Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza

I can't comfortably rate someone's experiences in a situation like this, so ignore the stars. That's just an automatic how could I do anything different sort of rating. This is especially true since I tend to rate my personal higher scale portion based primarily on "vibes". That's something I refuse to do here - the rating is just there because it would look strange on my digital shelf otherwise. This book is too honest and harrowing to be a "for the vibes" read anyone should do. This book is a lesson. A magnifying glass into reality.

This is a heartbreaking read, plain and simple. It's a real situation, real emotions, real horrors that no one should have to go through. It's terrifying, it's gut spinning, and it's raw. If you are show more looking for an insight into Gaza as a warzone, from someone who has experienced it, this book is it. If you're looking to feel empathy and horror and know what's going on from a day-to-day non-combatant standpoint, this is the book. This is the reality. show less

Mosab Abu Toha (1992-) is a young Palestinian poet who spent most of his life in Gaza before leaving, along with his young family, to become a Visiting Fellow in the Scholars at Risk program at Harvard in 2022, then pursuing an MFA at Syracuse University. While in Gaza he and his biological family experienced personal trauma and loss, due to regular attacks on Hamas terrorists and civilians by the Israel Defense Forces, and he was injured and nearly killed by an IDF attack at the age of 16 as he went to a local market. He was a good student, particularly in the English language, and he graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza despite additional IDF attacks that destroyed much of the campus. As a student he was inspired by the great show more English poets along with ancient and modern Arabic poets, and although he decided to become a teacher to support his family his great love was poetry, which allowed him to express his personal feelings and experiences living under siege and hardship in an oppressed society.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is Toha’s first published collection of poems, which won or was a finalist for several poetry awards. The poems are very evocative, and provide the reader with the beauty of Gaza, the destruction inflicted by Israeli attacks, and the near constant fear of its residents, who know that their lives can be altered or taken at any time. The poem that is taken from the title of the book was published by the Poetry Foundation in its March 2021 edition:

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD

i

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.

When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

ii

The drone’s buzzing sound,
the roar of an F-16,
the screams of bombs falling on houses,
on fields, and on bodies,
of rockets flying away—
rid my small ear canal of them all.

Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours,
my doctor, day and night.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is an outstanding poetry collection, and a superb account of life under occupation in Gaza. His newest collection is Forest of Noise: Poems, and I will buy and read it soon. show less

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha is an immersive, honest, and intense book of poetry. By the time I finished it I needed to remind myself that poetry, even when based on one's life experiences, is only a snapshot of the moments it details not a memoir. This was another book of poetry that while short took me a long time to read because I wanted to think about and feel each poem after reading it. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear reveals gems of language, nuance, and beauty even while detailing atrocities, personal pain, and loss in the larger picture of living. Abu Toha's poems constantly reminded me that while we have many differences in our lives across the world, we share the experience of being human. Abu show more Toha ends the book with a particularly impactful poem that speaks to both resilience and hopefulness. While laced with the realities of living under occupation, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear imparts an unexpected hopefulness. show less

Haunting yet sublimely beautiful. Mosab Abu Toha touches deeply on both the tragedy and wonder of being a Palestinian living in Gaza. What is gut wrenching is how many of these poems describe an endless situation that continues even as these words are punched out.

I discovered this book because of the author's recent kidnapping in Gaza, and was bowled over by his beautiful and poignant poems.

I'm rather selective when it comes to poetry that I absolutely love. I didn't get into this one a ton, but it's decently done.