‘To the Poet Who Knew the Storm Would Return’ – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY
The great twentieth-century poet Mahmoud Darwish was born on this day in 1941. Today, author-translator Alaa Alqaisi shares a letter to Darwish, below, and a poem, after Darwish’s “In Praise of the High Shadow.”
To the Poet Who Knew the Storm Would Return
A Letter from Gaza
By Alaa Alqaisi
Dear Mahmoud,
I write to you from Gaza, not as it was, nor even as it is, but as something in between—a city trapped in the silence of its own destruction. They say the war is over, but tell me, Mahmoud, can a war truly end if its ruins are still warm, if its dead are still waiting to be counted? Can a city return to itself when its bones have been broken, when even the sea no longer recognizes the reflection of its people?
You once asked, “Who am I, after this exodus?[1]” And I must ask you now—who are we after this war? If exile is displacement, then what do we call it when the land itself is lost, when we stand upon it and still do not belong? There was a time when I believed that survival was enough. That, if we endured, if we carried the weight of grief in silence, if we buried the dead and rebuilt the homes, life would find its way back to us. But now, I know better. Survival is not enough. Gaza is alive, but it is no longer living.
Mahmoud, Gaza has always been a city of the displaced—where promises of return turned to illusions, and siege became the only certainty. But now, even the refugees have become refugees again. The camps that once held the exiled from Jaffa, Haifa, and Safad now hold those exiled from Gaza itself. They have fled from one ruin to another, carrying nothing but the weight of their dispossession.
You wrote of the power of memory and the danger of its theft. And now, Mahmoud, they have come to erase even our ruins. They have turned the refugee camps into graveyards and the graveyards into battlefields. Gaza, which was already filled with refugees from the catastrophe of ’48, now carries the weight of another Nakba, a catastrophe within the catastrophe. Tell me, what does it mean when a refugee becomes a refugee again? When exile no longer requires a border, because it exists even at home?
You knew exile, Mahmoud. You walked through its cities, carrying your country in your voice. But I tell you, there is a new kind of exile now—one that does not require leaving. Siege is exile without departure. My generation, born beneath warplanes and raised under siege, has never seen the world beyond the horizon. We hear stories of what lies beyond the sea, but we do not know if they are real. We speak of places we have never touched, cities that exist only in our elders’ memories. You once wrote, “Siege is the waiting room of death[2],” and my generation was born in that waiting room. They saw our children dying and called it collateral. They saw our homes turned to dust and called it self-defense. They saw our people fleeing from one ruin to another and called it war, as if war can exist between the armed and the unarmed, between the occupier and the occupied, between the jailer and those born behind bars.
I used to love Gaza in winter. It was a city that carried the sea in its heart—its quiet, its depth, its unpredictability. Winter stripped away the noise, leaving only the stillness. It was a quiet that felt like it was holding its breath, as if it belonged to a storm that never came. Gaza did not rage, not visibly. Its storms were buried deep, invisible, the kind that no one ever sees but everyone feels. But Gaza is not that place anymore. The innocence of a seaside town has been stolen from it. It no longer dreams of fishing boats heavy with the sea’s gifts. Now it dreams of silence. Silence without sirens. Silence without loss.
Even the sea has changed, Mahmoud. It no longer carries the rhythm of life, no longer cradles the laughter of children chasing the waves, no longer holds the whispered secrets of lovers walking along its shore. Now, it mirrors its people—silent, wounded, taking hit after hit without a sound. And yet, “the sea is our reflection, so do not vanish completely.[3]” But tell me, Mahmoud, how do we hold on when even the sea looks lost? When the tide washes in, but brings back nothing—no footprints, no dreams, not even the memory of who we used to be?
“Go deep into my blood, and go deep into the flour.[4]” You wrote this once, but now, only the first remains. The second is impossible. They went, Mahmoud. The young men of Gaza, empty-handed and starving, walked toward the aid trucks, believing—naïvely—that hunger was not a crime. But the bullets reached them before the flour did. The streets of Al-Rasheed ran red before they ran white. Their bodies fell before their hands could touch the bags meant to save them. What does dignity mean in a place where survival itself is humiliating? Where hunger is not a misfortune but a weapon?
And the homes, Mahmoud.
“Houses die if their inhabitants are gone.[5]” I repeat your words because there is nothing left to say. Gaza’s houses have died, not only in fire, not only in stone, but in absence. The rooms where stories were once told now echo with the silence of those who are no longer here to speak them. The walls that carried the weight of generations have been reduced to dust. And dust, Mahmoud, does not remember. The jasmine tree my grandmother planted in the 1980s—gone. The house that carried our stories—gone. The streets that knew us—gone. Gaza is no longer Gaza. It is something else, something unrecognizable, something that can no longer be called by the name it once knew.
And the Arabs? You would not be surprised. You once said, “Arabs who obeyed their Romans/ Arabs who sold their souls/Arabs who were lost.[6]” And you were right. They watched as the bombs fell, as the houses burned, and they spoke of patience. They sent words instead of weapons, statements instead of soldiers. They have memorized the art of waiting, but they do not know what they are waiting for. Perhaps they think time will erase us, that we will grow tired of mourning ourselves. But they do not understand that Palestine is not a country you can forget. It is a pulse beneath the skin, a name carved into the bones of those who carry it. And as you once called upon them, Mahmoud, I repeat your words: “O watchers of the night! Have you not grown weary?/ Weary of staring at the light in our salt,/ Of the glow of roses blooming from our wounds?/ Have you not grown tired, O watchers of the night?[7]” But they do not answer, Mahmoud. They avert their eyes. They let their silence stretch like a shadow over our ruins. And yet, we remain. We stand here. We sit here. We remain here. And we have but one goal—to be.
And Israel? You knew them well. You wrote, “The killers are the ones who all look alike. They are one, dispersed across metallic devices. They press electronic buttons, kill, and disappear. They see us, but we do not see them—not because they are ghosts, but because they are a steel mask for an idea.[8]”
And now, more than ever, they rewrite history with missiles and call it security. They call this war, so the world believes there are two sides. They call this self-defense, so the world does not ask why all the dead are ours. They call this a conflict, so they can pretend there is something to negotiate. They bomb hospitals and call it precision. They erase the graves of our dead and call it urban renewal.
But listen, Mahmoud—Gaza still breathes. A child, standing in the rubble of his school, recites your poetry as if it is scripture. A boy, whose father was buried beneath the ruins, still kicks a ball through the dust, as if to defy the laws of war. A girl, kneeling beside the ruins, traces the word Palestine in the sand, knowing that even if they take everything, they cannot take the letters from our tongues. “We have on this land what makes life worth living[9],” you wrote. And even now, even after everything, we still search for it.
Tell me, if I carve the name “Palestine” onto the moon, will they still say it does not exist? If I whisper it to the wind, will it carry us home?
The war is over, they say. But tell me, what is war, if not exile in another form? And what is exile, if not the long road home?
I send you this letter, knowing that you, too, are a country. A country of words. A country that cannot be occupied, cannot be erased. And so long as we have words, Mahmoud, we have not lost everything.
From Gaza,
From the wound that refuses to close,
Alaa Alqaisi
Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza, deeply passionate about literature, language, and the power of storytelling to bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities.
[1] “Eleven Stars Over Andalusia,” translated by Agha Shahid Ali with Ahmad Dallal
[2] “State of Siege,” translated by Sabry Hafez and Sarah Maguire
[3] “In Praise of the High Shadow,” translated by Saifedean Ammous
[4] “Ahmad Alza’tar,” translated by Fawwaz Traboulsi
[5] “Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?” translated by Jeffrey Sacks
[6] “Besiege Your Siege,” translated by the author
[7] “State of Siege,” translated by Sabry Hafez and Sarah Maguire
[8] From “The Enemy Poem,” translated by the author
[9] Poem of the same name, multiple translators
