Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha: breaking free with words
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When everything is lost, what remains? For Mosab Abu Toha, it’s poetry. He shares how his verses capture the grief and resilience of Gaza in the midst of destruction.
In this episode:
- Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha), Palestinian Poet
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili, Sonia Bhagat, and Amy Walters, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Duha Mosaad, Cole van Miltenburg, and our host, Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editor is Hisham Abu Salah. Alexandra Locke is the Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:11.0 | Today, poetry on the front lines. |
| 0:15.3 | Every child in Gaza is me. |
| 0:18.1 | Every mother and father is me. |
| 0:24.9 | Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. |
| 0:33.2 | After fleeing Gaza, award-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Tzoha tours the West, using poetry as a force for liberation. Every hole in the earth is my wound. |
| 0:40.9 | I'm Malika Bilal, and this is the take. |
| 0:48.7 | My name is Musababu Toha. |
| 0:52.7 | I'm a Palestinian poet from Gaza. I'm talking to you from New Jersey. |
| 0:59.1 | Mosab, welcome to the take. It is really a pleasure to have you here. December 2nd marked one year |
| 1:06.2 | since you left Gaza, where you lost your house, the library you founded, and most importantly, |
| 1:13.6 | at least 31 members of your family. Now you've been traveling the U.S. and the world |
| 1:20.9 | holding these incredibly popular signings for your new book, Forest of Noise, but on social |
| 1:26.8 | media, you're still extensively |
| 1:28.7 | sharing with the world, the atrocities that are happening back home. And I wonder, what is that |
| 1:36.2 | like for you to be physically here in the U.S., being lauded for your poetry while your heart, |
| 1:47.4 | your mind, and your extended family are back in Gaza. |
| 1:50.3 | Thank you, Malika, for having me. |
| 1:55.4 | It is devastating that I am sitting in the United States. |
| 1:58.4 | I mean, I'm lucky because I'm with my wife and three kids. |
| 2:06.0 | But it is devastating to realize that I can help anyone in Gaza the same way I couldn't help anyone while I was in Gaza. So just imagine that you are |
| 2:12.6 | with your parents, with your siblings and their children in a refugee camp, in a shelter, in a school shelter in Gaza, |
... |
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