Location: Gaza, Palestine a week after the ceasefire Photograph: Duha Hasan
Basman Derawi, Cairo
Basman Aldirawi (also published as Basman Derawi) is a physiotherapist and a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2010. Inspired by an interest in music, movies, and people with special needs, he contributes dozens of stories/poems to the online platform We Are Not Numbers and other platforms including Vivamost, Mondoweiss, ArabLit, and Written Revolution. He has contributed to the Arabic poetry anthology, Gaza: Land of Poetry, 2021 and to the English anthology, Light in Gaza: Writing Born in Fire, 2022.
Theme: Miracle Poems
Basman Derawi’s Miracle Poem
Basman - Miracle Poem
I am the pain in the ass
Who asks too many questions.
I am a poet who is tiring his mentor,
Who wrote an ode to his bladder at the border
Instead of crying.
Who wrote an ode to the annoying drones.
I am the survivor who doesn't survive.
I am thirty-five years old, four wars, and a genocide.
I am a Palestinian who should have died years ago.
I am a miracle.
Theme: Colorism
Black and White
Even though we are more than
fifty shades of colors.
My community is too, black and white.
I am neither European nor American.
I am the less civilized, no black man in my uncivilized world
would be choked under the knee of a white cop.
Yet no black man marries a white woman without
whispers in the wedding hall.
No black boy grows without questioning
his skin as if it was a mistake.
In my community, God is for all but still,
Whiter is the prettiest.
Theme: Homeland
What is Homeland?
What is homeland?
It’s the land that never tired
to be a mother.
Even when her neck is under
the sharp knife of an occupier.
What is homeland?
It’s the land that never tired
to stand again.
Even when they leave her
four limbs amputated.
What is homeland?
It’s the land that never tired
to be a home.
Even when her body is shivering
and the tent is very cold.
Theme: Love Letters to Palestine
I Don’t Want to Die
I wonder if God let me choose,
Which places I would want to be from.
I might choose to be Brazilian.
I am not sexy but I would love to learn Samba.
I might choose to be Italian.
I could eat pasta and pizza every day.
I might choose to be French.
I am overweight yet fashionable.
I might choose to be Swiss.
Nature, chocolate, and cheese are irresistible.
I could list many places based on
food, music, dance and weather.
Palestine is on my list.
I put two lines under her name.
An angel in the corner laughing,
Why would you choose a place filled with blood and death?
I didn't ask him, have you tried Maklouba?
I don’t ask him about Dabka.
I don’t tell him how much of an olive oil’s lover I am.
I don’t tell him about Gaza’s sea.
I don’t speak about my friends.
I don’t speak about the weather.
I just answer: no, I don’t want to die.
Palestine always gives a better explanation to my existence.
Theme: Freedom-Huriye-Azadi
On the First Day of Freedom
On the first day of freedom,
I would visit Beersheba,
standing at the step of my old house
and crying.
I would eat konafa from Nablus,
walking in its old alleys.
At the back of my head,
fighting the flashbacks of the checkpoints.
I would leave the picture of the old city
of Jerusalem at the gravestones of my friends,
swallowing the wish this trip was supposed
to be a group trip.
I would hold the Palestinian flag,
running in the streets of Gaza
before opening my eyes and
remember my legs are amputated.