If I were asked to choose a favourite festival, and that festival could belong to a religion that is not mine, then I would immediately volunteer Divali.

A celebration of the triumph of light over the darkness, of good over evil.

Tomorrow I will light a diya or three, and I will remember all the evenings spent with friends and food and sweets, I will remember the smell of oil and smoke and the crackling sound of sparklers and fun snaps and bursting bamboo and music and laughter. I will remember Chris, I will remember long illuminated evenings in Marabella, I will remember that we can be the lamps in the dark.

Shubh Divali.

Attribution

A boy recovers trinkets

from his rubbled home.

I glint and glimmer

the objects he seeks.

My love drawing thirst,

my love a fatigue.

He fills his bucket.

He takes stock,

his small smile another sun

on a cluster of plastic roses.

A man says: You’ll get new toys.

You don’t need those.

This child is resurrecting.

Do not interrupt this work.

I want to roar but their ears

can never attune to my voice.

— from Sun to God (Gaza, 2021) by Ladan Osman