ABOUT THE COLLECTION

“This prose poetry chapbook is my humble effort to bring attention to the ongoing catastrophe in the Middle East — Israel’s engineered famine, its genocide, infanticide, and femicide of the Palestinian people. In addition, its total disregard for international law, and the targeting and smearing of anyone who dares to speak out against the brutality and barbarism. The Palestinian people have been systematically dehumanised by Western media outlets – over 18 000 children and 15 000 women (conservative estimates) have been killed by Israel so far. My intention with this collection is to humanise the Palestinian people through stories inspired by love, loss, struggle, frustration – the obscure, and the spiritual. I have read countless news articles, blogs, and have seen hundreds of disturbing videos and images online – a wickedness I believe the psyche was not designed for. Israel has traumatised us all, but may we live to see the Palestinian people free. I dedicate this book to the brave Palestinian people, and to everyone involved in the Palestinian cause.’’

The chapbook consists of ten prose poems and ten colour photographs; it is an attempt to combine moral outrage with artistic sensibility even as the merciless Israeli onslaught on the people and physical space of Gaza continues. 

Khalid From Khan Younis

today i saw my father after many weeks,

elated i was that we could once again meet –

Rafah has become all too unbearable for the soul.

and how peaceful his face looks under the dim house lights!

a glimpse of his inner Malak, i think.

today i held my father’s hand during the brief lull –

the heavens quieted down

with no frowning clouds as far as the eye could see,

those often grey with the weight of our mother’s tears.

today i will bury my father where our ancestors lay –

returning him to the earth like a seed where he will rise as the tallest tree in Gaza,

one that will keep our children cool during the thirsty summers,

we no longer grow fruits here…

and the children from Khan Younis will swing from his arms as i did,

their laughter will call others, too.

covered in a crisp white robe kissed with incense while others settle into the earth unknown –

a mouth full of sand is unable to wail, unable to pray,

i will carry him on my shoulders the way he held me when i was a boy,

and let him go in a sea of mourners to float – goodbye for now,

the sky is beginning to hum again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zeenit Saban-Jacobs is a South African poet from the North-West Province who now lives in Cape Town. The 2022 winner of what was formerly known as the DALRO Prize (awarded by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University), her poems have been published in various magazines and journals across the country. Zeenit is a Film, Television, and Digital/New Media Lecturer in Cape Town, specialising in production and post-production for corporate, education, and social media branding. She completed her Masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town in 2024. Her first collection Inside an Eyeball was also published by Botsotso this year.