Teaching the World to Say Gaza, Mohammed Moussa
Artwork by Hoài-Phương.
What do you write about these days, my friend, when the world feels like a wound that won’t close? To those closest to you, the ones who hold your heart in their hands, what words can you offer? Do you ask, “How are you?” when the question itself feels like a betrayal of the silence they carry? How do you speak of displacement—a home torn from its roots, a city reduced to ash and echoes?
How do you measure the weight of loss when it’s not just a house, but a lineage, a laughter, a life burned away? Write a poem to a stranger who knows only your name, who asks a hundred times, “Who are you?” as if your identity could be pinned to a single answer. Go for a walk, let the streets of a foreign city unfold before you, their vibrancy a stark contrast to the smoldering ruins you carry in your chest.
Your city, once alive with voices, now burns in memory—its streets choked with grief, its skies heavy with smoke. Yet here, in this new place, people build lives with a fervor that feels both foreign and cruel, their laughter a reminder of what you’ve lost. What do you say to the memories that greet you at every corner, those ghosts that rise from the pavement to whisper who you truly are? A poet, adrift in a city that no longer claims you, your name slipping through your fingers like sand. You’ve lost your city, your people, your anchor to the world. And as you dream of return, the question gnaws at you: Who returns to death? Who rises from it? Who carries a passport, like you, that grants passage through borders, while others—your people—are denied even a scrap of paper to escape a death zone?
Do not go back to who you were, my friend. Do not let the world’s indifference numb you, do not become a hollowed shell, desensitized to the genocide that scars your soul. Write. Write with the fury of a heart that still beats. Teach the world how to spell Jabalia, letter by trembling letter. Teach them how to pronounce Gaza—not as a headline, but as a cry, a home, a heartbeat.
Show them why they should care, and why their apathy is a wound of its own. Wear a shirt that screams your truth, then tear it off when it becomes too heavy. Write a song, let its notes carry your sorrow, then delete it if it feels too raw. Write a book, speak of it boldly, then pull it back into the shadows if the world isn’t ready—or if you aren't. What Gaza endures now is beyond the grasp of words, a grief so vast it defies language. Take time, my friend, to sit with this sorrow, to let it seep into your bones.
Such loss demands pause, demands reflection, demands courage to fathom what cannot be fully understood. Write, not to capture it—for no page can hold such pain—but to bear witness, to carve a space where the world might see, might feel, might remember. Write, because even in a lost city, a poet’s voice is a spark that refuses to die.
