October 17, 2023

No time

The mood of the celestial robots has soured

And we - the sons of the underworld - must find a way to talk to the metal.

It seems that the signaling does not work 

And engraving four Latin letters in the squares asking for help,

does not suit our souls.

We don't have time, friends.

The flying insects must stop playing the game of lighting fires, while we dismantle the explosive messages and arrange the words.

Every poet must think about the last poem and stop using metaphors.

November 3, 2023

Ten meters in life’s calculations

-So you say-

As for death, it has one calculation:

The distance is always point blank.

The night

The silence

And the dim light in the walls

All misleading signals

And you are as you are, you know nothing about yourself.

You watch over your shoulder

You tremble from the movement of the shirt on your body

You smell death up close

But you are like someone fighting a ghost

Not knowing where it is.

November 19, 2023

Adam: Dad, listen…

-Tell me

-Do the jews bomb poets?

-No son, they can’t

December 2, 2023

From dust

God built your thin shoulders

And in the shadows, near a sad unseen mountain,

Years have passed you by.

You lived, only repeating the words that belong to you:

God has always been right about all that concerns me.

God has always been less lenient when it concerns sad girls.

You always lived alone

The same obsessions and hallucinations rise and fall in you:

From atop a mountain,

I show you what I see:

no one.

December 12, 2023

Nine days and eight nights in Rafah. I retreated ten kilometers south of the holocaust. The Khan Yunis Holocaust, which will reach everyone, just as it did in Gaza and its north. I retreated - may God forgive me for this tactical withdrawal - in order to save my soul, as I have nothing else left.

For nine days I sleep in the street, after arduous negotiations with people to convince them I am not wanted by Israel. My name is Nidal Al-Faqawi. A poet. Haha, a poet does not kill unless his child is hungry. Thank God I have biscuits and a loaf in my backpack. I just don't have a place to sleep, and this is not a problem for poets, but my wife is eight months pregnant 

and my child, Adam, will definitely not be a poet after this.

On the fourth day, I found a crowded place for Adam and his pregnant mother, thank God. 

I remained, the schools are overcrowded, and do not accept a single man. People are afraid of you and do not allow you to sleep on God's sidewalks alone. 

You must explain yourself, enumerate your acquaintances, and get a reference over the phone to say: yes, yes, Nidal Al-Faqawi, true, true, let him sleep in the neighborhood, I know him well, shame on you for leaving him in the street in the first place... call disconnected.

Finally, I slept alone in the street without fear for Adam and his mother - what a blessing!

In the morning, I hear: Do not return to this sidewalk tonight, manage your affairs far away from here..

Indeed I managed my affairs; my friend Mahmoud Alshaer picked me up at ten o’clock at night, while I was negotiating with people to sleep on their sidewalk. 

He told me over the phone: Go to Al-Salam Mosque in such-and-such area. There are displaced people sleeping in the mosque. 

What horror!! Planes flying over my head, and the streets are empty. It is very late, and I have to carry my things and go to a mosque to sleep!!

Anyway… I laid down near the door and slept like a wolf, with one eye open . Oh, how long is the night!!

On this night of terror, I heard the most beautiful call to prayer in my life at dawn. This is the literal and figurative meaning of the call to prayer; a confirmation that the night is indeed over, and a confirmation of a new dawn, and approaching daylight.

On the steps of the ablution area, I ran into my poet friend, Saed Al-Swairki, who is a correspondent for the news channel “Russia Today.” We consoled each other, then went down the stairs, shaking our heads without talking.

I prayed at dawn with the people, waited for the first sound of a donkey’s hooves on the asphalt, and immediately left the mosque into the unknown.

Tonight, I finally got a carpentry workshop to sleep in. Thank God.

I slept on the ground, among the wood, and thought a lot about Noah :

Oh Noah

From all sides, water came   

And you did not drown

Oh Noah

Like you, with wood alone

I will survive the fire.

January 17, 2024

Rubble!

Rubble!

Rubble!

The poet says:

The poem must emerge from under the rubble.

Poetry says:

Oh how romantic

Oh what a gentle, dreamy word!

The poem says:

I have to push the tons of crumbling concrete on my head

Iron armored ceilings

And columns stained with heads and organs

I have to move crying walls

adorned with the saddest verses of God.

February 16, 2024

Yesterday, I left Rafah. I rode the wave of displacement again, heading for a tent in the bushes of Khan Yunis, near the freezing sea, or what is called “Al-Mawasi.”

There, during my first meeting with remaining friends, “Bassam” - the last to leave Khan Yunis - told me that an Israeli army battalion was holed up in our house in Al-Amal neighborhood.

He says: As we were leaving the Red Crescent Hospital with our hands tied behind our backs, we saw the soldiers in your room on the roof of the building setting up snipers, and throwing books, notebooks, and pens into the air!

I said while laughing: Sons of bitches!! Seven hundred books!

If one soldier had read the book titles only, they would have shit in their pants and returned immediately to Tel Aviv hahahaha 😂😂

Jamil interrupted me with a light joke: Abu Adam, listen, I know why they chose your building and why they stayed in your room specifically. While they were walking trying to choose one of the buildings, the battalion commander saw the balcony that I made for you, and noticed the roofing was well built, so he decided: We will go there, the last room upstairs; it looks like the blacksmith who did it is a badass bastard, and he certainly must have had a work permit by us in Tel Aviv, hahaha😂😂

“Mahmoud” woke us up from our fainting spell while we were laughing at Jamil’s smart way of praising himself and his work: Are you laughing? 

You know the house that they enter, they burn down as soon as they leave it, and they may blow it up!!

All at once, we asked him: Who told you so?!!

...

I did not like the silence that fell on our faces for a few moments. I said, “well, its a matter of luck; some homes they blow up, and in others they leave chocolate, jam, “ lekhem” bread, and cigarettes behind.

Don't worry, I promise you will eat chocolate and “lekhem”Haha.

 Jamil interrupted me: Aha, No way Abu Adam!!! We want cigarettes!! A single cigarette costs ten shekels!!

- No, no.. Forget it, the cigarettes are for the Hajj, not for us.

= Who is the Hajj?

- My father, your teacher in primary school, Abu Salah God rest his soul.

= What’s wrong with you!! Hahaha, you want to go to your father’s grave with a Cartouche of cigarettes?!!

- yes, I heard that the army smokes Imperial cigarettes! Can you imagine these whores smoke Imperial, man?!! Do they even know how to smoke? No one in the world knows how to smoke Imperials like the Hajj!! Are you stupid? Do you know how many boxes of Imperial my dad smoked in his life?

Wait a minute: it's called a box, not a Cartouche, you can't say a Cartouche of Imperial!! It doesn’t sound right!! You can say a Cartouche of Marlboro, but it’s always been a box of Imperial.

Guys, listen, my father has not had Imperial cigarettes for thirty years, and the building is his building. He is the one who built it!!

= By God, that is true

- So it is settled, the Imperial box will go to the Hajj. Goodbye.

= Ok, bye... but where are you going?

- I'm going to talk to my father..

= What’s wrong with you?

.

.

.

I climbed the hill - and the hill is the Prophet’s retreat -

I climbed,

With a stride of a fireman coming out of a crematorium

My mouth smoking the winter

And my city, in the black lowland there

with the soldiers,

smoking “Imperial” cigarettes.

February 27, 2024

I received confirmation that the Israeli army battalion that’s holed up in our building had burned down my home and my “poetry retreat” atop the building.

I received a video from my friend and neighbor Nader Hilwa, demonstrating the complete demolition of the houses in the back street, and showing my house with burned rooms.