Anand Patwardhan

Mahatma Gandhi on Palestine Written in 1938- ‘The Jews In Palestine’

Published in the Harijan  26-11-1938
An Excerpt

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became lifelong companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age long persecution.

Religious sanction has been invoked for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews. But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice.

The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine.

Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.

Rajni Bakshi

This is not what we wanted

By Tuvia Ruebner
Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back

This is not what we wanted, no, no, not this. 
Without them, who are we and for what?
We didn't want this, no, not this, we didn't think it would be like this: 
how the land just devours and devours.

Saranya Subramanian

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear

By Mosab Abu Toha

For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.

When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

ii

The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my small ear canal of them all.

Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours,
my doctor, day and night.

Sharmistha Mohanty

The Shelling Ended

By Najwan Darwish 
Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

No one will know you tomorrow.
The shelling ended
only to start again within you.
The buildings fell, the horizon burned, 
only for flames to rage inside you, 
flames that devour even stone.

The murdered are sunk in sleep, 
but sleep will never find you-
awake forever, 
awake until they crumble, 
these massive rocks said to be the tears of retired gods.

Forgiveness has ended, 
and mercy is bleeding outside of time. 
No one knows you now, and no one will know you tomorrow.
You, like the trees, 
are planted in your place while the shells are falling.

Kiran Rao

Pull Yourself Together

By Hiba Abu Nada
Translated by Katharine Halls

O! How alone we are!
All the others have won their wars
and you were left in your mud,
barren.

Darwish, don’t you know?
No poetry will return to the lonely
what was lost, what was
stolen.

How alone we are!
This is another age of ignorance. Cursed are those
who divided us in war and marched in your funeral
as one.

How alone we are!
This earth is an open market,
and your great countries have been auctioned away,
gone!

How alone we are!
This is an age of insolence,
and no one will stand by our side,
Never.

O! How alone we are!
Wipe away your poems, old and new,
and all these tears. And you, O Palestine,
pull yourself together.

David Britto

By Exiles 

By Agha Shahid Ali [A Ghazal]
For Edward W. Said

In Jerusalem a dead phone’s dialed by exiles.
You learn your strange fate: you were exiled by exiles.

You open the heart to list unborn galaxies.
Don’t shut that folder when Earth is filed by exiles.

Before Night passes over the wheat of Egypt,
let stones be leavened, the bread torn wild by exiles.

Crucified Mansoor was alone with the Alone:
God’s loneliness—just His—compiled by exiles.

By the Hudson lies Kashmir, brought from Palestine—
It shawls the piano, Bach beguiled by exiles.

Tell me who’s tonight the Physician of Sick Pearls?
Only you as you sit, Desert Child, by exiles.

Match Majnoon (he kneels to pray on a wine-stained rug)
or prayer will be nothing, distempered mild by exiles.

“Even things that are true can be proved.” Even they?
Swear not by Art but, O Oscar Wilde, by exiles.

Don’t weep, we’ll drown out the Calls to Prayer, O Saqi—
I’ll raise my glass before wine is defiled by exiles.

Was—after the last sky—this the fashion of fire:
Autumn’s mist pressed to ashes styled by exiles?

If my enemy’s alone and his arms are empty,
give him my heart silk-wrapped like a child by exiles.

Will you, Belovèd Stranger, ever witness Shahid—
two destinies at last reconciled by exiles?

Richa Roy

What is Home?
By Mosab Abu Toha

What is home: 
it is the shade of trees on my way to school
    before they were uprooted.
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding 
    photo before the walls crumbled. 
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants
   slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and 
   put in a museum. 
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and 
   roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house 
   to ashes. 
It is the café where I watched football matches
   and played—

My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold
   all of these?

Anuradha Parikh

I Often Dream

By Najwan Darwish
Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

I often dream that the waves of Haifa’s sea
are dunes of blue
and that an ageless camel driver
 is emerging from them,
dragging the days behind him.
He stops, for a little while, beneath my window
so I can give him everything
the Arabs have laid away with me:
the openings of unrecited poems,
and wars that never ended.
I give him all of it,
all their desperate love.

And as he’s loading these troves onto his steed
I convince him to take my life as well,
for which I’ve found no city,
and my city,
for which I’ve found no life.
And I wave to him as he cuts across the dunes of blue,
returning with his haul.
My joy is indescribable:
The Mediterranean
has become a sea of dunes.

Danish Husain

Falastini bachche ke liye lori 
By Faiz Ahmed Faiz

mat ro bacche 
tere aangan mein 
murda suraj nehla ke gaye hain 
chandrama dafna ke gaye hain.

Falastini Shohda Jo Pardes Mein Kaam Aae
By Faiz Ahmad Faiz

jis zamin par bhi khila mere lahu ka parcham 
lahlahata hai vahan arz-e-Filistin ka alam 
tere aada ne kiya ek Filistin barbad 
mere zakhmon ne kiye kitne Filistin aabaad

Dia Mirza

Think of Others
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Hassan Hegazy

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you wage your wars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you express yourself in metaphor, think of others (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself (say: If only I were a candle in the dark).

Ishan Benegal

On This Earth
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Fady Joudah

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: 
April's hesitation,
the aroma of bread at dawn, 
a woman's point of view about men, 
the works of Aeschylus, 
the beginning of love, 
grass on a stone, 
mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: 
the final days of September, 
a woman keeping her apricots ripe after forty, 
the hour of sunlight in prison, 
a cloud reflecting a swarm of creatures, 
the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, 
a tyrant's fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: 
on this earth, 
the Lady of Earth, 
mother of all beginnings and ends. 
She was called Palestine. 
Her name later became Palestine. 
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

Naseeruddin Shah

If I Must Die
By Refaat Alareer

If I must die, 
you must live 
to tell my story 
to sell my things 
to buy a piece of cloth 
and some strings, 
(make it white with a long tail) 
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 
while looking heaven in the eye 
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 
and bid no one farewell 
not even to his flesh 
not even to himself— 
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 
and thinks for a moment an angel is there 
bringing back love 
If I must die 
let it bring hope 
let it be a tale