Nasser Rabah, a poet from Gaza: “Our emotions are as if dead. We go to funerals mechanically, as if we were going to the market.”

The voice and words of Nasser Rabah come from his home, partially destroyed by Israeli bombing in the Al Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip , where he was born in 1963 and where he remains to this day, surrounded by ruins and the all-too-close sound of gunfire and bombing. The interview with this newspaper stretches on for weeks, with questions sometimes going unanswered for days, until, suddenly, the poet reappears and the conversation resumes.

“My new daily worries represent an unexpected burden: protecting my children as much as possible from shrapnel and stray bullets, finding food, maintaining a minimum of hygiene, gathering firewood…” she lists, almost apologetically.

Nasser Rabah is one of today's leading Palestinian poets and has published several collections of poetry in Arabic, Spanish, English, and French, among others. His voice has gained strength since the outbreak of this war in October 2023, and Gaza: The Poem Did Its Part (Ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo), largely written in recent months, has just been published in Spain.

“Rabah has a unique, spiritual, profound, and universal voice that rises above the vicissitudes of her people,” Inmaculada Jiménez Morell, director of publications at Ediciones de Oriente y del Mediterráneo, explains to this newspaper.

In her verses, there are ruined houses, fleeing birds, dead people, mutilated bodies, dust, emptiness, sadness, and fear. There is also a glimmer of hope. Her work has freed itself from artifice to become a daily lifeline. The beauty of her poetry, of which Rabah admits she is not fully aware, lies in that devastating and innovative simplicity, capable of describing, in a flash, the survival and suffering of the Gazans.

“In times of war, I see poetry almost as a patriotic duty, a national mission to document the disaster,” he says.

Question: How do you write poetry in the midst of war, flight, and hunger?

Answer. My writing pace has accelerated, as adrenaline flows constantly and scenes of sadness, pain, and horror spill before my eyes and my heart. My fingers are in a hurry to express themselves and shout, despite my new daily concerns, which represent an unexpected burden, such as protecting my children as much as possible from shrapnel and stray bullets, searching for food , maintaining a minimum of hygiene, or gathering firewood...

P. It is certainly another type of poetry

A. Yes. In war, we don't worry as much about quality, the structure of the poem, the musicality of the language, or the metaphors. We write what happens, what we see, in a simple way. The texts become more realistic. But, surprisingly, seen from the outside, these verses can seem aesthetically pleasing and even reach a level of cinematic fantasy, because reality in Gaza truly seems like fiction. We write, for example, sentences like this: "We train our eyes to miscount our missing limbs." A journalistic and even poetic statement.

Q. What did you mean by that phrase?

A. I'm referring to people, especially children, who have had limbs amputated, sometimes even without anesthesia. Every day we see people missing an arm or a leg, and it seems normal to us. I sometimes think we try to overcome the sadness and pain by seeing them whole, with their two arms and two legs, so it's as if we're training our eyes not to count their missing limbs.

Q. A few months ago you also wrote this verse: “In war the heart suffocates, its words burn, birds melt into it like a red dew, fluttering on a great mast they call homeland.”

A. Yes, in times of war, I see poetry almost as a patriotic duty, a national mission to document the historical disaster and express the concerns of people subjected to bombing and displacement. My mission remains to find poetry among the rubble of Gaza.

My mission remains to find poetry among the rubble of Gaza.

Q. When and how do you write?

A. After I finish the essential chores needed to keep my family and me alive, I feel exhausted and depressed. Also, almost every day there's news of friends or neighbors being injured or dying. But I write as many poems and texts as I can on my cell phone screen. I write with a weary soul, but I write because I feel it somehow frees me from oppression, and it's my way of holding on until the war is over.

Q. You and your family are still living in your home.

A. We left for 40 days in January 2024, and took refuge in another home and then a tent, but we returned . Part of our house was destroyed, but we cleared the rubble, repaired some walls, and we're still here, surviving. But these are tough days; the bombing doesn't stop, and we're very close to the Israeli border, about a kilometer away, and the danger is ever-present. Added to this is the lack of food and money.

Q. Your personal library was destroyed by Israeli tanks.

A: Yes, my house and other neighboring homes were targeted by Israeli army tanks during the invasion of Al-Maghazi camp. And I have an unconfirmed feeling that the library was deliberately bombed... The other two rooms in the house that were destroyed faced directly toward the tanks, but bombing the library required a very narrow viewing angle for the shell to hit it.

Q. Writers, professors, and artists have died in this war, and cultural, educational, and historical centers have been bombed. How do you interpret these human and material losses ?

A. I believe Israel's goal is to eliminate any possibility of a Palestinian political entity, that is, a Palestinian state , in the future, so it destroys homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, cultural institutions, and archaeological sites, in addition to annihilating as many civilians as possible. It also starves the population to make the option of leaving Gaza as soon as possible more pressing in people's minds.

My poems are sad, they speak of the wound that this war causes us, but also of survival, of the strength of the people and their humanity, which resists despite Israel's attempts to trample it.

Q. What is the last poem you wrote?

A. It's called How We Die , I finished it two days ago. It goes something like this: "How many died, it doesn't matter anymore, how many of us have died, there is no memory to count. War is an ugly sky, background music to a repeated holocaust. How many died, it doesn't matter anymore, burned hands can't count."

P. They are poems of immense sadness

A. They're a reflection of our lives. Sometimes I think we're so unhappy in Gaza that our emotions are dead. We go to funerals mechanically, as if we were going to the market. Our children can distinguish the sounds of gunfire and missiles, and death is a shadow that always accompanies us. My poems are sad; they speak of the wound this war has caused, but also of survival, of the strength of the people and their humanity, which endures despite Israel's attempts to trample it underfoot.