The Current - The world’s humanity is ‘under the rubble’ in Gaza, says poet

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Gaza has become a graveyard for the world’s humanity, says Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. He fled the enclave with his wife and children when Israel invaded last year, in a military campaign that has since killed 31 members of his extended family. He talks to Matt Galloway about watching that violence from afar, and writing poetry amid unimaginable loss.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Mossab Abutoa is an award-winning Palestinian poet. He was living with his wife and children in their family home in northern Gaza when war began. Within weeks, they made the decision to try to leave, but not before he was taken by Israeli forces and then released three days later. Through it all, he's been writing poetry. The result is his new book, Forest of Noise. Masab Abatoa joins us now from upstate New York. Just a warning that

some of the details he describes may be disturbing to some listeners. Massab Abatoa, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. How are you doing? Well, I'm breathing and I'm watching every day, every single minute. The massacres that are happening to my people, some of the people that I lived close to are killed every day. The neighborhood where I grew up are living to the ground. When you say you're breathing, I mean, that seems like it's, you know, a basic element of life, but to you, that's something to celebrate. Yeah, exactly. It's something that I do without any control. I'm just breathing just like any

other human being. But this breathing, this mechanical function of the body is accompanied by things that are traumatizing to me, that are affecting even the purpose of my breathing. It helps me continue to live, but at the same time, continue to suffer while watching my family, many of whom are still in North Gaza, besieged by the Israeli tanks, the Israeli snipers, the Israeli quadcopters and maybe this is something that many people don't know which is that these quadcopters

are armed kind of drones that would shoot at anyone who is trying to leave their house or their school shelter whether they are looking for food whether they are looking to check on other people who they left behind who couldn't make it with them to another place. And I lost contact with a young sister of mine who has three children,

because she moved from the school where she was sheltering with her three children and her husband to an area where there is no phone signal, there is no internet. So I don't know how my sister is surviving. I don't know how my sister is surviving. In the midst of everything that you're living through and the difficulty of being distant from what family members are living through, you continue to write and you continue to write poetry. And at the beginning of this collection is a quotation from the great Audre Lorde. The quotation is, poetry is not a luxury. What does that mean to you in the midst of this time right now?

Well, poets are regarded as brilliant people, as people of high status in the community. But for me as a poet, poetry does not make me a famous one because I'm doing something that other people do not do. I'm doing this because I have to do it. It's not a luxury that I find myself writing about the dismembered family members of mine, the students that I have lost, one of whom named Hatim Zanin. Just last week, he was killed by the Israeli army while he was looking for firewood to help his family survive.

while he was looking for firewood to help his family survive. And for me, this quote means that it's not a luxury to write poetry in the midst of all of this, not since October 7th, but even before. You know, in my first poetry collection, I write about how I was wounded in an airstrike in 2009. I was 16 years old. I barely survived. So writing poetry is not a luxury. And reading it, reading it to other

people, which is something that I do from time to time, it also brings back the trauma that I experienced living this horrible war and the wars before, the genocide that's going on, and also writing about it, and also reading it and sharing it with others. writing about it, and also reading it, and sharing it with others. Would you mind reading something for us? This is from the poem, My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter. Can you read just the last couple of paragraphs of that? Yeah.

So this poem is called My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter. It's based on a real experience of my son trying to hide his sister from an airstrike while we were sheltering in our house in May 2021. Every time we hear a bomb falling from an F-16 or an F-35, our lives panic. Our lives freeze somewhere in between, confused where to head next. A graveyard, a hospital, a nightmare. I keep my shivering hand on my wristwatch, ready to remove the battery if needed. My four-year-old daughter Yafa, wearing a pink dress given to her by a friend,

hears a bomb explode. She gasps, cover her mouth with her dresses, ruffles. Yazan, her five-and-a-half-year-old brother, grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body. He lays the blanket on his sister. You can hide now, he assures her. How do you, as a father, how are you coping with what your children have been through at such a young age already? In May 2021, it was the first time in my life I lived through a war as a father. Before that, in 2008 and 2009, and then 2014, I was single. I wasn't married.

But in May 2021, it was the first time in my life I experienced war as a father. I tried to assure my children that we are in a safer place. We were sheltering together in the inner hallway of the house, thinking that it would be the safest place, away from the windows, away from the kitchen. Just, you know, huddling together in the inner hallway. the kitchen, just, you know, huddling together in the inner hallway. And it is traumatizing for me to seem unable to protect my children, whether I am in my house, which was the case before our house was bombed on October 28 last year. And we were lucky because we weren't in that house when it was bombed.

We evacuated to a refugee camp, Jabali refugee camp. So it's traumatizing for me to see my children panicking after each airstrike. And also to hear my children's questions after we left Gaza last December, asking about their grandparents and their cousins and aunts and uncles, whether they have enough food to eat whether they have water whether they are still alive sometimes my children when they hear me talking on the phone with my sister for example my eldest sister is called aya so when i say hello aya my one of my children said oh is she killed because i i pronounced her name he thought that we are

talking about someone who was killed in an airstrike. And sometimes my child, when we were in Cairo, refused to eat. He was crying. He said, does my grandmother have food to eat? And I tell you that my children have lost so many friends from school and they don't know about that. A neighbor of ours, a friend of my daughter Yaffa, who is now seven years old, was killed in an airstrike with her father, her mother, and two other siblings. My daughter Yaffa does not know about that, and I did not tell her about that. And it is shocking that my brother sent me a photo of a foot of that girl, which landed in front of our house before it was bombed.

Just imagine what kind of trauma I, as a father, live, having tried to protect my children from airstrikes. But, of course, I will not be able to protect them from the trauma when they realize, as children, what they have lost when we come back to Gaza, or when we are in touch with our families and friends, when this comes to an end. Is that why you felt that you had to get them out, that you needed to leave Gaza? Because

you didn't want to, but is that why that inability to protect them was why you felt you needed to leave? Of course. I mean, people in Gaza had to pay a lot of money to leave Gaza. I mean, of course, I mean, if I was a single person, I would care about myself, and maybe I would decide to stay just like other people stayed behind to try and help others. But because I was a single person, I would care about myself and maybe I would decide to stay just like other people stayed behind to try and help others. But because I was responsible for my wife's life and also our children's lives, I thought that I should save as many lives as possible. And because we had that opportunity through the American embassy, because our youngest child was born in America and he has an American passport. because our youngest child was born in America and he has an American passport. So it turned out that the life of an American citizen was worthy,

I mean, more worthy of other people's lives. As I mentioned, it wasn't easy for you to get out. And I mean, this was a story that went all around the world and you wrote about it in The New Yorker as well, standing, trying to get out. And then you are picked out of a crowd by Israeli forces as you're trying to leave Gaza. Just briefly just tell us what happened. That was November 19th.

I was trying to evacuate with my wife and kids and move from north to south because the Rafah border crossing, one of the two only exit points between Gaza and the outside world. So we had to head from north to south. And in the middle of the street that Israel, the Israeli army, this is a big lie, said that it is a safe passage for people to evacuate from north to south. They had already installed a checkpoint where there are snipers. And that was the first time in my life I could see Israeli soldiers.

We have been killed and bombarded and massacred by the Israelis and we haven't been able in Gaza to see any of them. So I was working with my wife and kids. I was carrying my youngest child who is an American citizen and in the other hand I was holding the American passport of my son behind which there were our Palestinian passports. By the way, anyone whose name appears on a list to evacuate Gaza, it means that his name is cleared by the Egyptians, by the Americans, because they sent for us, and also the Israelis. I mean, I never thought that they would even kidnap me because our names were on the list. If they could see my face, then it means that they could see the passport, that this is an American family. At least one member of this family is an

American. But anyway, I heard an Israeli soldier in a broken Arabic, the man with a black backpack and carrying a red haired boy. So the red haired boy is my son. Put your boy down and put your backpack and come to us. Put the boy down and sit on your knees. And that's the title of one of my poems in the collection, On Your Knees, because that is the only pre-words that I heard from the Israeli soldiers. I was begging them to talk to me and for me to explain to them my situation. So I was taken, I was taken, and then I was, I heard my name in Arabic, and then they asked me to recite my Palestinian ID number, which is issued by the Israeli authorities, by the way. And then I was blindfolded and handcuffed. And then I was

taken somewhere. And then I was beaten. I was harassed. I was insulted. They kept saying, you raped our women, you killed our children, we will show you. I mean, come on, do you know who am I? Have you ever met me before? And then I was taken inside Israel. It was about 52 hours. And every hour counted for me. It was full of pain and nightmare. I didn't know whether my wife and kids were alive.

Yeah, so three days later, the Israeli soldiers called for me. And then later they said, we are going to be released. The previous day, one of the Israeli soldiers who was taking me from the interrogation center to the detention center said, we are sorry about the mistake, you are going home. Why do you think you were detained in the first place? And then why were you released? in the first place? And then why were you released? I can't say why exactly, but from what we have seen,

they have targeted university professors, they have targeted artists, they have targeted World Central Kitchen, they have targeted anyone who is speaking to the media, they have targeted journalists. So they are targeting everyone who is trying to speak about the genocide that's happening. I wrote two pieces for The New Yorker, one piece for The New York Times, one for The Washington Post. So I don't care about the reason they were taking me.

I care about the lives of other people who were similar and different in their destiny. Do you think the international pressure helped get you out? Of course, yeah. their destiny. Do you think the international pressure helped get you out? Of course, yeah. I mean, I think if no one knew about me, I think I would be still with the Israelis. I mean, they took a doctor from a hospital in North Gaza. His name is Adnan al-Bursheed. They took him from a hospital in North Gaza around the same time I was taken. And last April or March, he was announced dead under the Israeli torture. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Can you read another poem from this collection for us, please. This is about what you remember in some ways and about the importance of memory. This is a poem called Daughter. Do you mind reading that? Daughter.

I ask her to remember, not because I want to hear the story again, but because I want to watch her face relive the moment. That moment, her eyes sparkle with longing. I can see how she flies from the tent to a time when she slept through our farm in every direction with eyes closed, only stopping at the fence where our orange trees embrace our neighbor's olive trees. Some fallen oranges would tell her to open her eyes, to pick them up and put them in a plate at our doorstep, where children returning from school would stop to gulp some. I love the smell of oranges best when she remembers. In a piece that you wrote for The New Yorker,

you quote Bob Dylan saying, Take care of all of your memories, for you cannot relive them. Tell me a little bit about that and about the importance for you, but also for your children, to remember your life before you had to leave. Yeah, sure. I mean, I believe it's important to take care of our memories, not only by remembering them and sharing them with others, but also by creating good ones so that you could remember them. And unfortunately, for the past year, we haven't created any good memories. And we also, this is very devastating for me as I think about it every day, we have lost the tangible objects of our memories. We have lost the street. We have lost the trees. We have lost the tangible objects of our memories. We have lost the street. We have lost the trees.

We have lost the room. We have lost the books and the signature we got from friends. We have lost the postcards we got from friends. So sometimes I feel really thankful when I remember that I took a picture of something on my phone, that I took a picture of a signature of a friend of mine on his book. So I'm trying to take care of my memories. And also pictures of my grandfather's photo when he was young. I'm trying to take care of these memories by taking pictures of them, by telling them to others. And I can't relive these

memories. I mean, on two different levels. And I think this is unique to people who are living under war, and especially now in Gaza, in terms of not being able to relive the memory and repeat it with others, because the people with whom you created the memories are gone. I have lost 31 members of my extended family, two, three first cousins, two of them with their husbands and their children. So you can't relive the memory

with these people because they are gone. And also my friend, Professor Rifat Al-Arair, the author of If I Must Die. And the other level here is that we have lost the places where we could create similar memories. I have lost the university.

I have lost the trees. I have lost the mulberry tree under which I was playing marbles with my friends, some of whom were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Do you think about going back? going back? I've spoken with people who have left and they're trying to figure out whether that's even possible or whether that's as you start to put down roots in another country and you take a look at where you are now and where your kids get settled. Do you think about going back? Gaza is the nest and I'm thinking about going to it, going back to it every single minute. But of course, I can't right now go back to Gaza because Israel has took over the Rafah border crossing, the only border crossing that the Palestinians shared with the Egyptians. So, of course, I would love to go back to Gaza tomorrow.

I would love to go back to Gaza tomorrow. But I mean, I need to know that the day I return to Gaza, it would be that we will have a place, not necessarily a house, but a place where I could return to with my wife and kids. You have the book ends with a dedication to Gaza. I don't know if you have it there. Can you read that for us? Yeah, sure. To the souls who remain stuck under the rubble of their houses for weeks or blocked by clouds of smoke from continuing the journey.

To Gaza, I will continue to search for my books under your rubble, for my shadows in your bummed streets and fields of corn and strawberry, and for humanity in your raised graveyards. What does that mean, searching for humanity in your raised graveyards. What does that mean, searching for humanity? I think every bomb crater in Gaza is filled with the silence of the world, the people who are watching. I'm not talking about people who are trying and marching in the street, but people who are just watching and just going about it as if they have never seen anything. So humanity has been buried in Gaza.

It keeps being bombed by Israel because Israel bombed graveyards. Before the start of the genocide, I never succeeded in locating the graveyard of my grandfather who died in the 1980s. And now with Israel's destruction of more than 18 graveyards in Gaza, I will never find it. So humanity is under the rubble. And there is one message I would like the American administration to hear, and every administration in the world to hear. They keep saying that Israel has the right to defend itself.

And the next day, they send bombs to Israel to drop on people in Gaza. But when they say that we care about the civilian life in Gaza, half of whom are children and the other half are women, what do they do exactly? What do they do the next day? They do nothing. So humanity is buried there because of them. How do you, in the face of everything that you have lived through

and what your family members continue to live through um how do you think about the idea of peace a year into this war uh i think i think there is i mean peace is a misleading word um there should be justice there should be equality there should be care about the human life in palestine people should stop thinking about palestin Palestinians as only being victims. But they should look at them as people with political rights. When the Holocaust was committed at the hands of the Nazis in Europe, of course the Jewish people were victims of this Holocaust. It's really barbaric what happened to the Jewish people in Germany and in Europe.

And then later, the Jewish people, many of whom, came to Palestine to live on the ruins of my grandparents' homeland. But the Palestinians have been dispossessed for about 76 years. And the whole world really doesn't care about the Palestinian people. They look at them as victims. But they have never done anything to stop this suffering. The way they were trying to end the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe. And there is one thing that really annoys me as a Palestinian, which is repeated by Zionists, saying that we offered the Palestinians peace, but they kept refusing it.

I mean, come on. I mean, how do you offer me something that you have taken from me? Of course, this is not how things work. This is not how peace is achieved. And the world has to stop thinking this way. You wrote something in the New Yorker about hope. You said hope is a difficult word for Palestinians. It's not something that others give us, but something we must cultivate and care for on our own. We have to help hope grow. and care for on our own. We have to help hope grow. Are you somebody who is able to see hope? I see the hope in the eyes of people in Gaza who are trying to survive. I mean, we are a people who do not give up. We have not given up our rights since 1948.

And by saying this, I do not say the killing of other people in Israel. I think people in Palestine love life as much as other people do. We love our children. We love our trees. We love our schools. We have the highest percentage of educated people in the world, not in the Arab world. No, in the whole world. Everyone goes to school. When they finish school, they go to universities, even though we are impoverished people by the occupation and by the sea. So I see hope. By the way, my younger brother started his PhD before, three years ago. And a few days ago, I called him and he told me, you know what, I just finished my exam. Last week, I called him. And he was going back from a what, I just finished my exam last week. I called him. And he was going back from a classroom, a makeshift classroom, where he finished his last exam in the PhD program.

I see hope here. I mean, we don't give up. Of course, he spends most of his time looking for food and water. And now they are trapped inside their housing. But they don't give up because we look at the future. And we see hope in the free people of the world who never keep silent. But the problem is not with the people who don't keep silent. The problem is with the people who have the power to fuel this genocide. And I'm talking here about the administrations in America and Canada and in Britain.

You know, it's really devastating even to think about this. Can you read one final poem for us? This is from your new collection. It's called Rescue Plane. Yeah, sure. Rescue Plane. I wish I had a rescue plane to fly over Gaza, to drop wheat, flour, and tea bags, tomatoes and cucumbers, to

remove the rubble of the houses, to retrieve the corpses of my loved ones. I wish for a second rescue plane to drop flowers for children, the ones still alive, to plant on the graves of their parents and siblings in the streets or schoolyards. The wish behind the wish? I wish there were no planes at all. I wish there were no war. I wish we never had to wish. Mossab Abutoa, I'm glad to talk to you.

Thank you for speaking with us. And I mean, it's been a really hard year for so many people. I wish you the very best. Thank you so much, Matt. Mossab Abutoa is a Palestinian poet. His new book of poetry is called Forest of Noise.