be with my pregnant wife and baby daughter. On your knees. We are on our knees. On your knees. We are on our knees.

On your knees. They throw us into a truck. It travels and travels and then stops. They take us out. On your knees. Minutes later, someone kicks me in the stomach. I fly with pain. On your knees.

Then someone kicks me in the face. My head is down. My nose bleeds. On your knees. Then someone kicks me in the face. My head is down. My nose bleeds. On your knees. I hear soldiers chatting. On your knees. They take us far away from Gaza to the Negev desert. Someone there tells us.

On your knees. Most of the men with me are sleeping outside of Gaza for the first time. On your knees. In the toilet, no toilet paper, no water to clean. You are done. On your knees. Drops of water, a piece of bread. On your knees.

Interrogation. Two hours later, a soldier in English says, We are sorry about the mistake. You are going back to Gaza on your knees. And that was Mossad Abu Taha reading from one of his poems in his new collection, Forest of Noise. Do you have any idea why at this checkpoint, Israeli soldiers thought you were a member of Hamas? I think they were trying to torture anyone. I mean, I can't say that they took me because I was a poet. But I think from what they were doing by targeting journalists and writers, I think because I wrote for the New Yorker and also for The New York Times and The Washington Post. And I wrote, I kept writing

about what was happening in Gaza whenever I had internet connection. So they were targeting anyone. And by the way, this is something that happened 10 days ago. A young journalist, he was 19 years old. His name is Hassan Hamad.

He got killed by an artillery shell. And he was a journalist covering the recent land invasion of the Jabali refugee camp. Ten days before he was killed, he used to get WhatsApp messages and phone calls from the Israelis telling him, if you don't stop, we are going to kill you. Ten days after that, he was killed. So we know who they are targeting. So these journalists risked their lives because Israel is not allowing an international journalist Ten days after that, he was killed. So we know who they are targeting. So these journalists risked their lives because Israel is not allowing an international journalist to come to Gaza. When you were beaten, you cried out for your mother. Why do you think you cried out for her?

This is an automatic and also a conscious cry. When we feel pain, we say, mother, oh, Mother, oh, Mother. Because, you know, Mother is the warmest being in the world for us as people. It is the person who feels us, who asks about us, who cries when we leave. The last time I met my mother was a few months after she left Gaza. Now she is in Qatar treating my ill sister. And when I met her, she started to cry. And when I left her, she started to cry. So a mother is, for me, is the person who really loves her children, and she cares about them. She wants to feed them.

I mean, sometimes she would give me something that she's having, even though she needs it, but she gives it to me. So that's my mother. A mother is there to help her children live and survive. You had to search for your wife and children after you were released by the Israelis. You found them in a shelter in a school because the UN Relief Agency had been turning schools into shelters for families. What was it like when you saw them and realized that they were safe and they realized that you were safe?

It was very emotional, by the way, because when I was released, the Israeli jeep dropped me at the same checkpoint from which I was kidnapped. Okay, I did not have any way to reach out to my wife because there was no phone signal. There were no taxis, no cars because there was no fuel. Okay, again, I had to walk from the checkpoint to Deir el-Balah,

which is about at least 10 miles away from where I was dropped. I had to walk to that area. And then I did not know where my wife was, whether she was alive or killed in a near strike that happened in the previous three days. So I asked people in Deir el-Balah whether they knew of any schools where people from Beit Lahya, the city which I evacuated with my wife and kids, whether they knew that people from Beit Lahya are staying in a specific school. And I was told that, oh, there are some people from Beit Lahya who are staying in a school close to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. So I took off my slippers,

which was given to me by the Israelis after it was released. I took off my slippers and I started to run. And there were many schools. And then I spotted my daughter, Yafa, seven years old. I said, Yafa. And she said, oh, daddy.

And you know what she told me, Terry? She said, my mother has been looking for you. Can you imagine this? My mother, my wife, was looking for me. Not was crying for you. No, she was looking for me as if I went missing in the woods and she was looking for me. She did not know what I was going through. And I did not know what they were going through having to be away from me for three days.

You didn't even know if they were still alive. I mean, this is a big question. And by the way, this is something that I think I did not mention in the piece that I wrote for The New Yorker. When the Israeli soldiers told me that I would be released, I asked them, can you help me find my wife and kids? Because you took me away from them. Can you tell me where they are? They didn't give a damn about that. I told them, you took my money. Because when I was kidnapped, they took my wallet. When you take someone and you take their wallet, you take their credit card, you know, you take their watches, you take off their clothes. When you take their wallet, you take their credit card, you know, you take their watches,

you take off their clothes. When you take someone from his family and then you force them to get naked in front of three Israeli soldiers. I'm not sure if the English language has enough words to describe this. So I told them, OK, you took my money, you took my credit and debit cards. Can you give me some money, you know, to just maybe pay for a taxi or do anything? They didn't offer anything. So they didn't give you your credit card or your money back or your passport? No, no, no, no, no.

They stole the American passport of my son and our Palestinian passport. And when we left Gaza, we had to apply for new passports at the Palestinian embassy in Egypt. And every extra day that you spent in Gaza, you were exposed to the possibility of death. Of course. I mean, I think if I was still in Gaza, they would kill me, just like they did kill Rifat al-Arair, the English professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, because he was speaking to the media and exposing the truth of what was happening, the ongoing genocide, until

today. And by the way, Rifat al-Ara'il was killed in an inner strike along with his sister, Asma, and her three children and her husband and another brother. And a few months after that, his daughter, Shayma, his eldest daughter, was killed in an inner strike with her baby and her husband. So you are not only killed, but no, a few months after that,

your mother could be killed, your father could be killed, your children, your grandchildren, because Rifat became a grandfather after he was killed. Is this the person who you mentioned in one of your poems or essays, I forget which, who wrote, and I'm paraphrasing here, if I die, you must live to tell my story. Exactly. This is Rifat Larair, whose poem went viral, especially after he was killed in an airstrike last December. And by the way, just a few, three days before he was killed, I made it out of Gaza.

He was killed on December 6th. And sometimes people would report it was the 7th because of the time difference between Gaza and the state. So I left Gaza on December 3rd. The next day he called me in Egypt and he asked me, oh, is that true what happened to you? And he was very furious because of what the Israelis did to me. Two days after that, he was killed in an airstrike with his sister and her children. Let me reintroduce you again because we have to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Palestinian writer Mossab Abutoha. His personal essays about life in Gaza are published in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. His new book

of poems is called Forest of Noise. We'll be right back. This message comes from critics at large. Join the New Yorker's writers as they dissect the latest in pop culture, television, film, and more. From the romanticization of Las Vegas to the obsession of tarot cards, tune in every Thursday to deepen your knowledge. This message comes from the podcast Strict Scrutiny. Join law experts Melissa Murray, Leah Littman, and Kate Shaw as they break down the biggest legal headlines and SCOTUS decisions. New episodes drop every Monday.

Subscribe to Strict Scrutiny wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Once you got out of Gaza, you went to Egypt and stayed with your wife's distant cousin, and you were able to eat real food, which it had been a while for you. You describe an image of your mother in Gaza picking out grains of rice, picking out edible grains of rice from spoiled grains of rice, because there was so little food. You describe a photo of bread that somebody in your family sent that was made out of... My brother. Your brother, that was made out of animal feed, feed for rabbits, pigeons, and... Donkeys.

And donkeys. Yeah, it really, the photo looked really terrible, I have to say. What was it like for you to eat real food, food that brought back memories of better days? I mean, when you eat something that other people don't have access to, it feels terrible. I mean, again, I'm not living by myself.

I'm not living, you know, alone. When we left for Egypt, I was sitting at the table with my wife and kids and eating. And my son, Yazan, eight years old now, sometimes would stop eating and ask, is my grandmother eating? And he would start crying. I mean, this is a child who is 80 years old and he has the feelings, he has the empathy with other people.

I mean, I was happy because I could buy my children when I was in Egypt. I could buy them whatever they wanted. I mean, cakes, food, bread, fruit, vegetable, everything they wanted, I could get it to them. But at the same time, my child, Yazan, would break out crying because he was wondering whether his grandparents in Gaza did have food. And one time he started to cry, asking whether his friends from the neighborhood were still alive. And he thought, Daddy, he told me once, Daddy, you have money. Can you pay some money to get Dialla and Amira, his friends and their parents, out of Gaza to stay with us in Egypt? Because it's not safe there.

So it is terrible to be a parent in Gaza. You grew up in a refugee camp until you were nine. Your father grew up and lived most of his life in a refugee camp. Is that right? Yeah. Would you describe the refugee camp that you grew up in? So I was born in a refugee camp called Ashat Refugee Camp. Ashat means beach. And also my father was born in a refugee camp and lived most of his life there. It is the same refugee camp where my grandparents, after they were expelled from Yaffa in 1948, moved to. The memories that I have of the refugee camp are of houses that are too close, not very close, too close to each other, where a window of a neighbor is just, you know, a few centimeters. Sometimes it's about a meter

away from the window of the neighbor next door. You would smell the food that a neighbor is cooking. You could hear the mother teaching her children. You could hear a father shouting at his son. I mean, the refugee camp is just one big house. Did you have access to food, to health care? So in the gas trap, there are eight refugee camps. And the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, also known as UNRWA, is providing health care and food and education to the refugees who are living there. And I think I mentioned that 70% of the population in the gas rib are refugees and their descendants.

So we had access to clinics. We got monthly some ration, like sugar, like frying oil, like milk, like rice. But now with the devastation that's going on in Gaza, UNRWA stopped providing these things. It's unmanageable. And the thing that's happening in the refugee camp right now is that Israel is bringing as much destruction as you, was born in a refugee camp, and he lived all his life until it was bombed a few weeks before he passed away. So people in Palestine, now in Gaza, are not only being killed, but also the refugee camp where they lived for the last 70 years, the refugee camp itself is being wiped out.

And this is something dangerous, that the refugees are also losing the houses and the places that they grew up around for the past 70 years. I'd like you to read another excerpt of one of your poems. The poem is called The Wounds. And I should mention mention this poem is not in your new book. It's an earlier book. Yeah. So can you read an excerpt for us?

The houses were not Hamas. The kids were not Hamas. Their clothes and toys were not Hamas. The neighborhood was not Hamas. The air was not Hamas. Our ears were not Hamas. Our eyes were not Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Palestinian writer Massab Abu Toha. His personal essays about life in Gaza are published in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. His new book of poems is called Forest of Noise. He's now taking refuge in Syracuse, New York. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This message comes from the Open Book with Jenna podcast. Join the Today Show's Jenna Bush Hager for inspiring conversations with celebrities, experts, and authors. Hear from

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Visit plus.npr.org. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to the interview I recorded yesterday with Palestinian writer Massab Abu Toha. His personal essays about life in Gaza are published in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. Those essays won an overseas press club award. His new book of poems is called Forest of Noise. Abutoha and his family are taking refuge in Syracuse, New York, where he earlier received his MFA from Syracuse University. He now has a fellowship at the university. A few days ago, the New York Times reported on a series of minutes from secret Hamas meetings planning the October 7th attack.

The minutes were seized by the Israeli military and the New York Times got access to them. The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, discussed with his colleagues how a major attack on Israel would most likely require sacrifices from ordinary Gazans. And the Times says it was the first and only time that the hardship Palestinian civilians might suffer is hinted at in the minutes, the first and only time that that suffering is hinted at. And since October 7th, Hamas leaders have acknowledged that the resulting Israeli counterattack caused enormous destruction, but said that it was a price Palestinians must pay for freedom. So I'm wondering if the leaders of Hamas assume that the death and destruction that you've been describing, the misery, the suffering, the loss of life, is a price that Palestinians must pay for freedom, like Hamas said.

Hamas is a faction in Palestine. Whatever they say, they are not representing all Palestinians. So the rhetoric they are using, they represent themselves. Whatever the Israelis are saying, they are saying it as a country. So whatever Hamas is saying, whatever they are doing, they are not doing it as a state. We do not have an army. So you can say Hamas says, not the Palestinians. And I don't have to agree with everything that Hamas says because I'm not Hamas. I'm a Palestinian refugee who lost 31 members of my extended family, who was wounded in an

air strike in 2009 when I was 16 years old, who lost his house, who lost 300 friends. What I care about is the lives of the people who are being killed, the end to the occupation. I mean, until when are we going to live like this? Israel besieging us and bombing us and preventing us from building an airport. Why don't we talk about these things? Let's talk about what happened before October 7th. I mean, this has been going on for decades, not for a year. Everyone in the world should understand this.

And even if there is a ceasefire, let's be clear about this. Even if there is a ceasefire, this doesn't mean that there will be peace. Because the same problems that led to October 7, the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, still continues. We're out of time. And I'd like you to end with another excerpt of one of your poems from your new book, Forest of Noise. And this is an excerpt of your poem, We Are Looking for Palestine. Sir, we have no airports and seaports, no trains or highways. We have no passable roads, sir. We do have crutches and wheelchairs,

young men with one or no legs, no longer able to work, as if there was work. We travel to the West Bank or Egypt for surgery, even to set a broken leg, but we need a permit to enter. We stuff our suitcases with pictures and memories. They feel heavy on the ground. We can't carry them, neither can the roads. They scar the surface of the earth. We get lost in the past, present, and future. When a child is born, we feel sad for him or her. A child is born here to suffer, sir. Sir, we are not welcome anywhere. Only cemeteries do not mind our bodies.

Mossab, we have to end here. I wish you and your family well. I wish all your relatives and friends, your parents who are still in Gaza, I wish them safety. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Teri. Mossab Abu Toha's new book of poems is called Forest of Noise. You can read his personal essays in The New Yorker under the title Letter from Gaza. Our interview was recorded yesterday. Last week, we spoke with Israeli writer Edgar Carat. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, the latest in efforts to limit reproductive rights,

including abortion and IVF, and we'll also talk about the history of the fetal personhood movement. We'll talk with legal historian Mary Ziegler. She's written several books on the politics of get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski with additional engineering from Tina Keleke. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyer, Zanri Bodinato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Simon, Teresa Madden,

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