Palestinian poet Ramzi Salem’s “لم أنجُ من الحرب” originally appeared in Al Araby in December 2023. We will have a second of Salem’s poems, a translation of his “أقدامٌ تسبق الفجر“, tomorrow.
I Did Not Survive the War
By Ramzi Salem
Translated by the author
I still remember that night so clearly
when the wind became a dagger,
the night’s cockroach a wolf,
the bird a fly,
the room’s window a mine,
and the ceiling a trap
that might close around my chest,
my throat, my nose
at any moment, and drown me
in an orange sky
with every shell that falls.
My hands tremble,
under a winter blanket,
through a scorching summer.
My eyes are bloody,
mauled by saltwater.
My body is not my own:
stolen by fear and turned to dust,
waiting to merge with the rubble,
to return to where it belongs,
to its home and haven,
with every shell that falls.
Now ten years have passed
since the last wars, the first torments.
I still remember those nights
in the summer of July 2014,
which became scars on my belly,
which console every gray hair that invades my head,
piercing the dark flesh of my skin,
and cooking it slowly without any care
for my hypersensitivity to the shadow of fire,
feeding it to the naked night bats,
before they launch another belt of fire.
Now, in my eighth year
of the exile of body and soul,
in the desolate forests of the West,
war stings again, its venom more lethal.
I scour my skin
and snatch fragments of sleep
while I long for the respite of slumber.
Anxiety chews at me, tearing me apart with its fangs,
as the lion devours the deer.
This iron mask wears me out:
pretending as if nothing is happening
while the ants can find nothing to eat
and David’s daily question exhausts me.
Did I hear my mother’s voice again?
I’m tired of recycling the same answers,
of my sigh and the silence that follows,
of another massacre
that might happen at any moment,
or maybe it’s happening now,
as I carve out this text.
Ask the fields of gray on my head,
and don’t forget to count them strand by strand.
Let each lock of hair tell you its own story,
about how it became a ghost in the middle of a Gaza night,
how it broke time and turned it into nothing:
to be born prematurely at forty,
twelve years early,
before my skull was widened by a single centimeter,
before the broad lines split my forehead.
Now, eight years later,
I did not survive the war.
War is born with us,
with our names and titles,
with the first cry,
with the first frown,
with the first suckle,
and with the stamp of our birth certificate.
We are children of war,
so how can war kill us?
Ramzi Salem is a Palestinian poet who lives in Belgium. He has published many poems addressing various topics, including Palestine, exile, homesickness, and recurring wars. He is currently working on his first collection, which primarily highlights the disastrous effects of the devastating war that erupted in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. This collection deeply explores the pain of loss, suffering, hunger, and cold, and expresses his feelings as an expatriate—his constant anxiety and fear, along with longing and homesickness. It also reflects on the world’s failure and the loss of humanity.