Gedichte handeln nicht nur von der Schönheit des Lebens oder dem Wechselspiel der Liebe. Auch historische Tragödien und existenzielle Not finden ihren Weg in die Poesie.

Die Gedichte von Mosa Abu Tohab, die unter dem Titel „Forest of Noise“ bei Borzoi Books, Penguin Random House, veröffentlicht sind, konfrontieren uns mit der grausamen Wirklichkeit palästinensichen Lebens in Gaza nach dem 7. Oktober 2023. Aber es sind nicht einfache Tatsachenberichte, schon gar nicht politische Statements, sondern emotionale poetische Momente aus dieser Extremsituation.

Ich plädiere ausdrücklich für den Kauf dieses außergewöhnlichen Gedichtbandes und möchte hier zwei kürzere Gedichte und einen Prosatext vorstellen, in ihrer originalen englischen Sprache, die nach meiner Einschätzung aber leicht verständlich ist und keiner Übersetzung bedarf.

Door on the road

In the Refugee Camp,
after the explosion, a door flies into a far street,
rests near a heap of rubble.

Clouds of dust settle on the coughing neighbouring houses –
Their noses swollen by the heat
Of the scorched air.

A girl passes by, sees the bleeding door, opens it. A corpse lies beneath.
The earth weeps. Though some fingers got cut,
The dead young man still clutches in his hand
A very old key – the only thing he´s inherited from his father.
It´s the key to their house
In Yaffa. He was sure it´s been destroyed, but the key
Will be his passport to Yaffa when they return.
Now, neither he nor their knocked-down house in the Refugee Camp can stand.
The girl closes the door. Windows of tears
Open in her heart.

Ramadan 2024

Around that dinner table, missing are the chairs
Where my mother, my father
And my little sister used to sit with us on Fridays,
And where my siblings and their kids
Used to drink tea at sunset when they visited.
No one is here anymore. Not even the sunset.
In the kitchen the table is missing.
In the house, the kitchen is missing.

In the house, the house is missing.
 Only rubble stays, waiting for a sunrise.

Request letter

He pens  a quick letter on paper (a letter as plain in regard to form as possible, with no white spaces) and throws it in the graveyard at night:

Angel of death,

When you collect the souls of those killed in an air strike, do you mind leaving  a sign for us, so we know who is who?

Because last time my old kindergarten teacher couldn´t recognize her daughter´s face, which ear or arm or bloody finger on the dusty street was hers. And a father wouldn´t recognize which was his child if it wasn´t for the size of shoes (23 European size still on the sole) that he bought her for the new school year.

On the back of the paper, he pens the same letter in Arabic, because who could know what language the angel of death uses, the most spoken language of the world, or the language of God.

(es folgt der Brief in arabischen Schriftzeichen)