{"id":32262,"date":"2024-03-25T09:17:18","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T07:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=32262"},"modified":"2025-07-15T10:52:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T08:52:57","slug":"fady-joudahs-dares-us-to-listen-to-palestinian-words-and-silences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/fady-joudahs-dares-us-to-listen-to-palestinian-words-and-silences\/","title":{"rendered":"Fady Joudah\u2019s [\u2026]<\/em> Dares Us to Listen to Palestinian Words\u2014and Silences"},"content":{"rendered":"
During this time of genocide and attempted erasure of Palestinians, we have a large body of poems and other writings composed by Palestinians, both inside and outside of Gaza. In his latest collection, Fady Joudah takes on the inadequacy and necessity of language to convey the pain and hope of Palestinians right now as he pushes against a challenge Palestinian poetry faces, perhaps especially poetry written in English, where poets, as much as they resist doing so, are expected to explain the Palestinian condition.\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0[\u2026]<\/span><\/em> by Fady Joudah
\nMilkweed Editions<\/span><\/a>, 2024
\nISBN 9781639551286<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eman Quotah<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

What future will we look back from, onto the current moment? An unprecedented catastrophe, when Israel\u2019s military has killed and buried tens of thousands of Palestinians alive in a matter of months. This moment (meaning \u201cperiod in time\u201d) when every moment (meaning \u201cfraction of an hour\u201d), the Israeli state kills even more Palestinians in Gaza, by bullet, bomb, or starvation. This moment when the words we wrote one week after Hamas\u2019 invasion and killing of 1,200 Israeli Jews and others, one week after the beginning of Israel\u2019s bombardment and ground invasion that has, as of now, killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, including so, so many children \u2014 when what we wrote then about the scope of the horror Gazans faced seems no different than the words we could write today. And yet every day the horror intensifies. Words are never adequate and <\/span>often racist<\/span><\/a>; <\/span>grammar fails<\/span><\/a>; adjectives seep in bias. And time keeps accumulating.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"[...]<\/a>
[…]<\/em> is published by Milkweed Editions<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Words, language are never adequate, but whatever future we look back from, we will have a large body of poems and other writings composed by Palestinians, both inside and outside of Gaza, during this time of genocide and attempted erasure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Palestinian American poet, translator, and physician Fady Joudah\u2019s <\/span>[\u2026]<\/span><\/i>, his sixth collection of poetry, takes on the inadequacy and necessity of language to convey the pain and hope of Palestinians right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joudah has lost many family members in Israel\u2019s bombardment of Gaza. Written mostly from October to December 2023, his new volume\u2019s non-title repeats as the non-title of more than half its poems. In resisting titling and the way titles make and direct meaning \u2014 not just by leaving his work untitled but by drawing attention to his erasure of titles \u2014 Joudah makes a bold craft choice. On the \u201c<\/span>PalCast \u2013 One World, One Struggle<\/span><\/a>\u201d podcast on March 5, the poet explained, \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine words as the title\u201d of the collection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, he wanted to indicate silence: the silencing of Palestinians in what he refers to as \u201cEnglish\u201d \u2014 by which he says he means the \u201clanguage of hegemony,\u201d whether English, French, or German. To acknowledge the world\u2019s tendency to yank away from Palestinians their ability to <\/span>be<\/span><\/i> silent, a silence they sometimes need, whether out of grief or in search of healing or because words cannot express the magnitude of their losses and grievances.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And also, the silencing that is death.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a book that asks people to really consider what kind of listening have they not been offering to the Palestinians,\u201d Joudah said on the podcast. \u201cWhat kind of listening they think they have been offering to the Palestinians but have not, especially in English.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, a book that tells us to shut up and listen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent kerfuffle at <\/span>Guernica<\/span> magazine underscores Joudah\u2019s point. In early March, the magazine <\/span>retracted<\/span><\/a> \u201cFrom the Edges of a Broken World,\u201d an essay by British-Israeli writer and translator Joanna Chen, following the resignation of <\/span>dozens of volunteer editors and slush readers<\/span><\/a> over the essay\u2019s publication and months-long internal disagreement about the magazine\u2019s stance on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. The retraction has been criticized widely. But predictably, none of the half dozen or so news or opinion articles about the controversy <\/span>traces the series of events back to the <\/span>Palestinian writers whose criticism<\/span><\/a> of the essay on X triggered the resignations. And none truly engages with their critique of the article as colonialist and unwilling to truthfully grapple with Israel\u2019s apartheid realities. Those writers <\/span>included Joudah<\/span><\/a>, who pulled from a forthcoming publication at Guernica <\/span>a Q&A<\/span><\/a> that has <\/span>now been published elsewhere<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Much can be made of the symbol [\u2026], but how does it [re]direct our reading of the poems? It is a convention in poetry to refer to an untitled poem by using the first line or a portion of it in brackets or parentheses. So, Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 18 is [Shall I compare thee to a summer\u2019s day], and the first sonnet of Diane Suess\u2019s <\/span>Frank: Sonnets<\/span><\/i> is [I drove all the way to Cape Disappointment].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With that logic, Joudah\u2019s poem [\u2026] that begins, \u201cDaily you wake up to the killing of your people, their tongue accented\/in your mother\u2019s milk,\u201d is denied a bracketed title, and is therefore also, perhaps, missing a first line. The line isn\u2019t there because we weren\u2019t listening. Because the narrator has not wished us to hear it. Because the narrator began with a line of silence. Because the line was erased or removed, by the narrator or a censor. Because [\u2026].<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, the poem [\u2026] that begins:<\/span><\/p>\n

You have entered the tunnel.
\n<\/span>There is a light in the endless tunnel.
\n<\/span>Every word you think of<\/span>
\n<\/span>has already been written<\/span>
\n<\/span>by you or others who skim<\/span>
\n<\/span>the spume of their seas.<\/span>
\n<\/span>They love to travel.<\/span>
\n<\/span>They love you more when you\u2019re dead.
\n<\/span>You\u2019re more alive to them dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do we read and understand these lines when we perceive them to have been preceded by a blank space? A line we cannot make meaning of because of its absence? Does the missing line suggest the tens of thousands of missing Palestinians in Gaza, buried under rubble or buried anonymously? Or the thousands of Palestinians Israel has detained, the thousands missing from their homes and families and communities? Does it suggest endless displacement?<\/span><\/p>\n

Does the silence force you to listen?<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, read the first lines of this next one, and imagine a long pause, a deep breath taken before speaking, or a silence lasting a moment or more \u2014 a moment of silence, if you will \u2014 at the beginning:<\/span><\/p>\n

[…]<\/span><\/p>\n

They did not mean to kill the children.
\n<\/span>They meant to.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Too many kids got in the way<\/span>
\n<\/span>of precisely imprecise
\n<\/span>one-ton bombs<\/span>
\n<\/span>dropped a thousand and one times<\/span>
\n<\/span>over the children\u2019s nights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joudah is not alone among Anglophone (or, more accurately, bilingual) Palestinian poets in rendering absences visible. For example, Palestinian American poet, novelist, and psychotherapist Hala Alyan\u2019s <\/span>Revision<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>published in November 2023, makes itself illegible at times:<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a grandmother once.<\/span>
\n<\/span>She had a memory once.<\/span>
\n<\/span>It spoiled like milk.<\/span>
\n<\/span>On the phone, she\u2019d me ask about my son, if he was fussy,<\/span>
\n<\/span>if he was eating solids yet.<\/span>
\n<\/span>She\u2019d ask if he was living up to his name.<\/span>
\n<\/span>I said yes. I always said yes. I asked for his name and it was [ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ].<\/span>
\n<\/span>I dreamt of her saying:<\/span>
\n<\/span>[ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ]<\/span>
\n<\/span>[ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ]<\/span>
\n<\/span>[ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ].<\/span><\/p>\n

And several lines later, Alyan writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

If you say Gaza you must say [ \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 ].
\n<\/span>If you say [\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0] you must say [\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0].<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard Alyan read this poem, and when she reads the bracketed blanks, she says, \u201cRedacted.\u201d It\u2019s chilling.\u00a0 It evokes censoring by others, self-censorship, and false listening, as when politicians say they are concerned about civilian deaths but we can imagine them plugging their ears with their fingers and saying, \u201cLalalalala\u201d (which in Arabic we hear as \u201cNonononono\u201d). When you or I read or listen to Alyan\u2019s or Joudah\u2019s poems, we should think of what Palestinian American writer and performance artist Fargo Nissim Tbakhi says about catharsis in his essay \u201c<\/span>Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide<\/span><\/a>\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody should get out of our work feeling purged, clean. Nobody should live happily during the war. Our readers can feel that way when liberation is the precondition for our work, and not the dream. When it is the place we stand, and not the place we shake ourselves towards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his collection, Joudah pushes against a challenge Palestinian poetry faces, perhaps especially poetry written in English, where poets, as much as they resist doing so, are expected to explain the Palestinian condition. The problem, of course, is not the poetry itself or the Palestinian-ness of the poet, but rather the ongoing, relentless occupation and Nakba. The feeling of being stuck in a time loop, so that a poem written in 2021 or 2014 or 2011 \u2014<\/span> or 1982 \u2014<\/span> about the state of occupation and apartheid, bombardment, and impending Palestinian death, reads like it could have been written today, and vice versa. Take Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer\u2019s now-famous \u201cIf I Must Die,\u201d in which the narrator contemplates his own death and asks the reader to remember him: \u201cIf I must die\/you must live\/to tell my story.\u201d Alareer <\/span>posted the poem on X<\/span><\/a>, formerly Twitter, a month before the Israeli military murdered him and members of his family in Gaza in a targeted strike on December 6, 2023; many people on social media who read the poem then thought it had been freshly written. In fact, Alareer wrote \u201cIf I Must Die\u201d in 2011.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alareer was not clairvoyant. He couldn\u2019t see the future. He was simply living under the conditions of an endlessly repeating cycle of life-threatening terror.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joudah pays homage to Alareer\u2019s poem <\/span>\u2014<\/span> which has, since Alareer\u2019s death, been translated into some 40 languages <\/span>\u2014<\/span> and to the poet himself in a poem [un]titled [\u2026] that begins with the lines, \u201cSuddenly I\/\u2019in a blaze\u2019 died.\u201d It is given pride of place on the back cover of <\/span>[\u2026]<\/span><\/i>, where normally blurbs and a book description would go. Unlike Alareer\u2019s lyrical, hopeful verse, with its image of a white kite in the sky that a child believes is an angel looking down, Joudah\u2019s poem is fitful and frantic, unwilling to pass to the reader the cathartic role of storyteller and torchbearer. And yet it ends powerfully with \u201cI\u201d (repeating its first line), as though the martyr is reborn, repeatedly, despite the occupier\u2019s every attempt to snuff him out. Read together, Alareer and Joudah\u2019s poems deliver and defy sentimentality; they soar and crash into the ground; they accept the so-called inevitable and resist it; they embrace beauty and lyricism and reject it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The power of \u201cI\u201d reveals itself even more when one turns to the book\u2019s final poem, \u201cSunbird.\u201d The narrator moves from <\/span>I<\/span><\/i> to <\/span>we<\/span><\/i>, and back again, beginning with the lines, \u201cI flit\/from gleaming river\/to glistening sea.\/\/From all that we\/to all that me.\u201d Soaring with the sunbird (also known as the Palestine sunbird, and a symbol of Palestinian freedom, resistance, and hope), the poem moves across all directions of the land, \u201cFresh east to salty west,\/southern sweet\/\/and northern free.\u201d Finally, it swoops, \u201cFrom womb\/to breath,\/and one with oneness\/\/I be:\/from the river\/to the sea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In that spirit of oneness, Joudah\u2019s collection is best read in conversation with other Palestinian poets writing in this moment. Alyan, as well as Zeina Azzam, whose \u201c<\/span>Write My Name<\/span><\/a>\u201d was written and published last fall in response to reports that Palestinian parents were writing their children\u2019s names on their limbs to help identify them if parent or child died. <\/span>Mosab Abu Toha<\/span><\/a>\u2019s every tweet and Instagram post has become <\/span>something like<\/span><\/a> poetry<\/span><\/a> of resistance and witness over the past five months. <\/span>Haya Abu Nasser<\/span><\/a>, currently in Gaza. <\/span>Rasha Abdulhadi<\/span><\/a>, who turns even her bio into a document of protest. And <\/span>many others<\/span><\/a>. As well as the work of other Arab writers, like Omar Sakr\u2019s <\/span>\u201c\u2026 in the Genocide\u201d<\/span><\/a> series of poems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most importantly, Joudah\u2019s poems and the work of these other poets cannot simply be words we read. To read the work of Palestinians now and not also speak out or take action to end the genocide, to return all Israeli and Palestinian hostages home, and help strive for freedom and liberation for all is a betrayal of epic proportions. We can\u2019t allow ourselves to feel catharsis. We must really listen so the future we look back from is the future we want and need. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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