"In Gaza, Death is Safer than Life"

Mosab Abu Toha, a poet, recounts his struggle to stay alive in war-torn Gaza

- Sharmita Kar

What is home?

It is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted.

It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photo before the walls crumbled.

It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and put in a museum.

It was 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?

—Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha

lN Gaza, poetry has become the embodiment of I genocide. In a four-storey house, the third floor used to be occupied by a poet. His name is Mosab Abu Toha. He had a writer’s desk and a wall full of books. He had built Gaza’s first English library there. He used to spend hours there, reading and writing.