Mosab Abu Toha’s searing new book of poems, Forest of Noise, doesn’t give any false comfort or platitudes about hope. Instead, Toha looks readers in the eye and asks them to bear witness to the destruction of his homeland, Gaza.
It opens:
Every child in Gaza is me.
Every mother and father is me.
Every house is my heart.
Every tree is my leg.
Every plant is my arm.
Every flower is my eye.
Every hole in the earth
Is my wound.
Abu Toha will read from Forest of Noise on Monday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. at City Lights Books in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood (the event will also be livestreamed). On Tuesday, Nov. 5, he’ll be at Green Apple Books in the Richmond District for a signing at 2 p.m., followed by another one at The Booksmith in the Haight at 3:15 p.m.
Abu Toha composed the verses in the book over the past year as Israeli bombs rained down, destroying his home and the two branches of the Edward Said Public Library, which he founded in 2014. Airstrikes killed dozens of his extended family members and friends. After an arduous journey — during which he was captured by Israeli forces, stripped and beaten — Abu Toha, his wife and three young children relocated to Egypt and then Syracuse, New York, where he is now a fellow at Syracuse University.
It’s painful to imagine what might’ve happened to Abu Toha if he wasn’t an American Book Award-winning author, and if there hadn’t been an international outcry over his detainment. Now, in his essays for The New York Times and The New Yorker, and in interviews with PBS and MSNBC, he has made it his mission to speak for those who weren’t able to get out of Gaza.
