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A review by vani_in_wonderland_
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.75
~ Roses among Ruins ~
It is said that in 5 billion years, our sun will swell into a red giant, potentially consuming our planet in its fiery embrace. If not, we're sure to be toasted as temperatures rise. The end of civilization!
But we probably won't need to wait for that long. Demise of humanity might not need such cosmic timelines.
We don't need sun to scorch streets
We don't need earthquakes to tear apart homes
We don't need tsunamis to bring up the bodies
Hunger. Death. Destruction.
On days, they call it collateral damage.
Damage to?
Greed? Oppression? Power?
Can this reason for a child who mistook clouds for b0mb smoke?
Who would tell the old man that the home he still dreams of, is lost to collateral damage?
What to tell the child requesting her cat to eat strangers and not her as death takes her?
Mosab in his poem says, 'We Deserve a better Death'
Amidst the ceaseless turmoil, being consumed by the sun seems almost merciful.
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR shook me from within, it left me devoid of any more tears to shed. When a child grows up in a camp, unaware of even the concept of life and death, they are not meant to normalize b0mbs but they do. Mosab's poems make you face that ugly reality. He compares living in G, aza to living in a Kafka novel, where you don't know what you're guilty of but suffer the trauma, generation after generation. He reckons us to see the houses that are shelled, bodies that are mut, ilated while rest of the world is concerned to tend their garden, or a TV show to watch.
These poems are like roses grown in a tank shell. His words are gentle yet they act as thorns in the wreckage of our collective conscience.
PLEASE DO NOT LOOK PAST THEM
They are uncomfortable, Yes!
But they are obligatory, for the tiny shreds of humanity left in us.
It is said that in 5 billion years, our sun will swell into a red giant, potentially consuming our planet in its fiery embrace. If not, we're sure to be toasted as temperatures rise. The end of civilization!
But we probably won't need to wait for that long. Demise of humanity might not need such cosmic timelines.
We don't need sun to scorch streets
We don't need earthquakes to tear apart homes
We don't need tsunamis to bring up the bodies
Hunger. Death. Destruction.
On days, they call it collateral damage.
Damage to?
Greed? Oppression? Power?
Can this reason for a child who mistook clouds for b0mb smoke?
Who would tell the old man that the home he still dreams of, is lost to collateral damage?
What to tell the child requesting her cat to eat strangers and not her as death takes her?
Mosab in his poem says, 'We Deserve a better Death'
Amidst the ceaseless turmoil, being consumed by the sun seems almost merciful.
THINGS YOU MAY FIND HIDDEN IN MY EAR shook me from within, it left me devoid of any more tears to shed. When a child grows up in a camp, unaware of even the concept of life and death, they are not meant to normalize b0mbs but they do. Mosab's poems make you face that ugly reality. He compares living in G, aza to living in a Kafka novel, where you don't know what you're guilty of but suffer the trauma, generation after generation. He reckons us to see the houses that are shelled, bodies that are mut, ilated while rest of the world is concerned to tend their garden, or a TV show to watch.
These poems are like roses grown in a tank shell. His words are gentle yet they act as thorns in the wreckage of our collective conscience.
PLEASE DO NOT LOOK PAST THEM
They are uncomfortable, Yes!
But they are obligatory, for the tiny shreds of humanity left in us.