Linda Tavakoli
Afrasianet - Linda Tavakoli is an Irish poet who has published several books in poetry and short stories, and has received prestigious literary awards. Linda Tavakoli has written several poems about Gaza and published them in an e-book for Live Encounters magazine. In these texts, the poet tries to be a witness to the genocide, but she does not hesitate to remind us that she is writing from a distance, as she lives in Northern Ireland, so in these poems she brings up a lot of vocabulary related to news, radio, television, and photographs.
For Linda Tavakoli, whose country suffered from the violence and starvation of the British occupation (the famine of 1845-1852), writing about Gaza is a way to condemn indifference, collusion and forgetfulness, and to witness, even from thousands of miles away, the annihilation.
Injured child without survivors from his family
Their eyes are open, like the eyes of an owl staring at the night, swallowing the darkness with dry tongues, their identities are tattooed on their skin, a representative of signatures for future generationsNoor Khaledli Nasir Sleeping on the hands of the dead mothersremember the pastwhen the touch was a paddle for belonging, and the pain was after the blossoming of the stars in blissdear hope
for joy
Their silence protects themWho can comprehend the wounds of their torn limbs emitted from the screen, or the flaky flesh of what remains of their remnants?
Bodies that no one claimsThese ghost children dig up the darkness in search of what has been lost from themThese children's ghosts have nothing they have nowInhumanusOur belovedImanHamidZahra Lina
The Death Robe
There you areWrapped within the confines of warNothing indicates your age except your small stature, and here you are, your mother waiting there, the silence of grief before the collapse, there is no knowledge to tell us about your storyExcept the mixing of white and redWhile you take off the bandages one after the other, and through an opening that is barely enough to put a kiss on it, or a kiss, your identity is revealed in a flash, you are there, wrapped in the shackles of war, and now you are disappearing behind the TV newscastsThings you can't erase from memoryThings you should never see.
A child asks when will my arms grow?
Look at that great oak weeping in the winter storms, its limbs cut off, fragments of meadows of absence under feet. But look again at that bleeding trunk
to know that even in a drought there is a sustained life that is forever affected, not only by what is stolen, but by what remains aliveA solid and unrelenting testimony to the cruelty of loss.
Anonymous number 99
In the hospital, an infant carries a badge that reads: Anonymous number 99 as if it were a strange and insignificant giftDropped from the list of valuable giftsTo settle on a list without a name, I will call you the Little Miracle, and I will dare to think of your bright futureWhen time takes you to a place where the light is on you like a lull, the names on display regain their identity, where the moon can chase the stars in a clear sky, and the silence abandons
its longing for sleep, like melting snow.
Mass destruction
Look, and consider how suffering fails to penetrate the consciousness of the world, where the umbilical cords are cut with stones and the limbs are cut with a wire jelly saw.
Look, think about how what is not enough never seems to be enough, and when we look at the other side, we become complicit because we don't do anything.
Right of return
In the dusty palm of his hand is a key, the cold of his flame on his skin, his sewn metallic trace, like a tattoo on the fabric of his dreams, while his mouth is stiff and thirsty for a clam, screaming at a door somewhere in the past, waiting to return, waiting for a miracle.
You may think that you have silenced us, but the voices of our ancestors are still singing in the streets that have been destroyed by the machines of destruction, you may think that you may mutter to us, but every soul has a paradise, and every deceased person still breathes those whom he left behind.
You may think that you have destroyed us, but even the wreckage of what will remain can learn how to be a foundation again, and a country will be reborn.
An idea that came to my mind late
Tell the displaced that they will find a home, if they do not die walking to those whose limbs have been amputated, that they will learn to love again in five yearsTell the buried that they will live in the beating hearts of those who remain alive.Tell the orphans that the sympathy of others will never cure their loneliness.Tell those who have been left to their fate that they will one day be
remembered for their flogging.Tell the hungry that the phrase "skin on bone" is a name after a nameTell the missing that they have become mere numbers and have been lost in the midst of statistics and neglect.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures stopped occupying our television screens.
Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.
Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the displaced that they will find a home.Tell the displaced that they will find a home.If they do not die while walking.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.
Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.
Tell the displaced that they will find a home.if they do not die while they are walking.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that you have not forgotten them when their pictures have stopped occupying our television screens.Tell the children that To all who want to hear that the world is surely lost, if the dead become just a thought that comes to mind.
The desire for the calm of drones finds solace in an empty sky and in the sky, please.
Hypon for Gaza
Is there any significance to what I told you? If I told you that my sister's warm cheek presses against my cheek like a kiss, and the blood from her wounds leaks into my mouth as hot as a river of fire? Or how do I feel when I know that it was her light weight that protected me from death? Or if somewhere beyond this suffocating darkness is the voice of our Father bouncing through the rubble as he seeks our collective breath? Will this really matter?
I cry out, Daddy, Daddy, in the swollen space of my mouth, but the sound seeps into itself, fading into my consciousness and into my sister's growing skin disease.
Still, I think I'm in a safer place, safer than the upper place, which is the most dangerous place on earth where a child can be, and where our father grinds his fingers into dust. So, even in this hell where my sister found her bliss, I am grateful. And Allah is merciful. The drones buzzed and the danger they posed all these hours from the very beginning.
There is a sense of comfort in this unfamiliar calm so I close my eyes and welcome its decisive ending, but I am also aware of the agony that my death will cause. So, I breathe and pray, my fingertips touching a bridge of prayers in this small mosque from the air where I am now waiting, only to be dug up from the rubble.
A Drop of Light in the Dust of Our Despair, Illuminates the Darkness
