Nothing New Said or Done
The recital called in the name of war and peace did not finish in peace. A late reader from the world of the Open Mic rose up to question the…
Author: Indran Amirthanayagam
Listen
Listen to the doctor, the pediatrician, the head of the children’s hospital in North Gaza. Listen to him mourn his son. Listen to his cries, his wailing. his son killed…
Nyet
No more refugees. No more border- crossers. No more morning after pills. No more right to decide who will decide if I will bear the greatest child in the greatest nation.…
Traveling Genocide
I will not be silent. When Sri Lankan soldiers murdered seventy thousand Tamil civilians in the Vanni during the last months of the last Eelam War, there were cries…
Out of Yaffa
He has never visited Yaffa, home of his grandfather, just forty miles away across No Man’s land and the border fence. He has not seen the Wailing Wall, stepped on the…
A Bloody Turn
You say we are all traumatized by this genocide, that we are responsible as well, that we cannot hide under books or pillows from drones, fighter jets and two thousand pound bombs.…
Gaza, First Death Anniversary
International Words cannot bring back the dead. But they can heal the wounded my teacher said. I went to the house; found its absence baffling and bitter like smoke disappearing…
Persistence
The persistence of this gash, persnickety yet pernicious, painful, powerful, collective memory, to get the image framed for the memorial service, bodies burnt on the Yal Devi Express, houses and kovil…
The Utility of Tears
These tears fall into buckets, run to streams and rivers. These tears, shed weight from the body, leave a light patina like drops on the windowpane. How to go on…
Spring
Where do these words come from? From the bleeding River Jordan. From the Gaza sea bobbing with bodies and food packages. From the mosque in Rafah in the gunsights of…
Praying for Rain
A school in Nuseirat. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir-al Balah. These are the most recent places in Gaza to be memorialized later on a wailing wall. Here fourteen civilian women…
Target
I don’t want to be a pessimist, to darken your day, to add a fresh pack of stones to the load you carry. But I cannot help myself, not now,…
On Burial and Punishment
I note the moral equivalence, one punishment for another although I don’t think we can fix history in a flash. Go back to days before October 7th or 8th. But…
Peacemaker in the War Room
The 2,000 bomb and its little sister, the 500 pounder, have had a highly successful field test in Northern and Central Gaza in recent months. Large scale apartment buildings and…
Get Out My Vote
How can you expect my vote when you allow Haitians arrived at our border to be picked up and deported back to the island from which they fled, where rape, murder,…