The belief that we have a responsibility to others isn't short sighted sentimentalism; it's the moral foundation of a meaningful life
-Craig Spencer, Emergency Room Physician, NY Times 7/7/25
Basman Dewari and Michal Rubin met in a Consequence Forum Zoom poetry workshop at the end of 2024. Basman, a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Gaza, is a physiotherapist, Michal, a cantor, is also a psychotherapist. He was born in Kuwait, and raised in Gaza by his Palestinian parents; she was born in Israel. Both are poets, both are healers. Michal lives safely in South Carolina, Basman is exiled in Cairo where he happened to be visiting on October 7th. Within days of the Israeli bombardments, his sister, her husband, and children were killed. Ignoring—or momentarily suppressing—his grief, Basman scrambled to save his mother and two brothers; they are now living with him in Cairo.
Once he used to be a morning writer, he told me during a recent Zoom visit, but as his life turned upside down, he began to write in the evenings, though he still wakes "with words in my head." Michal writes when she can in between her professional commitments. Basman cannot work professionally in Cairo, so he spends his days reading and writing, reading and writing. He's in touch with friends still alive in Gaza. Each confirms what we all already know: there is famine, exposure to the elements without the protection of scarce tents, astonishing violence from the sky and at ground level, death everywhere and every day, the hostages long abandoned as collateral damage, many IDF soldiers resistant, or exhausted.
Basman and Michal's initial wariness of one another at the beginning of the poetry workshop has evolved into a deep affection—obvious in our Zoom interview—and a poetry project culminating in a book, Your Stories Look Me in The Eyes. The poems are a conversation, a dialogue. Here are two from the poetry workshop, not included in the book. They illustrate how the connection began for Michal and Basman in the midst of war, across the Palestinian-Israeli divide:
I can't finish the story
© by Michal Rubin (March, 2025)
I started something that couldn't wait
when I wanted to be with a girl blinded by a bullet,
a wandering bullet like a wandering Jew that entered
into someone's house, had its own story,
but I met this guy from Gaza, he carried the concrete-
remains of his home in his pockets/
I wanted to tell you about him so you absorb the story
like a bullet that went through the boundary of a body,
it settled inside the wall, evicting the living, expelling
years of ownership sending the carrier of the blinded girl
onto the gravel road, and Basman from Gaza lives
outside of the memories of his dead sister/
the words he scattered around the bodies of his nephews
became sentences my friends don't want to hear,
too painful to know of our capabilities when
we shoot bullets as if people are squirrels,
attacking the bird feeders/
But he kept shooting his words into our eyes
and we wanted to become blind,
so the letters would disappear
inside the black holes
that were stamped
onto our faces/
~
This is the story
© by Basman Derawi (April 2025)
They say in a story you could live forever.
I don't care about "forever".
But I want my sister, my nephews,
my friends to keep living.
To be alive with me at this distant long dark night.
I shoot their name alive tonight on a rooftop,
Scared an advanced technological missile
would assassinate even the names.
I bet no news media would be interested
to tell this boring story.
Yet I would steal a moment,
recreate it in my head.
Where I sit again at Gaza's beach,
Singing with Essa and Ouda,
spitting watermelon's seeds and laughing.
A moment where I hug Eman again.
Ignoring the fact that the physicality of
the moment is stolen forever.
Can I be the thief just one time?
I would carry the pictures of my home on my shoulders.
A blanket to warm me from the coldness of the world
until I could return again in the present.
But every time I look at the blanket,
It's full of the holes of bullets.
I put the blanket on Michal's shoulders
She sees the holes and the remains of me.
But her friends are too blind
as if the snipers are unknown ghosts
and the story should be short.
I don't shoot the words into any eye to see.
I shoot words in the air,
a fragile attempt for one bomb less night.
My throat is hurting from shooting words
for a moment to cry, a moment to a mourn.
for a small spoon of silence from the echoes of explosions.
for being killed seventy-seven years and not being a victim once.
for a cemetery that doesn't swallow the whole earth.
Basman made it clear during our conversation that nothing he writes, or Michal writes, or I write, should contribute to a sensation of "normalization" of the genocidal war against the Palestinian people. There are no "history lessons," here, Michal has said, no justifications or explanations, just literary minds and sensibilities, a heartfelt reaching out, a deep listening through poetry. Nor is the continuing dialogue between the two poets, and between the three of us during the Zoom call, or this blog post, a "solution," as posited by pundits and politicians. It is a modest, continuing attempt to deepen the commitment to each other's humanity and shared values, the fervent hope that a sustainable peace will come as Your Stories Look Me in The Eyes goes to press.