Till December 21, 13 poets have been documented to be killed by Israeli forces. And to celebrate their lives and to read the history through their memoirs, Outlook in its anniversary issue takes up the task of commemorating them.
Can the documented narratives of war be the 바카라true history of war바카라 unless it carries the pain, anger, anguish, or uncertainty of human emotions? Can it just be archived without taking into consideration the lost diaries, abandoned family albums, or discarded toys caked in dust and rubble? The silence of ravaged 바카라homes바카라 is enough to challenge the chronological and numerical forms of writing history/histories.
And when any other form of documentation fails to address the loss of memory and emotions 바카라when the pillows are deprived of the cuddles and tears바카라 poetry is born. Israel바카라s war on Gaza has not only killed more than 21,000 people, it has taken away aspirations, dreams, and imaginations. It didn바카라t let bloom several poets 바카라 some of them perhaps were weaving a few words to document their realities when they were bombed. And some of them used social media until the last moment to tell the world that they were not silent when the world silently witnessed the ethnic cleansing of a population.
Till December 21, 13 poets have been documented to be killed by Israeli forces. And to celebrate their lives and to read the history through their memoirs, Outlook in its anniversary issue takes up the task of commemorating them - sometimes through their social media accounts and in other times, through their last words scripted on the virtual walls - etched on the memories of the dead souls.
Outlook Editor Chinki Sinha in her introduction to the anniversary issues while brings in several components scattered across the streets and memory lanes of Gaza, she talks about the diary of verses that Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha took with him when he left Gaza after being kidnapped and released by the Israeli forces.
However, Toha was fortunate enough to escape at least with the verses that he wrote but Refaat Alareer, the 44-year-old Palestinian poet and academic couldn바카라t make it. He was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike. The only friend of Alareer in this journey were three lines that he wrote far back in 2011-
바카라If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story바카라Š바카라
Death of Alareer though is reported, many are counted as missing. Batool Abu Akleen, a teenage poet from Palestine certainly disappeared into the thin air of virtual world where a 바카라post바카라 shows your status 바카라 alive/dead. Only her words continue to survive challenging the enumeration of a besieged population. In her words,
My name is not important
My friends바카라 names are not important
Our stories are not important
Because we are just numbers.
This is how the world sees us.
Through these poems, Outlook tries to look at the war on Gaza from a perspective of the undocumented emotions. It explores the longing for home through the words of poets- vibrant even in a besieged world. Abu Toha바카라s words murmur into the ears-
What is home?
It is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were
uprooted.
It is my grandparents바카라 black-and-white wedding photo before
the walls crumbled.
It is my uncle바카라s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry
nights, before it was looted and put in a museum.
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast chicken
before a bomb reduced our house to ashes.
It is the café where I watched football matches and played.
My child stops me: can a four-letter word hold all of these?