I want to roar but their ears / can never attune to my voice.
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