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A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation ‹ Literary Hub

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Hiba Abu Nada, 32, wrote and published her final poem ten days before Israeli bombs killed her and many others on October 20, 2023, in Gaza. She had a B.A in organic chemistry and a master’s degree in clinical nutrition. In her short life she managed to publish one novel, Oxygen is Not for the Dead. The speaker in Abu Nada’s final poem is an inner I, probably the voice of God welling up inside. Here is an excerpt: I shelter you and the children who are sleeping as chicks in the lap of their nest they don’t walk in their dreams because death towards the house walks …. I shelter you from wound and woe, and with seven verses I shield the taste of orange from phosphorus, the color of clouds from smoke. II In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey passed through Houston loaded with rain. Our house was among the countless houses that flooded. Feelings of displacement, panic, attachment to material losses, and PTSD from growing up Palestinian in this world were initially overwhelming. Quickly, however

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