MARWAN MAKHOUL – Maalot Tarshiha, North District, Israel

Marwan Makhoul

An Arab at Ben Gurion Airport

I’m an Arab!

I shouted, at the doorway to departures,

short-cutting the woman soldier’s path to me.

I went up to her and said: Interrogate me! But

quickly, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to miss

take-off time.

She said: Where are you from?

Descended from Ghassassanian kings of Golan is my heroism, I said.

My neighbour was Rehab the harlot of Jericho

who gave Joshua the wink on his way to the West Bank

the day he occupied the land that occupied history after him  

from the very first page.

My answers are as stony as Hebron granite:

I was born in the time of the Moabites who came down before you

to this submissive ancient land.

My father a Canaanite

my mother a Phoenician, from South Lebanon of old.

My mother, her mother died two months ago

and she was unable to see her mother off two months ago.

I wept in her arms so that on-looking from Buqaya might console

the worst blow of tragedy and fate:

Lebanon, you see impossible sister,

and my mother’s mother alone

to the north!

She asked me: Who packed your bag for you?

I said: Osama Ibn Laden! But hold on,

take it easy. It’s no more than a joke in poor taste,

a quip that the realists here like me use professionally

for the struggle.

Sixty years I’ve fought with words about peace.

I don’t attack the settlement

and I don’t have a tank like you do

ridden by a soldier to tickle Gaza.

Dropping a bomb from an Apache isn’t on my CV

not because I lack qualifications,

no, but because I see on the horizon a ripple echoing

enough to the out-of-place revolt of the non-violent

and to good behaviour.

Did anyone give you something on the way here? she asked.

I said: An exile from Nayrab refugee camp

gave me memories

and the key to a house from the fabled past.

The rust on the key made me edgy, but I’m

like stainless steel, I compose self with self should I grow nostalgic,

for the groans of refugees

spread wings of longing across borders.

No guard can stop it, nor thousands

and not you for sure.

She said: Do you have any sharp implements in your possession?

I said: My passion

my skin, my olive complexion

my being born here in innocence, but for fate.

Pess-optimistic I was in the seventies

but I’m optimistic about the roars of disobedience

right now being raised to you in Gilboa gaol.

I’m straight out of the

tragic novels of history, the end of the story

a funeral for the past and a wedding

in the not far-off hall of hope.

A raisin from the Jordan Valley raised me

and taught me to speak.

I have a child whose due date I postponed, so he’ll arrive

to a morning not made of straw like today, daughter of Ukraine.

The muezzin’s chanting moves me, even though I’m an atheist.

I shout to mute the mournful wailing of the flutes,

to turn pistols into the undying strains of violins.

The soldier took me to search my things

ordering me to open my bag.

I do what she wants!

And from the depths of the bag ooze my heart and my song,

the meaning of it all slips out eloquently and crudely, within it all that is me.

She asked me: And what’s this?

I said: The sura of the Night Journey ascending the ladder of my veins, the Tafsir of Jalalayn,

the poetry of Abu Tayyeb al-Mutannabi and my sister Maram,

as a photograph and real at the same time,

a silk shawl to enwrap and protect me from the chill exile of relatives,

tobacco from a kiosk in Arraba that made my head spin until doubts got stoned.

Inside me a fierce loyalty, the wild thyme of my country,

the fieriness of pomegranate blossoms, Galilean and sparkling.

Inside me agate, camphor-wood, incense and my being alive,

the pearl that is Haifa: scintillating, everlasting, illuminating,

preposterous, relaxing in the pocket of our return for one reason

only: we worshipped our good intentions and bound

the nakba to a slip in the past and in me!

The soldier hands me over to a policeman

who pats me down and shouts in surprise:

What’s this!?

The manhood of my nation, I say

and my progeny, the fold of my family and two dove’s eggs

to hatch, male and female, from me and for me.

He searches me

for anything that could pose a threat

but this stranger is blind

forgetting the more destructive and important bombs within:

my spirit, my defiance, the swoop of the hawk in my breath and my body

my birthmark and my valour. That is me

whole and complete in a way this fool

will never see.

Now, after two hours of psychological grappling

I lick my wounds for a sufficient five minutes

then embark on the plane that has taken off. Not to leave

and not to return

but to see the soldier below me

the policeman in the national anthem of my shoes below me

and below me a big lie of tin-can history

like Ben Gurion become as always, as always, as always

below me.

---

HELLO BEIT HANOUN

Hello!
Beit Hanoun?
I heard on the news
that an artisan baker has come
to distribute bread
on the back of fresh artillery;
I also heard
that one of his loaves feeds
at least twenty children
and is so warm it burns, and solid
like a randomly targeted shell.
They said
the children woke up early that day
not to go to school
but to the local youth club
opposite the town’s playground
that in summer is big enough for two massacres
and a certain hope, the hope to live.
I also heard
that when they were on their way
they made light of their wounds
and poured blood on the corners
till blood took the colour of the streets
and feelings.
When I saw what I saw on the screen
I thought I was dreaming
or the TV was dreaming the impossible made real.
I never imagined, Beit Hanoun,
that you’d mean anything to me
what with all the fun I’m having

like being busy with friends discussing
whether wine in the bottle
ferments or not.
I never knew you’d mean anything to me,
even something small
something small, Beit Hanoun.
Hello . . . ?
Hello . . . ?
Beit Hanoun?
Can you hear me?
I think the phone’s not working
or is perhaps asleep,
it is very late after all.
Never mind, let it go.
I’ve nothing better to do
than catch up with my brothers shading themselves
by the axed trunk of Arab solidarity.
Goodbye, Beit Hanoun.
Goodbye.

---

New Gaza

No time left
so don’t linger in your mother’s womb
my little boy hurry arrive
not because I long for you
but because war is raging
I fear you will not see
your country as I’d wish for you.
…
Your country is not soil
nor sea that foresaw our fate and died:
it is your people.
Come get to know it
before the bombs mutilate
and I am forced to gather the remains
for you to know that those gone were beautiful
and innocent.
That they had children just like you
they let escape
from the freezers for the dead
at every raid to skip as orphans
on a lifeline.
…
If you’re late you may not
believe me and believe it is a land
without a people
and that we were not really here at all.
Twice exiled, then we revolted

against our luck
for seventy-five years
once luck turned all bad
and hope turned grey.
…
The burden’s too heavy
too much for you to bear
I know, forgive me for like a gazelle
giving birth I am afraid
of hyenas lying in wait to pounce behind
the pit. Come quick then run
as far as you can
so I’m not ravaged by regret.
…
Last night, despair exhausted me
I said, keep quiet.
What’s it to do with him?
My little one, child of the breeze,
what’s the Storm to do with him?
But today I am compelled to come back
bearing breaking news:
They bombed the Baptist Hospital in Gaza
among the 500 victims was a child
who calls to his brother, half his head blown off
eyes open: “My brother!
Can you see me?”
He does not see him
just like the frantic world
that condemned for two hours then slept

to forget him
and forget his brother
does not see him.
…
What to tell you now?
Disaster and catastrophe are sisters
both ravenous and raging they attack me
until my lips tremble and from them drop
all possible synonyms for
corpse.
In time of war don’t count on any poet
he’s as slow as a tortoise
making a futile effort to race a massacre
that runs like a hare.
The tortoise creeps
and the hare leaps from crime to crime
as far as the Orthodox Church, now bombed
in the sight of God who’s just come from
a mosque razed to dust they targeted
in the sanctuary of the saviour. Where is the saviour
when our Father who art in heaven actually is the airplane
one alone and with no partner
save the one on board who came to bomb us
but the target hit is our submission.
My child, on the cross now
there’s enough room for all the prophets.
God knows all
but you and innocent foetuses like you
are yet to know.

---

Love means…

To love means chasing a feather
till your shadow’s out of breath: take me with you
slowly as falling snow you chase her, unaware of yourself,
you forget who you were and your family.
To love means being a child
drawing a terracotta figurine in the dust.
Trees do not stand still before you; they raise you,
comb your hair towards the sunrise to parade you
as good tidings for the fruit.
To love means seeing the fingers of the butterfly
knitting your life anew at thirty
dancing for joy at you
midwife of luck.
To love means paying attention to tiny details
to know your heart that beats
on your chest with the concerto of beginnings
as you seek refuge in the crescendo.
To love means hanging without fuss
from tender mercies
as the dew flows over your cheeks and you wake
from night a lilac that makes the morning green.
To love means you’re romantic: you persuade the wadi
that the sea had dried up
yet it will become a river if it flows through you.
You teach mountains reverence before your emotional vastness
soaring akin to sublimity
and the impossible.
To love means growing younger
and the fear of death dying
you ride the wave, not to escape but to rock your body, to sniff
what others do not sniff: water’s relationship with water,
the sugar grains of creation.

To love means there is a beloved
and that you are a fool:
she makes you jealous of herself, and fuming
if one of her lips touches the other, to become
if your share her with her lips, a god without partner
in the firmament of kisses.

---

Marwan Makhoul is a Palestinian poet, born in 1979
in the village of al-Buqei’a, Upper Galilee, to a
Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. He
works in engineering as a managing director of a
construction company. He has several published
works in poetry, prose and drama, including the
poetry collections: Hunter of Daffodils, Land of the
Sad Passiflora, Verses the Poems Forgot with Me,
Where Is My Mom, and A Letter from the Last Man.
For his first play, This Isn’t Noah’s Ark, Makhoul
won the best playwright award at The Acre Theatre
Festival in 2009. His poetry is also award winning
and has appeared worldwide in Arabic publications.
Several of his poems have been set to music.
Selections from his poetry have been translated into
English, Turkish, Italian, German, French, Hebrew,
Irish, Serbian, Hindi, Polish, Dutch, Albanian,
Macedonian, Portuguese, Amharic, Eastern
Armenian, Bangla, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam,
Marathi, Russian, and Urdu.
During the 2023 Gaza war, the following poem of
his became a slogan raised by tens of millions of
protestors and written on the walls of cities around
the world: “in order for me to write poetry that isn’t /
political, I must listen to the birds / and in order to
hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent.”
These lines became the world’s loudest call for an
end to the targeting of civilians.