Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha Reads from New Book “Forest of Noise”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Part 2 of our interview with the acclaimed Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha. He has just come to the United States, months ago was in Gaza, where he lived his whole life. He’s just published a new book of poetry titled Forest of Noise. His previous award-winning book is called Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab is a columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. He recently published an essay in The New York Times headlined “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” And his latest piece for The New Yorker is headlined “The Gaza We Leave Behind.”

Thank you so much for staying with us, so we can go more deeply into your book of poetry. Mosab, how did you choose the title, Forest of Noise?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: In fact, the title of the book is the title of one of the poems, called “Forest of Noise,” in which I talk about the bullet holes from the bullets and from the bomb — I mean, also the bomb craters, that each bullet hole in our walls, in our hospitals, in our schools, is a forest of noise. It’s full of screams of the people who did not survive. The screams of people — I mean, I just talked my neighbor, Amar Abu Laila, who was killed by a bombshell. And his son is still bleeding in the house, because there is no hospital that can reach that area. So, even the bomb crater that was created by the bomb that killed his father is now being filled with the screams of this boy. There is no — there is no way for him to survive this if he continues to bleed. So, every bullet hole in our buildings, every bomb crater is a forest of noise. It has our history, that goes back to seventy — more than. It’s not only 76 years ago. It goes back to more than 76 years. It’s a forest of noise.

I’ve been living in Gaza all my life, and the only sound I could hear is the drones’ buzzing sound. That doesn’t mean that I could not hear the lapping of the waves. But, I mean, every single moment, there is the drones’ buzzing sound in the sky. There is the sound of the F-16 flying over us. There is one thing that many people don’t know, which is I’ve never heard the sound of an airplane, of a civilian airplane. I’ve never seen a civilian airplane in the sky over Gaza. So, it is everything —

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: We don’t have an airport in Gaza. We don’t even receive visitors from abroad. So, there is no need for any airports in Gaza. We are living in siege. We can’t leave Gaza when we want. And we don’t receive — we don’t get visitors. And we don’t see — we don’t see airplanes in the sky, because Gaza is under siege. It’s under occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: And that goes to your book, Forest of Noise, where half the poems are written before October 7, 2023, and half are written after. Explain the before, and share one of your poems with us from before.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, life in Gaza after October 7th is not very, very different from the life before, but the difference is the intensity of the airstrikes, the coldness of the outside world seeing us being burned in the fire and buried in the rubble. I mean, for months, I mean, the difference is that before October 7th, when there is an Israeli airstrike, I mean, ambulances would race to the scene. I mean, fire trucks, people would gather to rescue whoever could be still breathing under the rubble. So, after October 7th, what happens is that ambulances get hit. Fire trucks get hit. Nurses and doctors get abducted from inside the hospitals and the clinics, to the extent that many people — and fuel has been cut. Water has been cut. Electricity has been cut, to the extent that even — and phone signal has been cut. So, just imagine you are bombed in your house, and you had your phone. I mean, you are lucky enough to have some battery in your phone. And there is no phone signal even to call your relatives and tell the ambulance that you are breathing and you have some children about to die under the rubble. You don’t have to get — you don’t have the chance, this chance of asking for help. This is what’s happening, what’s been happening after October 7. It’s not very different. The only difference is that there is no fuel like before. There are no ambulances. There is no medical equipment like before, even though we had a big lack in so many things. And the difference is that we have been documenting this for a year nonstop.

And I have one question: What has the Palestinian people in Gaza and also in the West Bank — what has the people in Palestine — what have they not done in order for the world to step in and stop all of this? We have written poetry. We have written essays. We have taken videos. We have created films. We have run from our schools to humanitarian areas, which also later get bombed. I mean, what is one thing — I would like to ask this question to the whole world: What is one thing that the Palestinians in Gaza did not do to survive? I mean, can someone blame us? When we go from — when we leave our house for a school shelter, we get bombed in a shelter. When we leave the school shelter to another one, we get bombed there. When we go from north to south, we get bombed there. When we try to leave Gaza, we can’t. I mean, I have a friend of mine who was hit by a piece of shrapnel, and he sent me a video. I still have it. There was maybe — you could fit your fist in his chest. I still have this video. And he was — he couldn’t leave Gaza. That was November last year. He couldn’t leave Gaza, because Israel controls who leaves Gaza, even through the Rafah border crossing. So, it’s not only about Egypt, you know, closing the border crossing. Israel has destroyed and occupied the Rafah border crossing since last May. So they control who gets in, who leaves, what kind of biscuit, what kind of water enters Gaza. And this is the case since before October 7.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you share with us your poem “Thanks” and describe how you came to write it?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, I wrote the poem “Thanks” in — again, in May 2021, after an airstrike hit a house that’s just next to us. And my mother was making a cake. Even though it was war, she was making cake. And when there was an airstrike, we thought it was a warning. So we left the house. We ran away. And the poem will tell you what happened. “Thanks (on the Eve of My Twenty-Second Birthday): After Yusef Komunyakaa.”

Thanks to my mother always, but
especially when she called for me
to join them at the table,
just seconds before shrapnel
cut through the window glass
where I stood watching distant air strikes.

My mother’s voice, the magnet of my life,
swaying my head just in time.
Plumes of smoke choked the neighborhood.
It was night and when we ran into the street,
Mother forgot the cake in the oven,
the bomb smoke mixed with the burnt chocolate
and strawberry.

And thanks to the huge clock tower’s bell
which saved my life. I was crossing the street
and my head, glued to my phone,
never heeded the honk of cars
or the wheels of vans
screeching onto the rough tarmac.
The bell tolled for me.
Sorry, Death, but it was the eve of my twenty-second birthday

and I had to be by the sea and listen to the lapping of waves,
the sound I last heard before my birth.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, reading a poem from Forest of Noise, his second book of poetry. The picture on the cover of your book, Mosab, can you describe it, especially for an audience who doesn’t see it right now?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, in fact, I mean, I would like to talk about two things about — regarding the cover. So, the cover was made by a wonderful designer named Arsh Raziuddin. And the cover is about the opening of the book, in which I say that every — let me read it to you. OK, OK, right? — in which I say, “Every child in Gaza is me. Every mother and father is me. Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. Every plant is my arm. Every flower is my eye. Every hole in the earth is my wound.” So, this is my arm. This is a plant. This is the tree. It is. I mean, I’m made up of all the things that I have seen in Gaza, even the holes. I mean, when Israel bombs a house, they are bombing my body, because that house is in my heart. I love everything in my country. And when they target a street, they are targeting a vein in my body. When they bomb a tree, they are bombing my head.

And then, the other story about the cover, which was a few days ago, after Israel bombed the Deir al-Balah — the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Mustashfaa al-Aqsa, in Deir al-Balah, and where the whole world witnessed and watched Sha’ban al-Dalou, 19 years old, a man who was trying to help his family survive the genocide — the whole world watched Sha’ban dying in the midst of the flame, and I saw Sha’ban, Sha’ban’s two hands reaching in the midst of the flame. And I looked at the cover of my book, and I see his hands here. In one of the poems that is not — because I continued writing poems even after I submitted my manuscript and after it was printed. So, there is a poem that I wrote which is published by Zeteo. It’s called “A Hand Is No Longer a Hand.”

So, A hand is no longer a hand
if it does not find
another hand to shake,
if it does not find food
to share with others,
if it does not — if it’s the only thing
that a dog can find to eat.

Because there is starvation in Gaza, and the starvation does not only affect the people, but also the animals, some of whom, like cats and dogs, were eating the bodies of my people who were left in the street for weeks.

And then I look at the video of Sha’ban dying in the midst of the flame. And I say a hand is no longer a hand if it reaches in the middle, in the midst of the flame. It’s not — I mean, is this really a hand that we are watching? It’s no longer a hand. This is my hand, that I can use to write with, that I can use to shake the hands of other people, that I can use to say bye to my children before I come back to them. But the hands that we have been seeing of people, especially of Sha’ban al-Dalou, I mean, it could be my hand. It could be me. It could be you. It could be everyone. It could be the son of the president of this country. Why don’t these people put themselves in our places? What if Biden himself was born in Gaza, and I was here sitting and talking about sports, talking about, you know, food? How does Biden and his children feel when I’m enjoying my life here and working as if nothing is — as if I’m not and my country is not contributing to the genocide that’s affecting my people for years?

AMY GOODMAN: You share the quote of Audre Lorde: “Poetry is not a luxury.” Talk about writing in the midst of this catastrophe that is Gaza right now.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of the greatest quotes by a poet, Audre Lorde, “Poetry is not a luxury.” And I came to understand it as a Palestinian. I mean, I know that, you know, many people here in the States suffer from segregation, from racism, from, you know, white supremacist people. But, I mean, in my case, as a poet, poetry is not a luxury, not only because writing poetry does not come from a beautiful place. It does not come from an island in the ocean, someone writing, you know, like William Wordsworth writing about “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” and then describing the lakes and the plants and the flowers, the daffodils. I mean, we appreciate, of course, every single poem that has been written. So, for me and for Audre Lorde, for me, writing — I mean, writing poetry is not a luxury, as much as it’s not a luxury reading the poem that we are writing while this continues to happen.

So, the painful thing about poetry, and the poetry that I write, is that I’m not only writing about something that happened, which is the case for so many people, but I’m writing about something that, unfortunately, continues to happen. So the poem could be rewritten. I could — I mean, I wrote the poem “Thanks.” I wrote my poem “No art,” I lost three friends to war. That was in 2021. And now if I’m going to rewrite the poem, it would be “I lost 300 friends to war, and I lost my house, I lost my students.” I mean, the poem would be different. It’s not an experience that I’m writing about that happened long time ago. No, it continues to happen. And some of the people about whom I wrote and some of the places about which I wrote are long gone after the publication of the book.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you share “The Moon”?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. I mean, the poem “The Moon,” by the way — I just mentioned that even dogs and cats were starving to the extent that they had to eat and, I mean, to the extent that they had to feed on the bodies of people. I saw the picture of a young girl with her father in the street who were killed in an airstrike, and they were wearing their backpacks. And I mentioned in my first part that people in Gaza, when they travel, you would see them putting some clothes in a plastic bag or some clothes in their children’s kindergarten or school bags. So, I saw the girl. I looked at the picture of the girl with her father, wearing their backpacks, killed in the street. And then there was another picture of a man. It was a video, indeed, of a man whose body was left in the street and where about five or four cats were eating his body. Why? Not because there are no Palestinian doctors or paramedics. No, or there are no Palestinian neighbors. No, because the Israelis will target anyone who approaches an area where they are. So, I wrote the poem “The Moon” about these two pictures and videos. “The Moon.”

She’s lying on the asphalt.
Her small belly, her chest,
her forehead, her hands,
her cold feet bare in the night.
A hungry cat paces.
Shrapnel rings
as it hits neighboring
houses already bombed.
The hungry cat sees the girl,
her wounds still warm.
Hungrier.
The girl’s father lies next to her
on his back. The backpack he wears
still has the girl’s favorite candy
and a small toy.
The girl was waiting
till they arrived
to eat her lollipop.
The cat gets close
to try the flesh;
a bomb pounds the street.
No flesh, no girl,
no father, no cat.
Nobody is hungry.

The moon overhead
is not the moon.

AMY GOODMAN: “The Moon” by Mosab Abu Toha, as he reads from his new book of poetry, Forest of Noise. I am holding this one book. You have a library of books. I should say, you had a library of books, the Edward Said Library in Gaza. Can you describe what it was and what’s happened to it?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, when I talk about my library, I talk about three libraries, in fact. I talk about my home library, on whose shelf were some books that were autographed to me by friends here from the States. So, my house was bombed on October 28, and my house, the four-story building where I used to live with my brothers and my parents, is now a heap of rubble. And I remember that one time when the starvation began, when Israel started to block the entry of food trucks, that my parents returned to the bombed house, and they were trying to dig through the rubble to see if they could find some, you know, some food, maybe some kinds of oil, some canned food, a sack of wheat flour. And the only thing that they found when they were digging through the rubble of my apartment, they were finding only books, because it was full of books.

AMY GOODMAN: How many times was your apartment bombed?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, in 2014, I was not married, so I was living with my parents. So, our house was damaged in an airstrike. So, about three rooms were blown open. But then, on October 28th last year, Israel bombed our house. And we were lucky enough that no one of us was in the house. We were in the refugee camp. And I mentioned in the first part that the same house where we were staying before I evacuated Gaza was bombed yesterday, and about 150 people were either killed or injured, including the neighbor, Um Fathi Abu Rashed, who was killed with her children, her grandchildren. I showed you a list of about 19 people. So, our house was bombed that night, on October 28th. And even after it was bombed, after I left Gaza, my father sent me a photo of the house that shows that it was hit by some artillery shells again. After it was bombed, they targeted it again and again.

So, then, there is the Edward Said public libraries that I opened in Gaza. The first branch was opened in 2016 — no, it was — I started working on founding the library in 2016, but I opened the first branch in the summer of 2017. And two years later, I opened, with the help of so many friends of mine, the second branch in Gaza City. So, the first branch in Beit Lahia has been damaged, but one of the librarians has been able to, you know, take some books with him to rescue them. And I don’t know whether he is alive now or not. One of the librarians, by the way — I forgot to mention this. One of the librarians, Doaa Al-Masri, was killed in Hayy al-Tuffah, in the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza, along with her parents and siblings. That was, I think, January or December. I posted a picture of her. She was very dedicated to the children who were visiting the library in Gaza City. As for the second branch in Gaza City, what I know is that it’s destroyed, because the neighborhood where it is located has been leveled to the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you learn English, and why did you choose to build an English-language library?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I mean, how I did — how I learned English, it’s part of our education in Gaza. I mean, we are educated people. We learn English, Arabic, you know, science, maths. So, I mean, the only thing about English is that we don’t get visitors from abroad to practice our language with. This is part of the siege. The siege, that means — the occupation means of Gaza and the West Bank, but especially in Gaza. It’s different from the West Bank in so many different ways. So, the thing about Gaza is that you don’t get to travel easily, freely. We don’t have embassies, by the way, in Gaza. The only — the closest ones are in Jerusalem, and you have to get an Israeli permit to travel there. So, I don’t get the chance to travel to Jerusalem, to the West Bank, Palestinian territories, they say. And I can’t go travel to different countries, because it’s very difficult as a Palestinian to travel. And I wrote a piece about that for The New Yorker.

But at the same time, we don’t get the chance to get visitors like you, Amy. I mean, I wish I could meet you in Gaza. I wish I could — I mean, Chomsky, I mean, the first time I met him, it was in 2012. He came after years of trying, and he came there for a few days as a linguist, not as a visitor. No, he came for an international conference on linguistics and on applied linguistics and literature. But I don’t think that the Chomsky could come to Gaza because he wanted to see me or see my friends or other professors there. So it’s difficult even to get to meet people from the outside world, to even to practice our language with.

So, the only way was, for me to practice my language on, you know, by communicating with friends on Facebook, on Skype, etc., we had to break the siege. And another way of breaking the siege was bringing books to Gaza. One of the first people who sent their books to the library was Noam Chomsky. Two of his — three of his books were signed to me by him. And the books are under the rubble right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, you wrote that New York Times essay, “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.”

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, I mean, I told you. I mean, we leave our houses and go to school shelters, thinking that schools would be, you know, a safer place, and then the schools get bombed. And then we move to stay with families who are a little farther away from where the tanks are, and they get bombed there. I told you about my friend Ismail Abu Ghabin, who was killed with his two children, with his parents and two of his sisters. Only his wife and two other sisters survived. He used to live in north Gaza, not very far from me. He left north Gaza because Israel said, “North Gaza, evacuate. Go south.” He went south. And in November last year, he was killed in an airstrike. And his body and the body of his father — I mentioned that — and his sister are still under the rubble until now.

I mean, it’s really — I mean, it’s more than a genocide. It’s more than a genocide. I mean, a genocide could happen to people where there’s no occupation or there is no siege. But Gaza has been under siege since 2007. Just imagine people who have been devastated by the siege. Just imagine people who have been suffering from the siege and the occupation. We don’t get, you know, the freedom to sail in our own sea. We can’t get the chance to see our country from the sky on a plane.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re now living in the United States, at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, as a fellow, with your wife and your children. So you’re getting to see the U.S. media’s coverage of your homeland, of Gaza.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you see in that coverage? Or what don’t you see?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I see the, you know, so many anchors and so many interviewers repeating the Israeli propaganda about the beheaded babies, about the rape of women and the baking of children in ovens. I mean, I don’t know why they keep repeating this, because none of them have seen what the Israelis have claimed, especially the beheaded babies. What we have seen, I mean, the only beheaded babies we saw are in Gaza, for a year, not for one day.

I see that they don’t get — they don’t — I mean, I don’t say that they are not doing anything. But the number of voices that we get to hear from Gaza, I mean, people who are trying to survive — the number of people who are, you know, getting on CNN or BBC — I personally have been trying to talk to people in BBC, and I failed. They don’t have — they don’t have room for me to speak about my family and my pregnant sister and my sister and my younger sister with three children, who I haven’t been able to reach out for about 10 days. I don’t have to — I don’t have the chance to tell the story of my people. Why? If I don’t get the chance to talk about what’s happening, who? Who have more right to speak about his people? So, this is really depressing, and this is dehumanizing, when you don’t get the people who come from there to talk about what’s happening. This is dehumanizing. I mean, we do have a voice. We have been screaming and shouting and writing and documenting our genocide, and they are not giving us a space to speak.

But, I mean, just a few days — but just to be true, just a few days ago, I did an interview with Becky Anderson on CNN.

AMY GOODMAN: CNN.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: And it was aired yesterday, and they did a great job. And I hope that everyone, every journalist in the world, would be like Becky Anderson, who would focus on the human stories, I mean, what I care about. I’m a Palestinian, it’s true. I was born in Gaza. I was injured in an airstrike. I lost 31 members of my extended family. I mean, but what is more important than all is to stop, to stop killing my people. I don’t care about the context of what happened. I mean, I don’t want to talk about 1948, 1967, Nakba. I mean, for now, I just want to stop talking about everything. I just want to stop the bleeding. That’s it. But no one is hearing. They just keep repeating, October 7th, October. I mean, I was not born on October 7th. But these generals seem like they were born on October 7th, for a few hours, and then — I mean, this really breaks my heart that people continue to bring October 7th, despite all the lies around October 7, but they never cared about bringing up, I mean, the lives of the people before October 7th, the dispossession, the displacement of my people.

AMY GOODMAN: When were you injured in an airstrike?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, I wrote a poem about that in my first poetry collection. I was 16 years old. It was January 2009. I was walking in the street to buy some bread for my sisters, and there was an airstrike that killed seven people, and I got two pieces of shrapnel in my body, one in my neck and one in my forehead. And I survived by luck, because the piece of shrapnel in my — that entered my neck was just a few centimeters away from my windpipe. What if I looked, you know, just away or moved a little, I mean, a few centimeters just to my right, to just maybe say hi to a friend that I met in the street. I mean, I live this every moment. And now they are doing this to my people.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you end with “Under the Rubble”?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, sure. So, this poem, “Under the Rubble,” was written after October 7th. “Under the Rubble.”

She slept on her bed,
never woke up again.
Her bed has become her grave,
a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,
the ceiling a cenotaph.
No name, no year of birth,
no year of death, no epitaph.
Only blood and a smashed
picture frame in ruin
next to her.

In Jabalia Camp, a mother collects her daughter’s
flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a far away land.

A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.

It rained again last night.
The new plant looked for
an umbrella in the garage.
The bombing got intense
and our house looked for
a shelter in the neighborhood.

I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books,
the titles, and names of authors and publishers,
could flee when they hear the bombs.

I became homeless once but
the rubble of my city
covered the streets.

They could not find a stretcher
to carry your body. They put
you on a wooden door they found
under the rubble:

Your neighbors: a moving wall.

The scars on our children’s faces
will look for you.
Our children’s amputated legs
will run after you.

He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
No bread.
Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids.
No need for a table, no need for bread.

A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.

The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.

There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.

I changed the order of my books on the shelves.
Two days later, the war broke out.
Beware of changing the order of your books!

What are you thinking?
What thinking?
What you?
You?
Is there still you?

You there?

Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?

But Heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.

My son asks me whether,
when we return to Gaza,
I could get him a puppy.
I say, “I promise, if we can find any.”

I ask my son if he wishes to become
a pilot when he grows up.
He says he won’t wish
to drop bombs on people and houses.

When we die, our souls leave our bodies,
take with them everything they loved
in our bedrooms: the perfume bottles,
the makeup, the necklaces, and the pens.
In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed.
Nothing remains for the soul.
Even our souls,
they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha. That is the poem “Under the Rubble” in his second book of poetry, Forest of Noise. To see our first interview with Mosab in our studios in New York, you can go to democracynow.org. To see all of our interviews with Mosab, go there, as well — when he was in Gaza, when he got out of Gaza after being held by the Israeli military, when he got out with his family and was in Cairo, Egypt. We spoke to him in Durban, South Africa, and now he’s in the United States. His previous award-winning book is called Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. We’ll also link to his columns. He wrote an article in The New York Times. It’s called “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” His piece in The New Yorker magazine, “The Gaza We Leave Behind.” I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.