Palestinian Poet Reflects On A Life Of Loss

巴勒斯坦诗人反思失落的生活

Fresh Air

艺术

2024-10-16

44 分钟
PDF

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Mosab Abu Toha was able to escape Gaza, along with his wife and three young children. The award-winning poet talks about being detained at a check-point, parenting in war, and the devastation of leaving his family and friends behind. His new book of poetry is Forest of Noise. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

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  • This is FRESH AIR.

  • I'm Thierry Gross.

  • It's remarkable that my guest is still alive, but you could say that about so many Palestinians who live in Gaza.

  • Perhaps you've read Mossab Abu Toha's personal essays in the New Yorker, which have been published under the title Letter from Gaza.

  • They won an Overseas press Club award.

  • Abu Toha was able to get out of Gaza last year on December 3.

  • What enabled him, his wife, and their three young children to leave is that he was a 2019 scholar at risk at Harvard's Department of comparative literature, and one of his sons was born in Boston, making him an american citizen.

  • The US State Department was helpful.

  • Abu Toha is a great poet and essayist and had writers and scholars advocating for him, too.

  • In Gaza five days after the October 7 attack on Israel, Abu Toha, along with his wife and their children, fled to a refugee camp after leaflets were dropped by Israelis ordering the area where they lived to be evacuated.

  • Two weeks later, their home was bombed, leaving it in rubble.

  • They had to flee again.

  • After the refugee camp was bombed, they stayed in a school turned into a shelter by Unwa, the UN relief and works agency for palestinian refugees.

  • He was able to get passports for himself and his family at a checkpoint on their way to the crossing into Egypt, he was taken out of the line by israeli soldiers who claimed he was a member of Hamas.

  • He was detained and beaten.