Nov 2023 – Page 23

Hiba’s Last poem before her murder by Israeli bombs in Gaza- Hiba Abu Nada, Palestinian poet and novelist (1991-2023)

from thefreeonline on 1st Nov 2023 by Literary Hub / Hiba Abu Nada

A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation

Hiba Abu Nada, 32, wrote and published her final poem ten days before Israeli bombs killed her and many others on October 20, 2023, in Gaza. She had a B.A in organic chemistry and a master’s degree in clinical nutrition.

In her short life she managed to publish one novel, Oxygen is Not for the Dead. The speaker in Abu Nada’s final poem is an inner I, probably the voice of God welling up inside. Here is an excerpt:

I shelter you
and the children who
are sleeping
as chicks in the lap
of their nest

they don’t walk
in their dreams
because death
towards the house
walks

….

I shelter you
from wound and woe,
and with seven verses
I shield

the taste of orange
from phosphorus,
the color of clouds
from smoke.

Death

Her last post online was on 8 October 2023, when she wrote^[12]

“Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.“

On 20 October 2023, she was killed in the Israel–Hamas war, during an airstrike by the Israeli Air Force, which hit her home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. She was 32.^[13]^[14]

Works

‏الأكسجين ليس للموتى ‏ [Oxygen is not for the dead: a novel] (in Arabic). ‏دائرة الثقافة، حكومة الشارقة،‏, al-Shāriqah. 2017. ISBN 978-9948-23-314-5. OCLC 1032289333 – via Wikidata: Q123139804.

Author Abdalhadi Alijla wrote on Twitter, “With great sadness we mourn one of the most talented Gaza feminist poet and novelist, Heba Abu Nada. Her novel named, ‘Oxygen is not for the dead’. She wrote yesterday,’If we die, know that we are content and steadfast, and convey on our behalf that we are people of truth.’…….. Oh gosh Heba.”

Gaza in Paradise: The Tragic Story of Palestinian Writer Hiba Kamal Abu Nada

2023-10-22 12:31:15 We are in heaven now. A new city will be built there. Those who sing about eternal love there will be Gazans. These are the lines Palestinian writer Hiba Kamal Abu Nada wrote on her Facebook timeline before she was killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza. Gaza…October 22, 2023

In “world”