We See the lights of Jerusalem


Can a dream be killed?
 It's a sacred thread that their forefathers
Had carried over to the refugee camps
And never let that wean.

When one becomes a refugee
She carries the homeland inside them
Living in Kolkata
She smells the hilsa of Dhaka.
The Dhaka gauzes of her grandma
Hoversw over her breath.
The smell never faints.

Every night from the refugee camps
They see the lights of Jerusalem
Their unborn children walk
On the gossamer of the lights.
The generations have been walking
On the thread of that dream.

A dream can be killed
But a belief?
Death can limit a person's age
Belief grows into resistance with time.

Where Do You Bury The Little Boy's Legs
                     - Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah

Winter is approaching.
It might be snowing in Gaza.
A child's one-and-a-half legs
Are half less cold.
The mother is humming the lullaby
To his dehydrated child.
The night has gone deaf
The last night guard has fallen.
All know all are awake in sleep -
Both the dead and the alive

Do you still have that half-leg, mama?
The child asks
Where do you bury the little boy's legs?
The question makes a hole in the night
But no light peeps in from the hole.

The mother does not know the graveyard
Of the tiny limbs
Or she does?
The half leg is still under the rubble
Wrapped in the last piece of her apron.

Why are they afraid of prayers?

They have bought everything.
The children are their exchequers.
They have bought rivers to the sea!
Bought is the wrong word though
Let's make it right.
Let's say the right word:
Occupation.
They have occupied all
Why are still they afraid of prayers?

They have zoomed in on every corpse's head
Ransacked their pockets
Frisked their hearts
They found nothing.
Why are they still afraid of prayers?

God is a very cheeky thing
Both sides pray to the gods.
They know who has created them
Has created the dead too.
So it's only a dice's turn
They can occupy land
But how can they occupy gods?
Does god exist?

Why are they afraid of the people
Who did they kill yesterday?

Hate has a chessboard
And not every hater is always the winner.


*As per a report published on The Hindu(dated: 18/11/23) no congregational prayers have been allowed for six consecutive Fridays at Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid over apprehensions of protests in reaction to the situation in Gaza, with the mosque’s chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest.

Are The Toys All Dead Too?


The occupiers are afraid of everything
For they watched
the summer's death
Still, Rain came and washed all the blood.
They thought it was the last rain
So they waited for the Autumn.
When Autumn came
They went on a rampage in the Autumn.
Killed all, burnt all.
Still, the spring came and
The watermelon seeds gave birth to
Many summers.

Again this is Autumn, my son.
They are on a rampage again.

But trust the season
It has spring in its blossom.
Your toy horse will run again
Under the sun.

About the Poet:
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID-induced lockdown. Her second poetry collection, Poems At Daybreak is going to be published soon by Red River Publications. Her poem “I AM A MUSLIM WOMAN” in Protest against the Bulli Bai deals has been published by many webzines and has been translated into five languages.