Nadya Siyam

Mar 19, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Olivia Elias |Lena Khalaf Tuffaha |Nadya Siyam |Hiba Abu Nada

time has swallowed time night has swallowed day past future merged in a present of terror the boa constrictor encircling our lives has squeezed squeezed building after building hospital after hospital bookshop after bookshop body after body methodically & blindly demolish kill as widely as possible let the distressed birds fly away not wanting to know anything of this human world somewhere a little girl cries cries & asks if we collected all the tears would it wash away the soot resurrect the...

Mar 6, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Ahlam Bisharat |Nadya Siyam |Alexander Aguayo

***Come here, Death, and let me feed you;Here in the chicken coop. Here in the lamb’s pen. Here are some greens. There is a woman here, alone, watching Death,trying to lull it to sleepwith her hands and to trap itwith the other domesticated animals. ****I’m flipping between news stationsand the words I used to listen to before I can no longer hear. Even the moans of suffering that made me ache—I’ve stashed them awayin a bag of old laments.

Jan 29, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Lena Khalaf Tuffaha |Hiba Abu Nada |Nadya Siyam |Alexander Aguayo

In August 1982, poet Mahmoud Darwish was besieged in Beirut, like thousands of his fellow exiled Palestinians, and facing increasingly violent Israeli bombardment of the city where he had made a home in exile. The shelling was relentless, from the air and from the sea, and eventually a land invasion followed. Water and electricity were cut off. The city was starving and almost no place was safe.

Jan 29, 2024 | wordswithoutborders.org | Nadya Siyam |Lena Khalaf Tuffaha |Sinan Antoon |Alexander Aguayo

With a heavy heart, I mourn the loss of my great professor and dear friend, poet Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was killed with a number of his family members by an Israeli airstrike on his sister’s home in Gaza on December 6, 2023. Refaat was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza for more than fifteen years, during which he taught thousands of students. His influence on the person I am today is immeasurable.