Opinion | What becomes of us when they come for the poets - The Washington Post

Rabih Alameddine is the author of six novels, most recently “The Wrong End of the Telescope.”

Poets are the canaries in the world’s coal mines. Through the years, countless poets have been arrested for daring to sing their songs — most recently and publicly Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet sending dispatches from Gaza.

Every unhappy coal mine is unhappy in its own way. Some are so noxious, the canaries suffer from asthma and can no longer trill. Some are so poisonous, the canaries die by the bushel.

And some canaries are snatched from the sky. Were I to write down the names of the poets arrested by the Soviet regime alone, we would run out of space in this newspaper. Consider this inexhaustive list of poets, caged:

• Ovid, Roman, arrested/exiled by the Roman Empire in 8 A.D.
• John Milton, English, arrested by the British Crown in 1660
• Adam Mickiewicz, Polish, arrested by the Russian Empire in 1823
• E.E. Cummings, American, arrested by the French military in 1917
• César Vallejo, Peruvian, arrested by the Peruvian government in 1920
• Cesare Pavese, Italian, arrested by Italian government in 1935
• Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish, arrested and assassinated by Franco-era military authorities in 1936
• Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish, arrested by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1936
• Osip Mandelstam, Russian, arrested by the Soviet government in 1934 and 1938
• Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska, Ukrainian, arrested and exiled by the Soviet government in 1930; arrested again in 1941
• Sarojini Naidu, Indian, arrested multiple times by the British government
• Primo Levi, Italian, arrested by German fascists and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943
• Vasko Popa, Serbian, arrested and imprisoned in a German concentration camp in 1943
• Robert Desnos, French, arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and imprisoned in several concentration camps
• Nazim Hikmet, Turkish, arrested multiple times by the Turkish government
• Allen Ginsberg, American, arrested multiple times, in multiple countries
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American, arrested by the San Francisco police in 1956
• Dennis Brutus, South African, arrested multiple times by the South African government
• Joseph Brodsky, Russian, arrested by the Soviet government in 1963
• Wole Soyinka, Nigerian, arrested by the Nigerian government in 1965 and 1967
• Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban, imprisoned by the Cuban government in 1974
• Breyten Breytenbach, South African, arrested by the South African government in 1975
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Kenyan, arrested by the Kenyan government in 1977
• Grace Paley, American, arrested multiple times by U.S. officials
• Faraj Ahmad Birqdar, Syria, arrested multiple times by the Syrian government
• Jack Mapanje, Malawian, arrested by the Malawian government in 1987
• Abbas Ali Zulfiqari (Zoro), Iran, arrested multiple times by Iranian government
• Nurmuhemmet Yasin, Chinese/Uyghur, arrested in 2004 by the Chinese government
• Liu Xiaobo, Chinese, arrested multiple times by the Chinese government, last time in 2009
• Mohammed al-Ajami, Qatari, arrested by the Qatari government in 2011
• Ashraf Fayadh, Saudi, arrested by the Saudi government in 2013
• Shokjang (Druklo), Chinese/Tibetan, arrested in 2015 by the Chinese government
• Dareen Tatour, Palestinian citizen of Israel, arrested by the Israeli government in 2015
• Galal El-Behairy, Egyptian, arrested in 2018 by the Egyptian government
• Abdirahman Ibrahim Adan, Somali, arrested by the Somaliland government in 2019
• Hafiz Ahmed, Indian, arrested by the Indian government in 2019
• Pavel Horbach, Belarusian, arrested by the Belarusian government in 2020
• Hanna Komar, Belarusian, arrested by the Belarusian government in 2020
• Javier L. Mora, Cuban, arrested by the Cuban government in 2021
• Mya Aye, Myanmar, arrested multiple times by the Myanmar government, most recently in 2021
• Meral Şimşek, Kurdish, arrested by the Turkish government in 2021
• Sara Mottaghi, Iranian, arrested by the Iranian government in February
• Haseeb Ahrari, Afghan, arrested by the Taliban government in June
• Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian, arrested by Israel Defense Forces in November while fleeing to southern Gaza

At least three other Palestinian poets were not lucky enough to be arrested. In October, Hiba Abu Nada was killed in her home south of Gaza City by an Israeli airstrike. This month, Saleem Al-Naffar was killed by Israel’s bombing of Gaza City; he and his family were buried in their building’s rubble, and no one was able to reach them.

And on Dec. 7, Israeli forces killed Refaat Alareer in an airstrike on his sister’s home that also killed his brother, his sister and her four children. In a video filmed before he died, Alareer, 45, said he was an academic, and the only weapon he had in the apartment was a marker, and if the Israelis came to his door to kill him, he would throw the marker at them. He didn’t get a chance to do that.

Alareer published this poem just over a month before he was killed:

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself —

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

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