“If a Tree Falls in the Forest”

Here is a poem from Palestinian poet Mosab abu Toha’s newest book, Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024):

Ramadan 2025

Around that dinner table, missing are the chairs
where my mother, my father,
and my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays,
and where my siblings and their kids
used to drink tea at sunset when they visited.
No one is here anymore. Not even sunset.
In the kitchen, the table is missing.
In the house, the kitchen is missing.
In the house, the house is missing.

Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise.

Forest of Noise is Mosab’s second collection of poems. Back in the spring of 2022, when his first collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (City Lights) came out, I wrote an essay about the book and Mosab called “A Farewell to Arms?” Then in late 2023, after the merciless October 7 attack by Hamas and the massive and unrelenting retaliation by Israeli Defense Forces, I wrote a second essay about Mosab called “A Poet in Palestine.”

Much has happened since then, both in the so-called “Holy Land” (as ironic a misnomer as ever there was) and in the life of Mosab abu Toha who, after managing to get himself and his wife and three children out of Gaza alive, though not before being arrested and beaten by the IDF, is now temporarily living in the United States again.

He has lived here before, having been a visiting poet at Harvard and earning an MFA from Syracuse. One of his sons is a natural-born U.S. citizen. But while he and his family are safe—at least until the Emperor Trump strips Mostafa of his citizenship and deports the whole family—the bad news just keeps coming.

Many of his former students, dear friends, and even family members have been killed by the IDF, not because they were in any way connected to Hamas, but merely because they were “in the way” of the massive and indiscriminate firepower unleashed by the Israeli military. No one even bothers to employ the euphemism “collateral damage”; they’re just dead Palestinians, which reminds me of something attributed to General Philip Sheridan: “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.”

The most recent bad news comes not in the form of literal death, but is a kind of intellectual death. Back in 2016, Mosab set out to create an English-language free library in Gaza. He named it the Edward Said Public Library after the late Palestinian-American Columbia University professor of literature and Middle East expert.

With books donated by friends and supporters from the U.S. and Europe—in spite of petty hurdles put up by Israeli Customs officials who regularly turned away books sent for the library, including a box of books sent by my Veterans For Peace comrade Chuck Rossi that was returned to him—Mosab was able to open a branch in Beit Lahia, and then another in Gaza City.

Mosab eventually learned that the library’s branch in Gaza City was badly damaged several months ago. Then in January, when Palestinians were finally allowed to return to northern Gaza, Mosab got word that the original branch in Beit Lahia has been completely destroyed.

He himself says, “I’m committed to rebuilding the library, its two branches, and even expand the project to build one in Rafah and another in Khan Younis. My only two concerns now are whether I can get books into Gaza and also whether I will find children who are convinced that this is safe and important enough to visit the library, especially after all the trauma and losses each of us experienced.”

Meanwhile, as Forest of Noise so eloquently and poignantly attests, Mosab abu Toha continues to write and offer to anyone who is listening his own powerful poetry. Here are a few more of my favorites:

My Son Throws a Blanket over My Daughter

Gaza, May 2021

At night, at home, we sit on the floor,
close to each other
far from the windows and the red
lights of bombs. Our backs bang on the walls
whenever the house shakes.
We stare at each other’s faces,
scared yet happy
that, so far, our lives have been spared.

The walls wake up from their fitful sleep,
no arms to wipe at their bleary eyes.
Flies gather around the only lit ceiling lamp
for warmth in the bitter night,
cold except when missiles hit
and burn up houses and roads and trees.
The neighborhood next to us,
where Yazzan learned to ride his bike,
scorched.

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, Yaffa,
wearing a pink dress given to her by a friend,
hears a bomb explode. She gasps,
covers her mouth with her dress’s ruffles.
Yazzan, 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.

Love Poem

To Maram

When I sit to write,
you know that
and you distract our kids
from my writing room.

When I read the poem to you
and ask, What do you think?
You say, It’s beautiful,
though you know
that frustrates me.

Beautiful is not enough,
not next to you,
not next to the poem.

I’m asking you about
what makes my poem a poem,
just like when you ask me
what makes you my love:

your tears, your scolds when I spend
too much time writing my poems,

when the tea grows cold,
your jealousy of the poem,

the way you searched for me
when I was kidnapped
(our daughter, Yaffa, told me
all about it when I returned),
how I searched for you all—

your carrying our home, our destroyed home,
with you in your memories
(I forget so quickly
and that’s why I take a lot of photos),

your hand holding the pencil with me
when my fingers freeze out of fear,
your name,
which reminds me there is a goal.