Lisa Suhair Majaj: Shroud of Light

If I must die, you must live to tell my story
    —Refaat Alareer


By the time they killed Refaat, there was nothing new
about the rows of bodies rolled up in stark white shrouds,
surprisingly unbesmirched by dust or blood, tied

at both ends in neat bundles, sometimes in the middle
too, so the sheet wouldn’t slip, carried gently through
streets on the way to mass graves, those pits dug

in whatever ground could be reached without the living
being picked off by snipers, the unstained white
of winding cloths belying the odor of carnage

permeating every crevice, miasma of death hanging
like an ashen pall in the sky, clogging the lungs of those
who still try to breathe. A newscaster said, children

are meant to play in the dirt, but in Gaza it’s their shroud.
Even that is beyond many. One Gazan wrote, if I die,
please make sure my children’s bodies are covered—

not left open to wild dogs, the relentless, howling
sky. Lost beneath rubble, Refaat is denied
a poet’s burial, left only stone dust and concrete

for his shroud. But the words that survive his death
wrap his living spirit in a gauze of light.
“There’s a Palestine that dwells inside all of us,”

he wrote. Take his words, inscribe them on a kite,
brilliant white, to fly high over the terrible world,
so that his death is a tale that brings hope,

so that he lives, so that we live, so that Gaza
becomes a place not of shrouds but of freedom,
kites rippling in sunshine, lit by the blaze of life.

~

About Dr. Refaat Alareer

On December 6, the poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Dr. Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. He is survived by his wife, Nusayba, and their children.

Alareer was a professor of literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007.

He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). In his contribution to the 2022 collection Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, titled “Gaza Asks: When Shall this Pass?”, Refaat writes:

It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying. Sometimes I mean it. Sometimes I don’t. And as Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.

Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization launched in Gaza after Israel’s 2014 attack and dedicated to creating “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.”

Through his popular Twitter account, “Refaat in Gaza,” Alareer vehemently condemned the ongoing atrocities committed against his people by Israeli forces, as well as the successive U.S. administrations that enabled them.

In the wake of his death, Alareer’s heartbreakingly prophetic farewell poem, “If I Must Die,” has been translated into more than 40 languages; it has been read aloud from stages and written on the subway walls; it has been printed onto banners and placards and flags and kites held aloft in ceasefire demonstrations around the world.

[This biography of Alareer was written by Dan Sheehan and is included in his indispensable article THESE ARE THE POETS AND WRITERS WHO HAVE BEEN KILLED IN GAZA published by Lit Hub on December 21, 2023.]

Poem copyright 2024 Lisa Suhair Majaj. First published in Rattle. Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.

Lisa Suhair Majaj is a Palestinian-American writer living in Cyprus. Her poetry, creative nonfiction and critical essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies across the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.