a poem for Palestine
by Maliha Iqbal
Thousands of people attended a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony for victims of the conflict in Tel Aviv on Monday night, running the gauntlet of a handful of right-wing activists who shouted hated slogans. —Haaretz, April 24, 2023. Photo by Gili Getz, The Times of Israel, April 25, 2023.
The last thing that survives When the frightened mother Hides her littler children behind her In the face of the hard glint of a soldier’s gun The last thing that survives When the eldest child loses his childhood and innocence Because he is the only one left To look after his little brothers and sisters The last thing that survives When the soldier stares at the picture Of his dead daughter and crouches down, Wishing to shut himself off from the world and sob forever The last thing that survives When little children lying in hospital beds With IV drips attached to their arms Smile through the bandages at their parents To give them something to go on The last thing that survives When everything is covered with thick choking smoke Like a massive cloud has crashed on earth And all you see around yourself Are dead bodies floating in the cloud You vaguely recall the boom of the bomb And the gunfire that shattered the windows of your home The smoke strangles you, makes you tear up But you don’t care because You have just remembered the scream of your loved ones And right now you are too busy looking for them The last thing that survives the night of war Is the love that waits for the break of dawn.*
*
Maliha Iqbal is a student and writer based in Aligarh, India. Many of her short stories, write-ups, letters and poems have been published on platforms Live Wire (The Wire), Creativity Webzine, Cerebration, Histolit, Countercurrents, Times of India, The Palestine Chronicle, Freedom Review, ArmChair Journal, Counterview, Good Morning Kashmir, Writers’ Cafeteria, Café Dissensus, Borderless Journal, The Cadre Journal and Indian Periodical. She can be reached at malihaiqbal327(at)gmail.com.