"Their Cry Is My Voice. Poems from Gaza," a volume of lyrics on Palestinian resilience

Published by Fazi Editore with a preface by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé

Poetry as an act of resistance. The power of words as an attempt at salvation. This is the deepest meaning of the thirty-two poems by ten Palestinian authors collected in the volume "Their Cry Is My Voice. Poems from Gaza." They were largely written in Gaza, after October 7, 2023, amid the tragedy of the war in Palestine, in extremely precarious conditions: shortly before being killed by bombings, as a final prayer or poetic testament (Abu Nada, Alareer), while forced to abandon their homes to escape (al-Ghazali), or from a tent in a refugee camp where people are dying of cold and bombs (Elqedra).

As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé points out in the preface to the volume, "writing poetry during a genocide once again demonstrates the crucial role poetry plays in Palestinian resistance and resilience. The awareness with which these young poets face the possibility of dying every hour matches their humanity, which remains intact even when surrounded by carnage and destruction of unimaginable scale." These poems, Pappé further observes, "are sometimes direct, sometimes metaphorical, extremely concise or slightly tortuous, but it is impossible not to grasp the cry of protest for life and resignation to death, inscribed in a disastrous cartography that Israel has drawn on the ground."

"But this collection is not just a lament," notes translator Nabil Bey Salameh. "It is an invitation to see, to feel, to live. The poems translated here carry with them the sound of the streets of Gaza, the rustling of leaves resisting the wind, the crying of children, and the singing of olive trees. They are a testimony of life, an act of love towards a land that never ceases to dream of freedom. In a world that often prefers to look away, the poems stand like beacons, illuminating what remains hidden."

Because writing, as Edward Said, an influential Palestinian-American intellectual and literary critic and professor at Columbia University in New York, reminded us, is "our last stand against the inhumane practices and injustices that disfigure the history of humanity."

The volume contains two contributions: one by Susan Abulhawa, a writer and activist (born to a Palestinian family who fled after the Six-Day War) and Chris Hedges, an American journalist and author. The collection is also a concrete initiative of solidarity with the Palestinian population: for each copy sold, Fazi Editore will donate €5 to Emergency for its healthcare activities in the Gaza Strip. (Rossella Guadagnini)