Dedicated to the Palestinians in Gaza. The poem also marks the 7th anniversary of the war in Gaza in July-August 2014 / Ramadan 1435.
Rising into the blackened haze,
Smoke and stench of children ablaze,
All hope, laughter, dreams
Obliterated by blitz and siege
Who will make Gaza’s children wake?
Who will heal their mothers’ searing pain?
Who will end the agony, still the fear?
Who will dam the rivers of blood and tears?
Will it be the Muslims busy with rituals and rites,
Fasting by day, feasting by night?
Or Ramadan’s seekers of spirituality,
Undistracted by blood and ugly realities?
Will it be us, who slip into insularity
Focusing only on ourselves, our children, our families
Whilst Gaza burns and weeps alone
Strangulated, incinerated, ignored
Who will cry out from the pulpit, even whisper
A call for action, protest, prayer?
Will Gaza’s bloodbath, Yemen’s slaughter, Syria’s destruction
Provoke only silence in the Friday sermon?
With modernity, ignorance has long ceased,
Death and destruction fill our screens
Yet if ignorance is weakness, uglier still
Is apathy, inertia, a lack of collective will
As an ummah, we weep for Palestine’s pain
We’re moved by her resilience
Through 70 years of insidious, brutal Occupation
Yet,
If we do not mobilise leadership, vision,
Collective strategy and action,
How will Palestinian freedom and dignity
Ever become a reality?
By Fatema Valji
