From rubble, from memory, the poems salvage shards. They curve lovingly around 'what we have.' They carve not into silence, the marble of peacetime, but into a storm of noise: aerial bombing, shattering glass, surveillance drones intruding on every thought. What Abu Toha makes of this hard material is disarming. His voice tends to gentleness and wonder, nosing out beauty in all its small places.
What’s pervasive (and most disturbing) is not the constant thrum of death but the sense of loss—of family, place, memories, continuity, home, and village, with the loss of the past meaning the loss of the future.
A difficult but necessary read. As good poetry often does, these poems will keep you up at night and will require you to ask some of the most difficult questions of our time: What kind of world are we living in? What kind of world are we leaving to the children?
