Rifqa
Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd’s grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa—she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience.

With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa’s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba.

El-Kurd’s debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.

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Rifqa
Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd’s grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa—she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience.

With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa’s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba.

El-Kurd’s debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.

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Rifqa

Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd
Rifqa

Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

Paperback

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Overview

Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd’s grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa—she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience.

With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa’s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba.

El-Kurd’s debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781642595864
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Publication date: 10/12/2021
Pages: 100
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation’s first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which has been translated into several languages.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Love Is Older Than "Israel" Aja Monet ix

1

In Jerusalem 2

Who Lives in Sheikh Jarrah? 3

Born on Nakba Day 4

This Is Why We Dance 6

Girls in the Refugee Camp 8

Bulldozers Undoing God 11

Smuggling Bethlehem 13

A Song of Home 15

Portrait of My Nose 16

Rifqa 17

2

Wednesday 26

1948/1998 27

Fifteen-Year-Old Girl Killed for Attempting to Kill a Soldier (with a Nail File), or Context 29

No Moses in Siege 31

Things I Cannot Say 32

Boy Sells Gum at Qalandiyah 34

Math 36

War Machines Dress Up as Drag Queens 37

Elderly Woman Falls Asleep on My Shoulder 38

Three Women 41

3

Laugh 46

Kroger 47

Autobiography 50

The Day Is Like Butter 51

Small Talk 53

Park Benches with Teeth 55

No Poetry in This 58

And They Leave and Never Leave 59

Amal Hayati 60

4

Anti-Biography 66

Why Do You Speak of the Nakba at the Party? 69

Martyrs 71

Crows 73

Lice 74

Where Am I From Jerusalem? 76

Bush 82

The Biggest Punch Line of All Time 84

Sheikh Jarrah Is Burning 87

Farewell, Palestine's Jasmine 89

Afterword: Lest There Be Unclarity 92

Acknowledgments 96

Gratitude 97

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