Hiba Abu Nada, a Palestinian poet and novelist, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis on 20 October 2023. A three-part poetic sequence mourns her and reimagines a mysterious afterlife in which two poets meet to collaborate on a water-mural. The collection, published in spring 2025 by Fomite Press and titled there are days that I am dead (stylized with lower-case words except I), captures acute pain and divided loyalties. The poems alternate diary-like meditations with engagements that seek a vulnerable, navigable bridge between Israeli attachment to country and dismay over conduct in Gaza.
On 20 October 2023, Hiba Abu Nada, a Palestinian poet and novelist, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on her home in Khan Younis, Gaza. New Republic 1. I grant you refuge from hurt and suffering. Hiba Abu Nada We lived in the second century of world wars inside seas I drowned with you and we sank to the bottom of the sea of salt where drowning is not possible
2. You were first created out of love, so carry nothing but love.Hiba Abu Nada We carried nothing but each other, in the deep sand we built another castle share its floors and words braided melancholy tunes into unseen ceilings 3. O! How alone we are! Hiba Abu Nada You and I paint the shadows we brought along give them colors hang them on the walls of water to be washed off in the third century.
In this week's three-part poem, Michal Rubin mourns, and reimagines in a mysterious afterlife, the Palestinian author and activist, Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza in 2023. The collection in which the poem appears was published in the spring of 2025 by Fomite Press, entitled there are days that I am dead. (all words but I beginning in lower case on the book-jacket)
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