As a book reviewer, I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher or author to facilitate this review. I received no other compensation, and all opinions are always 100% my own.
Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He was already a prize-winning author when the current war began, and he found himself forced to evacuate their home with his wife and their two young children. At one point he revisited their old home to get some of the books he had painstakingly collected and formed into a community library named after Edward Said. Nothing remained but rubble.
Writing in the midst of chaos, homes destroyed and friends and family killed, Abu Toha has nonetheless managed to create something of beauty that will last. By writing particulars of his family and his memories, he brings the horrors of war home and pays homage to the strength of family and the power of memory.
For example in the poem My Son Throws a Blanket over My Daughter, he writes: “My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa,/weaing the pink dress given to her by a friend,/hears a bomb explode. She gasps,/covers her mouth with her dress’s ruffles./Yazzan, her five-and-a-half-year-old brother,/ grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body./You can hide now, he assures her.”
Whether we are reading of his grandfather’s orange trees in Jaffa or the amnesia of stones, which “forget they were in a wall in a bedroom or a kitchen or a bathroom,” Abu Toha’s poems capture quotidian life in a war zone as lived over generations, bringing the reader into the experience. Forest of Noise is devastating and beautiful, timely and timeless, and highlights our shared humanity. Highly recommended!
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