Mosab Abu Toha
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. His second collection, Forest of Noise, was a New York Times Notable Book, a New Yorker Best Book & Essential Read of 2024, and a Library Journal Best Book of Poetry. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild. He recently won an Overseas Press Club Award, a James Beard Award, and a Pulitzer Prize in Commentary for his essays on Gaza in The New Yorker.
What is Home?
– 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?
Published on Poets.org. From Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha. Copyright © 2022 by Mosab Abu Toha.