He is keen for his poetry to have a voice of its own, far from the influences of the Palestinian poets who preceded him, avoiding being a copy of any of them or even falling into the love of their great Mahmoud Darwish, who, as he said in a previous interview with him, “whose words stick to us like a glue that is difficult to remove.”
The Gazan poet Nasser Rabah combines poetry with writing novels, and in the field of poetry he has published five collections: The Elegy of the Robin, One from Nobody, Running After a Dead Deer, Passersby in Light Clothes, Water Thirst for Water, and in the novel he has published two novels, “A Fence for the Deer.” And “about an hour ago.”
Rabah moves between the iambic poem and the prose poem, “trying to reflect the bitter reality that the Gaza Strip is experiencing, and in the atmosphere of heat and the recent aggression against Gaza, he wrote:
“The sound of the planes all night was gone, and the sound of their empty bullets was replaced by the children with a kite. The sound of the planes was gone, and as for the house that was destroyed by its people, it remains in the ground, benefiting the people in a tomorrow in which beautiful houses and beautiful balconies will rise, and there will be no planes.”
Tel Aviv Tribune Net interviewed the poet Nasser Rabah, who is still in Gaza among many of his creative peers, and he responds by writing to the massacre that affects everything in Gaza. This meeting was with him:
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You said about war in your last text in the War Diary that it rediscovers the self. What about the individual self and the collective self of the world that were changed by the war?
Every moment in the lives of the people of Gaza now is a moment of writing, and a moment of history. Every scene we have seen for months is a rare and unrepeatable snapshot, whether in the journalistic or humanitarian sense, and even in the literary and artistic sense.
Hundreds of stories and anecdotes pass before our eyes morning and evening, stories about human torment, suffering, and oppression, about challenges, adaptation, and inventing the possible from the impossible. And other stories about human weakness, brokenness, disappointment, and disappointment.
Writing here rises to the level of a national function, and the moral duty of telling the story in the words of its heroes and as they wrote it with tears, blood, and screams. But who will write all this outpouring? And when? And how? If the writer himself is the hero of these stories, and not just the viewer, then Sisyphus is one of those ascending the mountain of suffering morning and evening, and he does not have the luxury of contemplation, the serenity of the moment, and the majesty of identification with language.
How he spends his day moving from one bread line to the other to get water, collecting firewood for cooking, dodging places of danger and accidental death as much as he can, restoring what was destroyed by his family’s steadfastness and their dreams in the displacement tents. How can it be that no one sleeps in Gaza, where the sounds of marches, distant artillery, and often a nearby explosion here or there keep him company. Observations in Gaza are a busy sea, and writing is a small fish, as the fishermen are very busy and very tired.
The radical changes in the world’s view of us represent an unexpected achievement in the course of war events and may be harmful and beneficial. We may not have been victorious militarily, but our blood forced the world to cheer for us and win for our cause. Perhaps our blood was excessive and free, but it brought to our side what we had not even dreamed of. From universities in America, judges in the Court of Justice and Criminal Courts, demonstrations in London and Paris, major countries that recognize us, artists, athletes, and great politicians screaming for us.
Here, the Gazan street’s fascination with her can be explained to the point of ecstasy. She is a bandage for our wounds, the return of water to the streams of conscience and truth, the world’s rediscovery of its just spirit, which the West has long extinguished with policies siding with the spoiled child, and which suddenly discovers that she has gotten out of control and turned into a serial child killer, and she is Certainly a big step towards the establishment of a state and necessarily the collapse of another state
War and poetry
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During war, while you collect poetry and prose, what do you insist on while you are under fire?
Writing a novel at this time seems like a naive claim, not worthy of the heat of the moment and its rapid manifestations. Writing novels is the joy of discovery, as Umberto Eco said, and this joy is not achieved in the midst of the anxious war diaries and its noise, so the writer does not have the pleasure of contemplation and the serenity of moments of research and analysis, but Undoubtedly, it is crowded and filled with an enormous amount of desire for narration and stories, which will find its appropriate moment later.
Here, poetry seems to be a suitable choice, more present and more elegant, although it leans, despite the poet’s nose, towards directness and clarity, and perhaps more towards high rhythm, as background music for the state of pain and screaming, as well as for the pulse of heroism and steadfastness. This is what I would like to say now.
Big war makes good poetry
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I ask your question about war making good poets. Does war really do that? Does it increase poetic sensitivity and can a poet create a beautiful poetic image in a desolate world?
Yes, necessarily, big events create good poetry. I observe on the pages of my colleagues a lot of unexpected poetry, manifestation in poetic elevations that I have not prepared for them, and perhaps they themselves are surprised by it. The great pain that besets us produces rare words, a filter free of chatter and nonsense, produces striking and confusing images. Even for the imagination. Someone writes about the bullet that pierced the sky, causing it to rain blood! Another writes about a child who wets the amputation site and perhaps his leg will grow again. And so on.
Simply put, poor art cannot be accepted to express a just cause. The wild world produces terrible events, but it also, in some ways, unwittingly produces good poetry and good poets.
Mine of creativity
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The recent war almost lifts the siege on the cultural voice. There is a desire to discover the creative voice in Gaza, which presented a stereotypical image related to war, hunger, and siege. What do you say about that?
Gaza in particular is an undiscovered mine for poets and writers of short stories and novels, and we have something to be proud of and with great confidence. We have amazing energies of giving and amazement. It does not hurt us that the siege has affected the sources of creativity and literary and cinematic production. Gaza has only appeared as a stereotypical image of the victim, and therefore it is preferable to break this mold. And to highlight the amazing energies and treasures hidden in this crazy war.
But perhaps yes, and to a significant extent, the writings that we publish on social media pages have contributed to introducing more readers from outside Palestine, who have not previously been exposed to the works of Gaza’s creators.
Celebration doesn’t concern me
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While you are in the midst of war, I ask you about celebrating your experience and whether it received the criticism it deserved?
I do not want to say that I am completely satisfied with the level of celebration and awareness of us, but this issue does not concern us and is left to time and circumstances. Personally, I am proud of what I have achieved among those interested and critics in my country, and this is very enough for me. I have publications for 5 poetry collections and two novels, and I participated in several festivals. International poetry, and currently translated selections of my poetry are being prepared in a book to be published next year in America.
Among the poetic selections:
“How can I forgive me when I left you in the crowd? The sky is raining iron, and the ground is like an old carpet that is being dusted off. In the crowd the hospital was far away, and the sky continues its delirium, and the hospital is far away. The blue and green are gone, and nothing remains in my eyes but ashes, and the crowd is driving the street out of its sobriety and it is intoxicating.” And he wailed: I am the forest of the dead. The beggars returned to him and found him blind, and I went back to look for my eyes, but I did not find them.
How can I forgive me when the hospital is far away? He returned crying to his house and did not find him. He returned to his night and did not find him. He came to me. We drank another day, and many countries, and we said: O memories, be beautiful, but they were not. We said to the windows, do not hurt the birds of the poems. The houses were wounded, a city searching for itself in the crowd. I was sitting with her dying, and the hospital was far away.”
