Mohammed Abu Lebda is a Palestinian poet and translator from Gaza.
"The last attack on al-Mawasi was horrible," Mohammed Abu Lebda wrote to me recently, from Gaza. Israeli airstrikes on the crowded tent camp in southern Gaza—which the Israeli military has designated a "humanitarian zone" for displaced Palestinians—killed at least 19 people on Sept. 10, according to witnesses and medical officials. "Six rockets erased everything that was there," said Abu Lebda, who works as a translator at a field hospital.
This is his latest poem for Democracy in Exile. Azrael is the canonical angel of death in Islamic tradition.
—Frederick Deknatel, Executive Editor
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Azrael Confesses
I am just like you—powerless,
Dragged by the shepherd's flute,
A creature forged from dim light,
My questions find their answers in you.
I never wished to cradle a child,
Whose doll still begged me to take it too.
I never desired to yank the execution chair
From beneath a young man who screamed, "I am innocent!"
How I longed to seal the lips of the army officer
When he summoned me to fulfill my dreaded duty.
But I am one of those cursed laborers,
Whose work only begins when the world crumbles.
I ached to run, to flee
When I witnessed a slaughter spilling over the bodies of children,
Children who know of knives only as tools to peel oranges.
I am like you—
Mass death wounds me,
Even though my task is mercilessly swift.
The wars consume me,
You find me soaring from home to home,
From explosion to explosion,
And when the chaos ends,
I curl into a corner, and my tears flood the earth.
My tears are your blood.
Your bodies sustain me,
And my conscience howls in agony,
For I am cursed with no memory.
I used to laugh bitterly,
Watching you don helmets and cower behind crumbling walls,
As if I were blind to your fear.
How I wished I could abandon you,
But your death in my hands breathes life,
And your life—merely death disguised.
I beg forgiveness—
From the little girl who only wanted a braid for her bald, cancered scalp.
From the widow left frozen at the doorstep,
Awaiting the husband I carry in a body bag.
From the mother who carved a boat for her sea of tears,
And whose son I sailed into the abyss.
From the man whose prayers sealed a coffin for the friend I had already taken.
I beg forgiveness,
For when I perish, I will never tell you that I am innocent,
That all of this,
Is nothing but a film I have learned too well to direct.
