My Little Things

What possibly could any pen say to one who has set down his poetry in a language not his own? But that is not all. The vocabulary language—chosen by this poet for setting down his thoughts—has been the English language which, surely, must be a tongue almost as far removed, as could be, from the poet’s own native Arabic? Little wonder that Ibrahim Saad, whose family was forced to flee to Gaza in Al Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, has written his collection of poems with the anger and bitterness most of his people feel, running through them. Only suffering can lead to deep thought—those with easy lives mainly deal in surface thought and never have to look into the abyss.