The 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair takes place March 26–29, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Join Mizna for a long weekend of SWANA lit! At this year’s conference, Mizna will present an AWP Featured Event with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Mosaab Abu Toha, an AWP offsite event, and panels. Learn more about how to attend the AWP 2025 here.

Mizna + RAWI Booth

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

Featured Event: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

Mizna AWP Panel: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

SWANA Panels

SWANA Caucus

Find Mizna + RAWI at Booth #355

Find Mizna journals and merch for the duration of AWP 2025 at booth #355. We’ll be sharing the booth with our friends at RAWI!

AWP SALE: Subscribe to Mizna and get a FREE back issue + a specially printed poem by Randa Jarrar from our forthcoming Futurities Issue!

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

To kick off AWP 2025, join us in celebrating Mizna’s dual launch of the Catastrophe and forthcoming Futurities issues of our literary journal.

Featured readers include Randa Jarrar, Nancy Kricorian, Yahya Ashour, Sarah Aziza, Summer Farah, Gina Srmabekian, Umniya Najaer, Alia Taqieddine, and Pınar Banu Yaşar.

This event takes place on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 7pm at The River, 2929 Knox Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90039.

Doors will open at 6:30 and space is limited. We strongly encourage RSVPing, but walk-ins will be welcome if space is available.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

Featured Event: March 29, 2025 at 10:35am
Our People Shall Live: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

As we mourn Gaza’s destruction by the recent campaign of Zionist genocide and watch a tenuous ceasefire evolve under an appalling new threat of American imperialism, we seek voices from Palestine to render, deconstruct, and reimagine these realities and our relationships to them. Toward that, Mizna is thrilled to host a critical conversation and reading with two major Palestinian poets: National Book Award winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and acclaimed Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha. The two will share work responding to the ongoing catastrophe and engage in dialogue about Palestinian sumud, literature’s role in resisting genocide, and our collective futures in and beyond the world of poetry.

This event will take place in person in the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions.

Location: Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

Mizna AWP Panel

Thursday, Mar 27, 2025 12:10pm PDT
Mizna Presents: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

To write in relation to Arabic in the US is to confront problematic “East meets West” discourse through contrapuntal processes that unlock entire canons, forms, and genres. Intergenerational Mizna contributors from diverse backgrounds explore how hybrid language generates formal possibility that embraces orality and interrogates homogeneity. Panelists discuss how vast Arabophone traditions provide innovative techniques for attending to narrative structure, time, language, voice, and more.

Speaker(s): George Abraham, Sarah Aziza, Jameelah Lang

Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

SWANA Panels at AWP 2025

March 27, 2025 at 9am PDT
The Velvet Air of Gaza: Protest & Beauty 

This multigenre reading by mostly Palestinian writers focuses on what it means to write in the face of genocide and the global student protests against it. How do our words transcend mere empathy and reach beyond it to achieve active solidarity? What is the relationship between beauty and protest? Between protest and language? How do these relationships inform love in the tradition of Black radical love? Our readings will illuminate some possible answers to these urgent questions of our time.

Speaker(s): Samah Fadil, Samina Najmi, Lena Mubsutina, Deema Shehabi

Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 12:10pm PDT
Poetry in Translation: Satisfactions & Discontents 

This panel brings together writers/translators from Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Armenian backgrounds, all living in the American diaspora, and writing in their native tongues and in English. As poets, novelists, and literary scholars, the panelists tackle a wide array of issues, including linguistic transgressions, gains and losses, dual identities, and politics of translation at times of calamity.

Speaker(s): Fatemeh Shams, Ahmad Almallah, Armen Davoudian, Huda Fakhreddine 

Location: Room 513, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 3:20pm PDT
Theories of Vastness: On Capaciousness in Poetry 

What does it mean for a poetic work to be “capacious”? This term implies an expansiveness of scope and experience—the possibility for the primordial and the vatic to converge, the promise of poem as sprawling event. This panel explores the mysteries of the capacious poem, while demystifying capaciousness from a craft perspective. It asks what craft tools can be brought to bear to enact cultural, linguistic, and spiritual vastness in poetic space.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh , Kazim Ali, Brenda Hillman, Roger Reeves

Location: Concourse Hall 151, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 10:35am PDT
Sumud Motifs: Woven Inheritances in Arab Visual & Literary Storytelling 

Award-winning Arab, Black, and Indigenous creators are weaving literary and visual elements, rendering multicultural multimedia modalities grounded in sumud/steadfastness and decolonial resistance to oppression. Award-winning Womanist/Queer/Trans creatives will share cutting-edge storytelling structures through graphic novels, installation art, poetry based on Palestinian Tatreez, dance/movement, graphic art, multilingual printmaking, and text within painting/audio/video/visual poetics.

Speaker(s): Doris Bittar, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán,  Marguerite Dabaie,  Samah Fadil,  Micaela Kaibni Raen 

Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 12:10pm
Beyond a Homeland: Celebrating Iranian American Women Writers 

How do writers make sense of the Iranian diasporic experience? This reading highlights Iranian American women fiction authors, all with incredibly varied connections to Iran. How do their relationships with a homeland that has been taken from them help shape the stories they tell? This is Iran beyond the news headlines. Discussion will follow the reading.

Speaker(s): Shideh Etaat, Jasmin Darznik, Sahar Delijani, Marjan Kamali, Porochista Khakpour 

Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 1:45pm
We Are Still Here: A Reading for Palestinian & Armenian Solidarity 

IALA (International Armenian Literary Alliance) presents a reading of multigenre writers of Palestinian and Armenian descent. Their works in prose, poetry, and nonfiction examine culture and heritage in the diaspora despite ongoing campaigns of silencing by colonialist and fascist governments. In the face of exile and violence, our coalition fights for the recognition of our peoples’ safety and autonomy while celebrating writing as a continued form of resistance and survival.

Speaker(s): Gina Srmabekian,  Nancy Agabian, Mai Serhan, Raffi Wartanian, Priscilla Wathington 

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 3:20pm
The Politics of Imagining: Poetry as Social Practice 

The political dimension penetrates every intimate aspect of human life—who is allowed to love whom and on what terms, who lives, who dies. Yet, “the political” is often relegated to a subgenre rather than being seen as the primary field of experience out of which the poetic imagination arises. This panel considers poetry within “a web of other social practices historically weighted with enormous imbalances of power” (Rich) and argues for a liberatory poetics that centers political consciousness.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh, Courtney Faye Taylor, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Solmaz Sharif, George Abraham

Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 9am PDT
Behind the Acronym: Empowering Ethnic Voices – Launching a Literary Nonprofit 

What does it mean to be a literary nonprofit dedicated to a specific ethnic group? What are the benefits of highlighting diverse voices within a community that others see as defined by their cultural background? Hear from founders and arts administrators of the International Armenian Literary Alliance, Mizna, and the Radius of Arab American Writers on the importance of visibility, diversity, and practicalities in launching and maintaining a successful nonprofit.

Speaker(s): Arthur Kayzakian,  Shahe Mankerian,  Zeyn Joukhadar, Ellina Kevorkian

Location: Room 515A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 1:45pm
Fighting the Muzzle: Literary Organizing for Palestine During Genocide 

The invasion and genocide of Gaza has cost the lives of almost forty thousand Palestinians. In the United States, even acknowledging this unconscionable atrocity has been labeled as “complicated.” The leaders of three prominent Arab/SWANA literary organizations (Mizna, RAWI, and Palestine Writes) discuss the ways they have been silenced trying to promote Palestinian, Arab, and Southwest Asian and North African literature, and the methods they’ve used to break through this silence.

Speaker(s): Glenn Shaheen, Susan Abulhawa, Lana Barkawi, Sarah Aziza,  Tarik Dobbs

Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 3:20pm
Innovations in Arab American Fiction 

A panel of groundbreaking Arab American fiction writers will read their work and discuss the trajectory of their artistic journeys. What is the responsibility of a writer to represent their culture in a society where their people are often maligned and misrepresented? How does the experience of Arab American writers working in fiction differ from other communities in this current cultural moment? 

Speaker(s): Zeyn Joukhadar,  Betty Shamieh, Ghassan Zeineddine, Sarah Cypher

Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025, at 5pm
SWANA Writers Caucus

This will be a town hall–style meeting, creating a much-needed space for SWANA writers to build and connect within AWP. We invite established and emerging writers, editors, students, scholars, and organizers, and aim for the caucus to facilitate networking and exchange on literary endeavors, craft, publishing, poetics, and praxis. Our caucus seeks to empower and center the voices of underrepresented Americans with roots in SWANA cultures and communities.

Speaker(s): Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Rabha Ashry, Tariq Luthun, Pinar Banu Yasar, Sophia Babai

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

The post Mizna at AWP 2025 appeared first on Mizna.

Raindrops by Mazen Halabi originally appeared in Mizna issue 8.1, in the summer of 2006. In 2025 his work remains one of the numbered works written by or about Syrians to be published by Mizna. While Halabi’s story was first published before the Syrian revolution of 2011 against the Assad regime, and is now running in the aftermath of its fall, his work remains relevant and insightful. Raindrops is a story about youth: its sarcastic and playful moments, as well as the aberrant and painful lessons learned when growing up under a violent regime.

There are two main conditions to storytelling: necessity and safety. We at Mizna hope that 2025 will be the year of safety and storytelling for the Syrian community in all its religions, ethnicities, generations, and identities. We start this hope with Halabi’s story, and extend our hope to all Syrians whose stories are surfacing after decades of extreme violence, censorship, and fear.

—Layla Farah, editorial intern

Thunder drummed in jubilation as our tires tangoed with the city’s cobblestones, and we rode like Khalid and Abu Obiedah, banging on the city’s gates, claiming Damascus as our own. We were her boys, and she gently embraced us, pulling the cover of rain over to protect us. Our clothes, drenched and heavy with rain, clung tightly. We were soaked to the last inch of our bodies. We wore soft, innocent smiles. Not a word was uttered.

—Mazen Halabi

RAINDROPS

A winter storm blanketed Minneapolis over the weekend. It painted the city, decorated the trees, and greased the roads. It promised a pretty hectic rush hour come Monday morning. I knew I had to be in the office early, so I left the house earlier than usual. I avoided the main highway and took the city’s side streets. The drive was slow, slippery, but I moved along. I usually spend my commute speeding through the four-lane highway, going through my list of phone calls and mentally recounting my appointments; but that morning I got to see the city waking up, driveways getting shoveled, delivery trucks following their routes, and parents bundling their children up before jettisoning them off to school. Stopped at a traffic light, I noticed a teenager throw a snowball at a friend’s window, yelling for him to come out: “Mikey . . . Mikey . . .” A boy raised the window on the second floor of the English Tudor, poked his head out, and in a half-whisper, so as not to not wake up the rest of the family, answered, “I’m coming.”

These children, painted on a canvas of snow, brought me back to Khaldoun, a boy I met my first year of high school in Damascus. Khaldoun used to come by our tile store every day before school. He would rest his foot on the sidewalk, ring his bike bell a few times till he got my attention, and then tap his watch with his two fingers as he mouthed from a distance, We’re late. I would usually finish up the order with the customer, grab my satchel, and kiss my dad’s hand as he patted my head and murmured, “Allah yerda ‘aleik, God bless you. Come after school—we’re busy tonight.” Then I would jump on my bike, and we would zigzag our way through the dusty city alleys to get to school on the other side of town.

Our school was on the rich north side of town. An old building, like most in Damascus, it embodied history in its columns. It was a boys’ school with a good reputation. Most of the students had to have some kind of waasta, or connection—know somebody high in the government—to be able to get into the school. Khaldoun and I knew the custodian, Abu Mahmoud, an old guy from our neighborhood who told us how to get in. On the day that we filled out our admission applications, he told us to use the address of the apartment in the building across the street instead of our own. This way we would fall within the school district, and they would have to admit us. It wouldn’t matter for any correspondence between the school and our parents. Postal services are not just slow in Damascus—mail is never delivered.

Abu Mahmoud, it turned out, had let too many kids in on his nifty little secret. On the first day of school, the principal called us in. We piled into his office, fifteen of us, not knowing what we had done but knowing we were in trouble. Mr. Khateeb, a short brainiac with big glasses and wild hair, was angry. He was wearing an old wrinkled suit that had seen its best days. His pants were yanked up mid-waist, packing their contents to the side like Mount Ararat. Khaldoun, standing next to me, murmured, “Ouch, if that’s how he treats his own boys, imagine what he’ll do to you.” “Shut the hell up, you little jackasses!” yelled Mr. Khateeb. “Come in here. Fifteen of you living in the same goddamn house . . . fifteen of you! Either your mother is the biggest sharmouta on the face of the earth, having fifteen kids with different last names, or that is one fucking giant apartment. What the hell am I going to do with you now? School’s already started and no one will take your little dumb asses. You’re gonna stay in this school, but I swear to God if I hear one peep out of any you, I’ll send you right back to the goddamn rat hole that you came from. Now get the hell out of my face.” Never having heard language like that, we shuffled our feet nervously as we walked out, breathing a sigh of relief upon reaching the safety of the halls. Khaldoun, with a half-smile, said facetiously, “Welcome to the big league, boys. This is going to be a great year.” Houssam, a short, hyper little kid who was walking ahead of us, turned around and, trying to sound bigger than he was, exclaimed, “Did you see the unit on that guy?” Samer, from behind us with a high-pitched voice piped in, “Why were you looking at his penis, you little faggot?” Houssam, with a gleam in his eye, replied, “At least I have a penis, ya khrenta, you little eunuch. What, do you use a magnifying glass and tweezers every time you have to pee?” Samer lunged at him with arms flailing and for the most part missing their target. Khaldoun and I had to separate them, grabbing each as they were trying to claim a little turf in the new school. From that moment on, the four of us were best friends.

We all had similar backgrounds. We were from large, poor, religious families. Khaldoun and I went to mosques on opposite sides of our neighborhood. Samer was a hafiz (someone who memorized the Qur’an), and Houssam was an altar boy at the Assyrian church. We were boys walking sheepishly through the gates of manhood. We spent lots of time together and we had opinions about any and everything—girls, sports, politics, money, poetry, UFOs (in that order); we knew it all. During recess we usually stopped at Abu Mahmoud, who in addition to performing his custodial duties also operated a concession stand. We would pick up sandwiches and tea before playing our latest pranks or choosing our next argument.

Abu Mahmoud sold all kinds of wrapped sandwiches that he had made, but he never labeled them, so you never knew what you might get. Yet he would always ask with the most pleasant demeanor “What you would like?” just before reaching over to the basket next to him and handing you the closest mystery. As soon as the kids got their sandwiches, a Wall Street–style bazaar began and the trading proceeded quickly and furiously. Loud shouts were fired out: “Lebaneh!” “Zaatar!” “Jubneh!” “Falafel!” Lebaneh was the blue chip of sandwiches—you could trade that for anything. Every once in a while some unsuspecting freshman went back to Abu Mahmoud for an exchange. Not only would this bring the whole operation to a screeching halt and shut down the trading floor, but Abu Mahmoud would hand it to the young guy and calmly say, “Shouf wela hmaar, listen, you little jackass, I’ve had it up to here with your shit. These are the best goddamn zaatar on God’s green earth—you’re lucky you’re getting one today. So take your sandwich and get the hell out of my face.” The kid would usually walk away perplexed, as the trading resumed behind him.

At the end of the school day, Khaldoun and I would usually ride our bikes home together, slowing down by the girls’ school and then traversing the old city’s alleys, picking fruit from trees that spilled over courtyard walls—blackberries, figs, apricots, nanerj, akee dunia. Our conversations would vacillate between the topics of adolescence and those of adulthood, from crude jokes to theological discussions of Ghazali. Khaldoun was witty and extremely intelligent. One day as we left school, the sky started to pour. Never had the parched ground below seen such a hard rain. Kids scattered in all directions, trying to prevent the rain from drenching their pressed school uniforms. Khaldoun and I stood there for a few minutes with our tongues hanging out, trying to catch a few drops. Abu Mahmoud yelled at us to go home as he locked the school gates behind us. The streets were amazingly empty—no cars, no people—as if the rain had just washed everything aside to watch us ride. We got on our bikes, school bags tied behind us, looked at each other, smiled, and rode through the city as slowly as we could possibly pedal. As if in an initiation ritual, Mother Nature ordained us. The rain washed our faces with holy water as other drops crashed and rejoiced in celebration. Thunder drummed in jubilation as our tires tangoed with the city’s cobblestones, and we rode like Khalid and Abu Obiedah, banging on the city’s gates, claiming Damascus as our own. We were her boys, and she gently embraced us, pulling the cover of rain over to protect us. Our clothes, drenched and heavy with rain, clung tightly. We were soaked to the last inch of our bodies. We wore soft, innocent smiles. Not a word was uttered.

Our regular stops by the girls’ high school finally paid off. Khaldoun met a girl whom he quickly fell in love with. Zainab was simply gorgeous. She had long, dark hair that she always adorned with a red ribbon. Her big black eyes would sparkle as she smiled, radiating her whole face, like sunlight reflecting off peaceful waters. She was the only person I knew who was smarter than Khaldoun. She had read books we had never heard of, and she would recite poetry by the qaseedeh (the entire poem), providing us the slightest bit of comfort as she breathed the famous lines that were familiar to us. And she loved Khaldoun more than anything. Her eyes would nervously scan the crowd when school was out, and she would light up with a huge smile when she spotted him. She would wave and mouth the words I’ll see you on the other side. There were so many boys waiting for girls that Mrs. Edelbi, the principal of Zainab’s school, banned the boys from waiting by the entrance.

The boys got a whiff of the love story, and they teased Khaldoun mercilessly. And when I told them she was not only beautiful and smart but also a Communist, the chant went around school about the brother dating the comrade. Samer had the school band play the chant to the tune of a famous song before the weekly national anthem recital. The topic of Zainab took over our conversations. “You know what my cousin in Kuwait told me?” Houssam asked us rhetorically, citing his most commonly referenced source. “That Communist girls wear red panties!” He crossed his arms and nodded his head decisively as he said that, indicating that this was as airtight a fact as you were gonna get. We had questioned Houssam every previous time he cited his infamous cousin, but this time it didn’t really matter. To us it was a fact. Besides, you put four boys and an image of red panties together and amazing things happen. We got quiet, our jaws went slack, and you could almost hear the sound of our brains churning, creating fantasies and processing images faster than a Cray supercomputer. The only thing that brought us back to earth was the sound of Mr. Khateeb yelling his usual “Ya tyoos, mules, get your asses in the classrooms before I make drums out of them!” We all walked to our chemistry class, our minds still aglow with shades of red. Samer, in his usual high-pitched voice, was the first to speak, half an hour into the chemistry session. “You know what, I’ll just have to marry me a Commie.” We all nodded in unison as we returned to our now slightly altered fantasies, while a subconscious “yep” dripped from our lips. I don’t remember a word Mr. Saboni said that entire hour.

That year was tough on the city. The oppositional Islamist movements were putting pressure on the dictatorial government, and the government responded without mercy. Political arrests, disappearances, midnight raids, and gunfights became as common as the issuance of parking tickets. A lot of the opposition came from our neighborhood and there wasn’t a household that didn’t have a missing or arrested member. Khaldoun and I couldn’t avoid the activities around us. We started reading outlawed books and listening to contraband music. And our conversation during our daily bike ride became more passionate, more serious, older.

One day near the end of the school year, Khaldoun missed a couple of days of school. Assuming he was sick, I called his house to give him the class notes and tell him about the chemistry exam. His mother answered and, in a choked-up voice, told me that he had been arrested by the secret police. Not knowing what to say, I just hung up. The boys had plenty to say when they heard the news. They were curious at first about his confinement. How long would they keep him and what would they do to him? We all knew what they did to political prisoners and we had to deal with those thoughts somehow. “You know, they’re going to beat him so hard on his feet, those size-11 shoes that he got from his brother will finally be a perfect fit,” whispered Samer, only half-jokingly. Growing louder and bolder, he continued, “And what about all the electricity up his ass—he’ll have a permanent fucking boner. We’re all gonna wish we got arrested when we’re thirty, fucking old and can’t get it up no more.” We all laughed, the tension softened. Then we got quiet when Houssam said, “God help his mother.” We thought of her, awake in the middle of the night, when the world is asleep, except her and maybe her boy, in her white prayer clothes, with wilted eyes, calling on God to protect her child, in a soft whisper, “Elahi.” The class bell rang piercingly loud, jolting us back to our present situation. Houssam wiped his eyes and said, “At least he doesn’t have to take this fucking chemistry test.”

Zainab would stop by our store every day after his arrest. She would stand just outside the door for a few minutes, hesitating, wanting to hear the best news, but afraid of another crushing disappointment. I would come out and shake my head—not a word. Her face would turn red, her eyes tear up, her shoulders drop, and she would tuck her hair behind her ear and walk away. Two months went by and Khaldoun hadn’t shown up. Zainab stopped by the store that day, angry and agitated. I came out. “Did you hear anything?” she pleaded. “No,” I muttered to the floor. “What the hell do they want from him? He is a young boy!” she yelled, alarming the customers. My older brother came out, turned to her and said firmly, coldly, gently, “Zainab, listen to me . . .” He paused a moment, then, with steady eyes, “He’s never coming back.” Her body shook, her hands trembled, her soft face turned red with an expression of disbelief, anger, and resignation all at once, like an innocent standing before the noose. She bit her lip, wiped a tear, pushed her hair back, and walked away. That was the last time I saw Zainab.

The years went by. We finished high school and went our separate ways. Samer took over his dad’s shop in the city’s old spice market. Houssam eventually moved to Kuwait, teamed up with his cousin and started a software company. I moved to the States. Zainab joined the resistance in southern Lebanon and was killed during the Israeli invasion. She had asked to be buried in the old cemetery in our neighborhood. Her grave is easily identified. It has a tombstone with no name, no date, nor religious inscriptions. It is simply wrapped with a red ribbon and marked with the words I’ll see you on the other side.

It had been a long day at work. I left the office thinking about the items that I needed to pick up for my wife; we were having company over that evening. I pulled into the garage. My son was outside throwing snowballs at his friends. He ran to help me with the bags. I kissed him. He told me that he had done his homework and asked if he could see a movie. “Allah yerda ‘aleik, come home right after the movie. We have company tonight,” I told him. I walked in the house. My wife asked from the top of the stairs if I had picked up the Brie and the pomegranate juice. I told her that I had. I took off my jacket, threw my keys on the table, and picked up the mail and the few faxes that we had received.

That afternoon, a man with a soft, scraggly beard and sunken eyes, holding his hands close to his chest, walked into our family store in Damascus. He was looking around in bewilderment, inspecting the tiles, the columns, the door. My younger brother, who was now running the store, looked at him suspiciously and asked if he could help him. “You used to have a counter over here, with a phone and a leather pad,” the man whispered, mostly to himself. “We took that out more than seventeen years ago,” my brother said. The man continued in a soft, nostalgic voice, “And you used to have a table with a big chair that your dad sat in.” My brother, with a smile, said, “The chair wasn’t that big. We took it out when we redecorated the store, more than ten years ago, after my dad passed away. Did you know my dad?” my brother asked gently. “No . . . I mean, I did, but I was a friend of your brother.” My brother had heard the story of Khaldoun from me, so he knew right away who he was. He shook his hand, asked him to sit down, and offered him some tea. Khaldoun sat down, still looking around, trying to process the images and match them to what had been with him all these years. His hands trembled a little, his hair had receded. He was old. My brother asked how he was doing. He said he was OK. They had released him two days ago, nineteen years after his arrest. Things had changed a lot and he was trying to find his way around town. The government had destroyed his family’s house when they put a six-lane highway in the middle of our neighborhood in an attempt to break up the opposition. His mother had passed away never having seen him again. He asked about me, and my brother told him that I had moved to the States and that I had a family there. He asked if he could write me. My brother told him that he was sure I would love to hear from him, and that he could send me a fax if he would like. He gave Khaldoun a pen and a piece of paper. Khaldoun scribbled a few words, and he looked at the paper for a second or two before handing it to my brother, who promptly sent it to me. Khaldoun finished his tea, thanked my brother, and walked out, gently, curiously, purposefully, trying to claim our city again.

I rifled through the mail, the bills and the offers for zero-interest credit cards and mortgage refinancing. Then I came upon the fax with the few Arabic words scribbled on it. My wife called for me to help set the table. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, eyes fixed. I sat down on the steps and read the words in disbelief: 

My Dearest Akhi, 
I hope this letter finds you well
Like Job I endured and like Jonah I was reborn,
the though of raindrops eased the journey.
See you again soon, my brother.
Khaldoun

My heart raced, my hands trembled. I was at once happy, angry, and sad. I imagined the boys’ reactions—jubilant, yet subdued: “Ya sharmoot, you didn’t miss much—it’s the same old fucking town . . . How is that boner? . . . Lucky bastard, you didn’t have to take any of the chemistry finals . . .” And then I thought of his mother—old, gray, with the white prayer head cover: “Waladi, my little boy . . . Thank you, God. You finally heard my prayers . . . are you hungry, habibi?” And the soft whisper to God: “Elahi.”

The next morning I drove to work. When I got to the highway ramp, the cars were lined up, inching forward as the metered light turned green. I pushed in one of the contraband tapes that Khaldoun and I used to listen to—I had spent hours the night before looking for it in old boxes. The cars inched up a little. The sound of the angry poet on the tape erased the silence, but the words were not as sharp as they used to be, the years like rain having softened the edges of those large boulders. The light turned green; we inched forward a little more. “In Kuwait, my cousin told me, there are no ramps. You get your own highway from your house to your office… But in Kuwait there are no Damascene berries and no jasmine.” The bike bell rang. The light turned green. I looked up. He smiled, tapped his watch with his two fingers, and mouthed, You’re late. I pushed on the gas pedal and sped off onto the freeway, surrounded by sounds and images that seemed to ease this journey.

Mazen Halabi, a Syrian-American and community activist, left Syria following the Hama massacre in which more than 40,000 people were killed by the then President, Hafez Assad. He has worked with multiple civil society organizations during the Arab Spring and the Syrian revolution. He holds advanced degrees in computer science and business, and works in the IT industry.

The post RAINDROPS appeared first on Mizna.

In the past few decades, as liberal cultural institutions have grown more dastardly effective at co-opting and defanging the political potential of writers and artists from historically marginalized backgrounds, the amorphous imperative to “witness” continuously re-emerges in the face of unceasing tragedy wrought about by the United States, its ruling class, and its ghastly allies across the globe. We are implored to “witness” atrocity after atrocity, but never as more than bystanders, contributing nothing beyond sympathy, and even then, only for the “perfect victim.” I am drawn to Sara Aziza’s stunning blending of form precisely because it refuses this hijacking, asking us instead to unravel the dangerous language with which we understand and articulate the victims of empire from within it.

– Hazem Fahmy, Uncrafted Column Editor

HAZEM FAHMY

Broadly speaking, how do you think about your relationship with craft as a term and a concept? And in what ways have you encountered it, institutionally or pedagogically? 

SARAH AZIZA

HF

I wanted to go back to your point about literature’s capacity for mystery and the undefinable. As vital as it is to center an unambiguously political critique of institutionalized ideas of craft, for me it is also a question of pleasure. For example, there’s been much conversation about the “MFA novel” or the “workshop poem,” these really formulaic ideas of what a sentence should look like, or how a project should be structured—the kinds of characters and concerns that a work can be fixated on. Of course, these are also very political choices, involving what you can and can’t criticize or forefront, but it’s also about narrowing down what is enjoyable. 

SA

HF

You mentioned earlier that initially your relationship to poetry—like that of many people, certainly mine—felt very distant, like something that couldn’t speak to you. When did it, to use Barthes’s term, puncture through for you? 

SA

HF

It seems to me like what you found in poetry during this period was the opposite of what had been pushed on you in journalism school. Journalism in the West in general, but particularly in the U.S., is obsessed with this idea of objectivity, which we’ve seen being put to particularly violent uses since October of last year. For you, to what degree was moving toward poetry moving away from journalism?

SA

HF

I’m assuming they were also asking you to translate very particular narratives that a liberal American audience would find palatable.

SA

Empire is really stupid because of how narrowly it defines legible knowledge. One source of hope for me is the continued refusal of empire to actually exhibit real interest in its own survival, like refusing to take cues from nature, indigenous people, or history itself. When thinking about writing against empire, I think about emergency, about “resistance” in its many forms. But I also think about the desire to preserve who we are in our wholeness and beauty, our desires and interests and curiosities and idiosyncrasies; our uniqueness in the midst of resisting. 

In thinking about my relationship with English and English education, I started taking apart my syntax. I would download declassified documents from the 1950s and redact or appropriate the language and mess with it. It felt like there were lots of ways to be insurgent. I’m thinking about Look by Solmaz Sharif, for example, and how she takes the military dictionary and uses it as a starting point to craft poems against the US military industrial complex. But her next book, Customs, was also very different. So as much as resistance is a really fruitful and important place for me, I never want my craft, art, humanity, or existence to just end there. That would allow for too much of my life to be shaped by oppression.

I want to write against, but I also want to write without. I always ask myself: what art would I create if I’m not even thinking about the oppressor? What can I write that the despots and fascists could never grasp or understand? 

I think a lot as well about Édouard Glissant and opacity when it comes to how stupid and limited imperial knowledge is. I love the moments where art, or even just human friendship, revel in themselves, in what the enemy can never know about us. I think that can be so beautiful, abundant, sustaining, and powerful. And it does work against empire because it begins to build, even if just on the page, or in a space, or for an evening, a different reality. It’s practicing, moving us toward the future that is the reason for our resistance. We resist in order to get to a place where we no longer need to resist. 

HF

Before we get into Mourid Barghouti’s work, as we planned for this conversation, I wanted to ask you about memoir writing more broadly. As the author of one yourself, are there particular considerations of craft for you when it comes to this form?

SA

For starters, I’m very suspicious of conventional notions of narrative, the idea that you have to have rising action and climax, or a beginning, middle, and end. That’s very dangerous to me, especially because I’ve been writing a memoir that has to do with trauma, the Nakba, and recovery. I wanted to be very careful. For instance,I didn’t want it to be a straightforward narrative of “resilience”—I’m very suspicious of this term as it’s packaged and sold in the mainstream, based on simplistic ideas of redemption and clear binaries. On the other hand, when I was talking to agents and editors, most of them fixated on  my female body and its experiences of ancestral and sexual trauma. Many wanted to lean into that in a very lurid sense. They looked for emotional, almost erotic descriptions of my fragility, my shrinking flesh. It’s a conscious choice to resist this  fetishizing appetite for the trauma of certain people; queer trauma and female trauma, but obviously also Palestinian trauma, or that of the colonized subject more broadly. 

When I started writing about my grandmother, I was very sensitive to these considerations. I wanted her suffering and loss to be reclaimed, to be thoughtfully, faithfully presented in language. On a personal level, too, this was so important for me—because her trauma also informs the story of who I became and what my struggles were. Yet, I didn’t want to write about her in a way that implied she, or those like her, are just destined to suffer. 

HF

To just be a perfect victim. 

SA

Yeah, like Mohamed el-Kurd talks about. It was important for me to show her rage, to show my own rage. A quote from el-Kurd that I really like is: “we have a right to contempt.” It’s a little spin on Glissant, who’d said: “we have the right to opacity.” In that same sense, we have a right to contempt, anger, and messy feelings. I didn’t want my book to just be a shallow valley of suffering, one trauma after another, and I didn’t want it to be tied up neatly in a bow of “resilience.” I wanted my grandmother—a brown, disabled woman—and all my people to be granted the complexity, fallibility, and nuance that has been afforded to white, male characters for centuries. And I wanted to begin and end in irresolution—because that is how I experience the world, and because our liberation is incomplete. 

I was also thinking a lot about the responsibility of handling another person’s story. I was writing a personal memoir, but also a family memoir, so I thought a lot about the privacy of my grandmother and father, whose stories I was trying to approach and tell. I wanted to know as much as I possibly could—from other relatives, from photo albums and family records—in order to render their stories faithfully. I learned a lot from Saidiya Hartman’s words about writing into the archive while also respecting the sovereignty of those characters’ stories. There were things that I gave myself license to render on the page, and others that I felt belonged to no one but my grandmother, so I kept them out. I wanted her to be understood, but I didn’t want her to be exposed.

HF

 This actually leads quite smoothly to another question I wanted to ask you, which is that of ethics in the memoir, especially as it’s one of the forms where this concern is most pressing. 

SA

It was central for me. Besides what I’ve just mentioned, I was thinking a lot about how to approach putting less flattering things in the book because some of the people who harmed me were fellow Arabs. My grandfather, as well, was a complicated character. But as we were saying earlier, I didn’t want to write a story in which we were perfect victims. Because of what Palestinians are currently facing, I often felt this pressure that because I have a mic I have to show the best of us. I really struggled with that sometimes because I just don’t want to give anyone any more reason to disparage Palestinians, or more specifically Palestinian or Muslim or Arab men. 

But then I realized that that’s also dehumanizing because that’s not allowing us to be human, i.e. inherently complicated, fallible, and often misguided. It’s also desecrating our love and relationality. Because in reality, love is always fucking up. We make mistakes and harm one another. I was trying to find a way to welcome in some of that messiness because that’s also our birthright. We deserve to be full.

Sara Ahmed talks about the risks of bringing up stories of trauma, specifically sexual trauma, perpetuated from within our own communities because white audiences are so primed to clutch to those things and say: “See? Look at these barbaric men!” But she also talks about the harm of rendering these things secrets—so it’s important to tell them with care. She’s another person I took ethical cues from when deciding to include certain things that ran the risk of being used against us. But in general, I just think it’s more important to write toward our fullness than to preemptively flatten and hollow ourselves out. That’s already done for us so much. 

HF

Agreed, and to that point, I think there’s also a huge difference between someone writing about the experience of patriarchy, misogyny, or gendered violence in the particular context in which they have experienced it versus writing about how a racialized group is exceptionally or inherently violent. Plus, there will simply always be racist who are just waiting for anything to cling to in order to justify their racism against Arabs, Muslims, or whoever else. 

HF

Something that strikes me about his book, which you alluded to earlier in yours, is that he seems uninterested in giving a linear account of his life, but is much more focused on these vignettes that tell a larger story of life in and outside of Palestine.

SA

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity and represents the first in a new interview series Hazem Fahmy is editing with Mizna Online titled Uncrafted, exploring intersections of literary craft and anti-imperial thought. 

Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer and translator. Her essays, journalism, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, Mizna, Jewish Currents, Lux Magazine, the Intercept, NPR, and the Nation, among others. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a 2022 resident at Tin House Books and a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Her book, The Hollow Half (April 2025), is a hybrid work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream.

Hazem Fahmy is a writer and critic from Cairo. A PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University, he is the author of three chapbooks: Red//Jild//Prayer (2017) from Diode Editions, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo (2022) from Half-Mystic Press, and At the Gates (2023) from Akashik Books’ New-Generation African Poets series.  He is a Watering Hole Fellow, and his writing has appeared, or is forthcoming in The Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, Mubi Notebook, Reverse Shot, and Mizna.

The post Uncrafted #2: An Interview with Sarah Aziza appeared first on Mizna.

trans. by Nour Jaljuli & Aiya Sakr

It was April of 2024 that Mizna first published Diaa Wadi’s essay “Autobiography of Gaza”. Back then, executive editor George Abraham reflected that “‘ceasefire’—a bare minimum demand back in October—has come to lose all meaning as the horrors of Al-Shifa Hospital and other Zionist massacres unravel before our eyes . . .” Now, in January of 2025, we find ourselves yet again grappling with what it means to cross that threshold marked by whatever it is a term like “ceasefire” could ever hope to signify some 460 days and tens of thousands of casualties of zionist genocide later. We again urge all readers to consider donating to Diaa Wadi’s campaign to evacuate his family to safety.

—Nour Eldin H., Mizna assistant editor

Should I tell you a secret?

I’m afraid of the anguish I hold within me. Do people fear their own anguish?

—Diaa Wadi (trans. Nour Jaljuli & Aiya Sakr)

On the Edge of a Volcano, a Rip through a Gazan’s Heart

This grief is larger than anything I can bear. My eyes shatter from what I witness and my brain withers with the endless thoughts and storms of my own imagination.

I write these words while my heart rings like an alarm with fear and anxiety. I write as the Occupation’s artillery shells and war missiles drop on my family. But now, people see these bombs as raindrops, not tons of explosives and fires eating at Gazan bodies, souls, and buildings.

It is the worst of times. People are being slaughtered—mounds of flesh fill the streets and homes. People in the south of Gaza have turned into the new object of slaughter, while in the north, slaughter joins starvation and thirst.  Monumental exhaustion weighs down my tongue.

I imagine them now, spread across the corners of the tent with burnt edges. An empty tent with only gravel and stone. Each of them holding onto their suitcases, their documents, and their few belongings. They stare at each other. Fear sits with them as they wait for the end with each minute. They remember the moments they shared with their beloved martyrs, every person who left to the sky. They remember the warm family gatherings, loud laughter, daily bickering. They wonder, “Will the day ever come when we argue again, and storm out of our home?” But there’s no home left, no fights, it’s all rubble and ruin—ruin beyond anybody’s description.

I am now reading through reports and searching the faces of survivors and the names of martyrs from al-Shuja‘iyya neighborhood to find out what has become of my uncle, his wife, and their children after connection has been lost. I look for them so I don’t come across their pictures and names by accident as I had before with my martyred aunts and uncle.

Can you understand? You can’t understand and you will never know.

Death came near a few days ago. All of my senses were heightened. Except sight. I didn’t need my ears to hear, the voices were coming from inside of me and from the outside too. I spent my life trying to adjust, to heal from the torments of previous wars. I thought they would face no pain after I left them. Didn’t I do it for their sake? To protect them from harm and need? Did I not suffer distance, rejection, and lonely laboring to provide them with all their wishes?

Now, evil is growing. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide, a policy for organized mass killing. This is terrorism and ethnic cleansing. This is organized state terrorism. And my family is there. They are there with all of my people of Gaza suffering through wounds that can swallow a world whole. Fifty thousand martyrs. Life itself will end before we’re able to adequately mourn each and every one of them. The wounded are in every street, remnants strewn across rocks and trees, dogs are gnawing at the living and the dead, and helplessness is amputating every living part inside of us.

This is the truth that beats at us: that this unlawful attack is a mere tool to erode our very sense of self, to plow out of us every concept, idea, and belief; it is the  complete disregard of all useless laws laid out in ink on paper. What is happening in Gaza singles us out, a dignified people kneaded with death, a people whose fate is folded in with facing tragedy alone. This is nothing new in our cycle of setbacks. We don’t know fear and we don’t surrender to any weakness, even if it was the color of blood.

As for you, living outside the borders of these bombs, know that there is no room for a middle ground. You are either a person of honor defending against our pain with your blood, words, voice, and arms, or you are stuffed with filth, apathy, and so-called neutrality.

The greatest agonies in a person’s life happen during childhood and adolescence—not because of their relative weakness at that age, but because the concepts that may aid them to bear these pains have not yet formed and taken root within. So pain shapes and mutilates their thoughts as it wishes. My life in Gaza was filled with anguish of many forms and shapes. The war of 2008, another one in 2012, 2014, 2021, and now this war—a war a thousand times more violent than anything that has ever preceded even though I am not there.

Helplessness, grief, and loss mold a weapon that stabs at my soul, my heart, and my stamina. This weapon reshapes itself, again and again. It pounds at me until I am debilitated. Every day I grow more certain that what was taken from Gazans cannot be retrieved—this is at the heart of our journey. And the ugly truth is that this sorrow is invisible. No eyes can track it. No one can gauge the size of the blow or how deep the wound runs.

Baraa, my brother, let’s play a game.

I will let you go to bed late, and I won’t worry over you swimming long laps in the sea. I will give you hours to play and I won’t smother you with advice. I will get you the phone you want. I won’t tell mom about some of your grades, and I will hide your shenanigans from the family—keep it all in my heart like a gentle breeze. You can have all you want and more. Under one condition, brother: that you don’t leave on my behalf.

“They cannot expel us unless they transfer our corpses to Sinai. This idea they have of us walking there is a fantasy.” This is what my father tells me before the internet and all communications with them are cut off. We will not leave, we will not have a tent in Sinai, and we will not look back at Gaza longingly from behind a fence. Death smells good in the face of the hell our souls are now subjected to.

An international call comes through.

To be honest, I fear nothing more than an international call with a Palestinian code. He says, “Another Baptist Massacre, Diaa.” He cries and hangs up.

Oh God, give us our old fear back. The one that vanishes when we see family and friends.

Give us our old sorrows and normal life. Give us everything that was and forgive us for complaining.

Give us normal fear just like all people. Oh God, only give us what is mundane.

My mother tells me that some of the women cut off their hair due to the lack of shampoo and cleaning supplies. They’ve been off the shelves for ages. Some have even cropped their children’s hair for fear of lice and parasites. They want to maintain their personal hygiene even if by the bare minimum.

What an unremarkable piece of news. No one will care. It doesn’t have the word “massacre.”

Take this advice from a bereaved soul—pray to God more because you have your children with you; hug your mothers more and sleep at their hands; take photos with your siblings and forgive them for their mistakes; hug your fathers, touch their faces and heads, and ask for their blessings; give your thanks to God that your mothers are nearby and safe and that your family is well. Others have had their hearts eaten by sorrow and the world tested them with what  they hold dearest. I am others.

All of us are like this, with no exceptions. We each got our share of suffering, having to watch our families in tents, friends in hospitals, and their remains gathered in death bags.

Gazans have suffered every kind of torment there is. They’ve tried them all in order and they never stopped paying a dear and outrageous price the rest of the world cannot fathom. We pay with each passing second, literally, a hefty price no one in this time has ever paid. What falls on the heads of Gazans are lava balls of hatred, resentment, and a wish for our extermination. It’s a terrifying state that was never before experienced by anyone other than us in this modern day. Allah is almighty.

“Triers of pain,” that’s what Gazans are. We try pain, pain tries us, Gazan pain—what do you think? Are these titles catchy enough? Are they good enough for your fancy publications? Choose the most emotive descriptions and choose carefully. Take your time. This is not human blood. These are not real scenes. Stay neutral and don’t bother providing a single drop to those drinking filthy sewage water.

May whomever is standing on neutral ground fall. May they fall, those who didn’t give their money, or lend their voice, pen, tears, and prayers. 

We are humans and we know sorrow. But this feeling isn’t sorrow, anguish, nor pain. This thing doesn’t have a name. Today, on the phone with my uncle, he responded with a single sentence, “We’re hungry.” I hung up immediately. I couldn’t bear it.

What does the world want? We will die of anguish!

Should I tell you a secret?

I’m afraid of the anguish I hold within me. Do people fear their own anguish?

They must fear their own anguish and resentment when there’s no way to relieve it, to dispose of it, or deal with it. A sort of anguish that repeats daily in larger and larger doses. An anguish that cuts the strings of my heart and now seeps into my very features and behaviors. An anguish that, if placed on a mountain, would shake it or even force it to collapse.

“Stockpiling crisis,” this is the state in which Gazans are living now. They remain steadfast in their homes despite all that has happened and happens every day.

Gazans are stockpiling their crises and sorrows, so that once this war ends, another can begin. A war no news channel will cover, a war uncapturable without bombardment. A war of trying to eat without ash, now a permanent resident in our mouths. A war of going out to the street without conjuring amputated limbs and heads split open. From the war of tanks and weapons is born another war to build a new life.

“Israel commits a new massacre in al-Nuseirat.”

“Israel targets an UNRWA school sheltering refugees.”

“Israel buries children alive under the school rubble.”

“Israel kills entire displaced families inside the school.”

The world must understand that Palestinians, even when they carry weapons, are always the righteous ones, and that Israelis, even if they are lounging on the beaches of Haifa, are always guilty.

They have barely entered life’s threshold; they don’t have passports. They know the world only through screens. They know nothing outside of the wall. No trains, no civil planes, no mall escalators. They don’t know a boat or the sea without siege. They don’t know.

Baha, Alaa, Bara, and Mohammad, my brothers, don’t know.

After the war on Gaza, mothers will ask about their children’s graves.

If a mother wishes to sit by her son’s grave, “Where’s my son buried?” I don’t know. All I know is that this is a mass grave. Perhaps your son is here or there, or perhaps his parts are bagged together in a different mass grave.

You don’t know the meaning of anguish. You cannot understand what it means for your family to sleep on sand in a tent on the coldest and hottest days of the year. You cannot understand what it means to not find a bathroom to go to when you need it. You don’t understand the meaning of all of this. If we place all of this sorrow in a basket over your head none of you will be able to bear it.

This basket of sorrows is too heavy.

My brother Mohammad tells me that at the beginning of the war he only missed home, but now he misses opening the fridge door, sleeping in his own bed, and turning the lock on our front door.

He tells me about his discoveries in this war, “The thing is, you will long first for the main thing—our home. But then you start thinking about details that never crossed your mind, like opening the fridge.”

Mohammad, let’s play a game.

When we hear the bombs, we run.

Whoever gets tired loses the game.

I never imagined being on the outside of the war; the war that never left us. Loss and helplessness increase with the distance. Keeping up with the war through windows and streets would have been easier than constantly flipping between screens, news channels, images of martyrs, tracking neighborhoods, and endless phone calls, one after the other.

All that I do these days is try to find a way to describe how I feel. At least that way I will be able to hold the keys of knowledge and understand, even just a little, how my mind and heart can settle.

Choice turns into a daily hardship. Especially with the tremendous number of choices we must face in every moment of our lives.

But the choices this time are not only confusing, they’re deadly. Either your flesh is shattered to pieces, or you escape your home with no guarantee that you’ll even survive. You either suffer starvation and fear in the north, or the anguish of living in a tent with its unbearable heat in the south.

But the world did its best to aid us. The world was too generous and offered us a long list of choices: to be killed, or displaced. 

Oh Gazan, what do you think? Should you die by a missile that will turn you into pieces no larger than a finger, or do you want to die with your limbs amputated by a bomb?

No, you still have another choice, a lucky choice: to die whole. What do you say if a bullet should hit you between your shoulders, ripping through your body?

Language has changed, and words mean different things now. Children know school as a place of learning, boring math lessons, and a yard where they can run and play. But now school has become a shelter, a place where you sleep surrounded by carpet bombings and shelling. Mohammad tells me he won’t be able to go to school after the war. The only thing he’ll be able to see are images of him running between bombs to reach shelter in the same school he had once loved and studied in. This is the trauma that children won’t be able to escape.

There are moments when one is forced to question their own sanity. How did I endure all of this harm, my soul as clean as a bird’s? You are shocked by your own ability to endure, and are afraid you will suddenly collapse for no reason after having to bear all of this.

They peeled away all of my loved ones. I remain naked and alone, pretending that “strength” is the only life raft available to me.

After once shivering at the thought of us turning into mere numbers, shame has led us to see the genocide as some sort of victory because the Occupation failed to achieve its goals.

I am as silent as a lamb. I only speak when necessary, or I nod my head. I don’t talk much, and I wait for the night to look for them in my dreams. Last night, I saw them walking to the west, carrying their things. With every kilometer they walked, they would cry all at once to lighten the load. Off they went, no one knows where they are now. Perhaps they were killed or maybe they’re still walking. I don’t know if they have enough tears to see the journey through.

Humans have always been more brutal than animals. Even preying animals only eat because they’re hungry. But what is wrong with humans? Are they even humans, or monsters cast upon us?

I don’t know what to tell you about Gaza now. But the road to heaven is crowded in Gaza.

The great poet Al-Muari once wrote upon losing a dear one, “My sadness over his departure is like the blessings of the people of heaven, it’s born anew every time it runs out.”

The tears that fall by accident are the voices of loved ones preserved in our bodies after they leave us. They fall whenever the heart longs to hear their voice and has no other way to find it.

They disperse between bombs. Some survive and leave elsewhere. Death by scorched earth policies, families exterminated by every kind of weapon and tool, from missiles to vicious dogs, each dies according to their own fate.

Perhaps in heaven when martyrs come together, they will tell each other about how they died.

“How did I pass? By a missile.” Another says, “I was killed by a bomb,” and a child responds “Uncle, a sniper shot me.”

Diaa Wadi is a Palestinian writer and blogger. He studied mechanical engineering and has traveled to many countries speaking for the Palestinian cause at international events. Wadi believes in literature and writing as an effective tool of resistance against the Occupation. He writes about the life of Gazans and the details which are often overlooked by the camera. As Refaat Al-Areer said, “If I must die, / you must live / to tell my story.” Diaa writes on behalf of all those who left us, to honor the martyrs and send them eternal love—for the martyr Refaat Al-Areer, now more than ever. Diaa tweets @diaawadi2.

Nour Jaljuli is a translator and poet traversing between the worlds of Arabic and English. She holds an MA in literary translation from the University of East Anglia and is the Arabic translator of Rana Dajani’s Five Scarves. Her translations have appeared in ArabLit, Middle East Eye, Jummar, and the 2022 UEA MALT Anthology for which she was also coeditor. You can find out more about her work on nourjaljuli.wordpress.com.

Aiya Sakr (she/they) is a Palestinian-American poet and artist. They are the author of Her Bones Catch the Sun (The Poet’s Haven, 2018). A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in Foglifter, Mizna, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a co-organizer for In Water and Light, a regular community building space and reading series for Palestine. She is also a Winter 2023 Tin House Fellow, and has served as Poetry Editor for Sycamore Review. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Purdue University. She collects buttons, and is enthusiastic about birds.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post On the Edge of a Volcano, a Rip through a Gazan’s Heart appeared first on Mizna.

English below

دعوةٌ لِلمشاركةِ فِي عددٍ مِن مجلَّةِ مزنة خاصٍّ بِغزَّة: إصدارٌ خاصٌّ مِن وإلى الكُتّابِ والكاتباتِ الغزِّيِّينَ/اتَ معَ المُحَرِّرِ الضَّيفِ يَحيى عاشور

قد انتهتْ فترة تسليم النصوص

في ظِلِّ هُدنةٍ غيْرِ وثيقةٍ بعدَ خمسةَ عشرَ شهراً مِن إبادةٍ جماعيَّةٍ وحصارٍ صهيونيٍّ على الفلسطينيّينَ/اتِ في غزَّة، تسعى مجلَّةُ مزنة في أمريكا، والتي تختصُّ بِأدبِ مَنْ لهم جذورٌ عربيَّة وجنوب غرب آسيويَّة، إلى تعزيزِ واحتضانِ أصواتٍ غزِّيَّة في إصدارٍ خاصّ. يُرحِّبُ المشروع، رِفقةَ المُحَرِّرِ الضيف، الشَّاعرِ الغزِّي يَحيى عاشور، بِمشاركاتٍ أدبيَّةٍ مِن كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ في غزَّة وكذلكَ كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ فلسطينيّينَ/اتٍ في الشَّتاتِ مِمَّن لهم جذورٌ غزِّيَّة 

محتوى المشاركاتِ مفتوح، سواءٌ أكانَ ذا صلةٍ بِالحصارِ والإبادةِ الجماعيَّةِ بِشكلٍ مباشرٍ أو غيرِ مباشرٍ، أو لمْ يكنْ له صلةٌ بذلكَ بِالمُطلق، فكُلُّ تجربةٍ تـ/يمرُّ بها الغزِّيّ/ة جديرةٌ بِالاهتمام

سيحصلُ الكُتّابُ والكاتباتُ على مكافأةٍ ماليّةٍ لا تقل عن ٢٠٠ دولار في حالِ تمَّ اختيارُ مُشاركاتِهمِ/هُنَّ

شروطُ التَّقديم

١. يجبُ ألّا يكونَ النصُّ الأدبيُّ منشوراً مُسبقاً بأيِّ شكل

٢. يمكنُ تقديمُ النَّصِّ الأدبيِّ بِاللُّغةِ العربيَّة أو الإنجليزيَّة

٣. كلُّ أجناسِ النُّصوصِ الأدبيَّةِ مقبولة

٤. يجبُ ألّا تتجاوزَ النُّصوصُ الأدبيَّة ٣ آلافِ كلمة؛ يُسمحُ بِتقديم ٣ قصائدَ كحدٍّ أقصى، أو نصٍّ أدبيِّ واحد

٥. يُرجى إرفاقُ نبذة مُختصرة عن الكاتبِ/ة مِن ٥٠ كلمة كحدٍّ أقصى، تتضمَّنُ المنطقةَ أو الحيّ الذي ترعرعَ/تْ فيهِ الكاتبُ/ ة أو أهله/ا في غزَّة، وعددِ مرَّاتِ النزوحِ. يمكنُ أيضاً إرفاقُ صورةٍ شخصيَّةٍ للكاتبِ/ة

٦. تُرسلُ النصوصُ الأدبيَّةُ إلى واحدةٍ من هاتينِ الوسيلتينِ وليسَ كِلتاهُما

عبرَ البريدِ الإلكترونيّ
gazafolio@mizna.org
أو، مِن بابِ التَّسهيلِ عبرَ رقمِ الواتساب: 0006 946 612 1

آخرُ موعدٍ لاستقبالِ المشاركاتِ هو ٣ آذار/مارس، ٢٠٢٥م، السَّاعةُ ١١:٥٩ مساءً بِتوقيتِ غزَّة

تعرَّف أكثر على يَحيى عاشور

تعرَّف أكثر على مجلَّةِ مزنة

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Mizna Gaza Folio: A special publication by and for Gazan writers guest-edited by Yahya Ashour

SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED

At the juncture of a tenuous ceasefire after the fifteen-month-long Zionist genocide and siege of Palestinians in Gaza, the US-based Arab/SWANA literary journal Mizna seeks to amplify and embrace voices from Gaza with a special publication. Guest-edited by Gazan poet Yahya Ashour, the project welcomes submissions from writers in Gaza as well as Palestinian writers in diaspora who have roots in Gaza. 

The content is open—related to the siege and genocide directly or indirectly or not at all—every experience you have as a Gazan is relevant for consideration. 

Accepted writers will receive a minimum $200 USD honorarium.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1. 1. Unpublished work
2. 2. English or Arabic only
3. 3. All literary forms accepted
4. 4. Under 3,000 words; maximum three poems, or one prose piece
5. 5. Fifty word author bio that includes where you originate from in Gaza. Optionally, you may include an author photo and how many times you have been forced to evacuate. 
6. 6. Submit writing to gazafolio@mizna.org, or, if needed, to Whatsapp number +1 612 946 0006.

DEADLINE: March 3, 2025, 11:59pm Gaza time

Learn more about Yahya Ashour

Learn more about Mizna

The post Call for Submissions | دعوةٌ لِلمشاركات appeared first on Mizna.

As we celebrate a ceasefire and renew our commitment to fighting alongside our Gazan kin toward a free Palestine, Mizna shares a new poem by Randa Jarrar that insists on a future of Palestinian aliveness. This piece will be published in Mizna’s forthcoming Futurity-themed issue, edited by Barrak Alzaid and Aram Kavoossi.

A Palestinian Tomorrow

after Jotamario Arbeláez

For us, all of us, part of our resistance to the erasure of genocide is to talk about tomorrow in Gaza, to plan for the healing of the wounds of Gaza tomorrow. We will own tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a Palestinian day.

—Ghassan Abu-Sitta

not the day after the war but a day after
the day after the war,
—that day—
the men will sleep for the first time 
without fearing death or its thefts
and for days after that day they will rest
but only a little bit after everyone else 
especially the children 
and the days after the day after the day 
after the war because there is always a war 
the mothers will sleep for two weeks
in shifts
and after that they will start a school
but only after the day that they lie
on the bare earth to say,
I will hold you and only you
in my lungs and heart one day, 
but thankfully not today.

Because today there is still a war and 
maybe after the war there will be a day,
if after the war I have a drum or even a mouth 
to fix to say that we will dance 
and laugh so hard a day 
after the day after the war
and after that we will sleep some more
if after the war there is more 
than a day if after the war
there is a ghost
of a heart or of a lung
if after the war we meet
by each other’s graves 
after we crawl out
on that day, the day
after the day after the
day after the war

Randa Jarrar is a Palestinian artist, author, professor, and actor based in Los Angeles.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post A Palestinian Tomorrow—A New Poem by Randa Jarrar appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna welcomes Moheb Soliman, who will begin as Executive Editor and Literary Programs, taking over from George Abraham’s distinguished period at the helm of the Mizna journal. Abraham will continue on in a new role as Editor at Large and Editor of Mizna Online, as they settle into their new faculty position as Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College’s English Department. “Over the past year, Mizna has played the critical role of providing space for our communities to gather in collective grief, rage, and solidarity. This staffing expansion comes as Mizna continues to meet an urgent moment for our communities in and from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and beyond; publishing, screening, promoting, and preserving Arab & SWANA voices through new and existing programs,” says Mizna’s Deputy Director Ellina Kevorkian.

Soliman first joined the staff of Mizna more than ten years ago as a transplant from Montreal, moving to Minnesota, where Mizna is rooted, to work as Community Liaison and eventually becoming Program Director, working closely with director Lana Salah Barkawi. For five years, he became familiar with local and national contemporary Arab/SWANA creative spheres, and led Mizna into new interdisciplinary art and literary territories. During this time, Soliman developed his own practice as a poet and performance artist, creating work at the intersection of identity, modernity, nature, and otherness. “I am thrilled to be back with the organization, colleagues, and community that so deeply shaped me. I can’t wait to continue the work of amplifying and expanding the boundaries of our creative expression and critical consciousness,” says Soliman.

In 2018, Soliman left Minneapolis for the multi-year Tulsa Artist Fellowship and eventually returned for a BIPOC-centric fellowship with Milkweed Editions. There, he focused on development and acquisition for the Seedbank series, which holds books from across the globe and across time that deal with human relationships to environment, place, and the non-human living world. He was also part of the Milkweed editorial team, guiding diverse poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction manuscripts through the publication process to books. Both of these recent immersions, in addition to years of project management and programming work with an array of Twin Cities arts organizations and national literary institutions, make his return to Mizna in this new capacity a fitting, exciting, and happy one. 

Moheb Soliman attended Eugene Lang at the New School for Social Research and the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His debut poetry book HOMES was published by Coffee House Press. He lives in Northeast Minneapolis with his partner, writer Kathryn Savage. 

George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, and performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.  As Executive Editor of Mizna, Abraham has spearheaded the production process of three print journals, Myth and Memory, Cinema, and Catastrophe, and has helped launch and edit our new digital publication, Mizna Online. On their new position, Abraham commented, “I am excited to continue visioning and producing an online publication which complements our biannual print publication with regular content reflecting on the urgent and current realities of the SWANA region and beyond. In a moment where so many authors and artists are being censored for expressing their solidarity with Palestine, Mizna Online has become a vital space. As we continue to stand against the genocide in Gaza, we have focused much of our efforts this past year on publishing work in solidarity with Palestine. Forthcoming work will continue to critically engage with Palestine and Sudan as well as recent developments in Syria and beyond. We also look forward to expanding our work in literary and cultural criticism, with projects such as Hazem Fahmy’s Uncrafted column, and other urgent projects addressing gaps in the literary landscape.”

The post Moheb Soliman Rejoins Mizna Staff as Executive Editor and Literary Programs Director appeared first on Mizna.

“The reality that it is the refugees, who lost their homes and land in 1948 and have been living under difficult conditions for 76 years, are the ones targeted the most in this murderous war, and are thus paying the highest price of all. It is difficult to accept that it is mostly the refugees who are willing to pick up the weapons and fight a nuclear army with their own blood, whether it is the refugees in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank.”

—Noora Said

During a few visits to Jenin Refugee camp in the north of the West Bank, Yousef Hammad documents a reality of destruction and resilience through a series of black and white photos. Leaving the role of contrast mainly to the shadows, this low-contrast series captures the stillness of life in the camp, as in the rest of Palestine; Palestinians await a bloody and unbalanced battle to determine their future. The camp is filled with bullet holes, relatively vacant streets, and destroyed houses, instead of its own people, whose lives have become impossible with the constant military invasions, which have only escalated since mid-May 2021. These photographs were captured from late May to early June of 2024, just a few months before the Israeli occupation’s largest recent military operation titled “Operation Summer Camps,” but after the second largest military invasion which happened in July 2023, a few months before the most recent Zionist genocidal escalation in Gaza. 

Driving through Jenin city to reach the camp, the rubble of the destroyed George Habash roundabout lies in the middle of the street. Habash, referred to as “the wise,” was a prominent Palestinian leader who founded the leftist political party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He worked as its secretary general from its founding in 1967 until 2000. As a revolutionary leader, Israel intentionally targeted the urban symbol commemorating his memory and crucial role in the Palestinian liberation struggle. In the current manic psyche of the Israeli state, the army has been strategically and relentlessly targeting material monuments that symbolize resistance. There are many examples from Jenin camp, but some of the most noteworthy are the repeated destructions of the memorial that marks the exact spot where the martyred journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot and killed in cold blood by the Zionist army. They also destroyed the camp’s stone-made entrance, which is called “The Arch of Victory;” it displays the camp’s name and photos of martyrs, and a metal horse sculpture was built from the ruins of the ambulances that Israel bombed during its 2002 large offensive.

Jenin Refugee camp is referred to by Palestinians as the “castle of the revolutionaries” or the “capital of resistance” because it has historically been a birthplace of resistance fighters, and has always witnessed intense battles between its refugees and the invading occupation forces. Subsequently, the Israeli military refers to the camp as the “wasp’s nest” due to their obsessive panic over potential operations by a growing militant brigade. Since 2021, Zionist military invasions of Jenin refugee camp have become a near-weekly occurrence. In the year 2022, according to a Palestinian data center, Mo’ta, Jenin witnessed 97 confrontation incidents, 58 shooting incidents, and 41 stone-throwing incidents. According to research conducted by Abd Albasit Khalaf and published by the Palestine Studies Institute, Jenin city, including all of its villages and refugee camps, has been invaded more than 1500 times in 2023. In another documentation by the Anadolou Agency, from the 7th of October 2023 through the 21st of May 2024, Jenin has been invaded 72 times. Long before the most recent and brutal “Summer Camp” military operation, the resilient Jenin refugee camp has been witnessing recurrent military invasions since mid-2021.

The uprising in 2021, which some refer to as the “unity uprising” and others refer to as the “dignity uprising,” is crucial to the ongoing war in Palestine and the genocide in Gaza. The year 2021 witnessed a re-ignition of Palestinian armed resistance and revived a sense of Palestinian nationalism. This occurred gradually after a series of escalating Zionist attacks on Palestinians. First was the struggle of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood residents, whom Israel is still attempting to forcefully evict out of their homes in Jerusalem. Palestinians came together from every city to participate in solidarity demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah and protest the potential expulsion of these families. It is noteworthy here to mention that the photographer, Yousef, and his family are among the families living in one of the houses threatened with eviction. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli police and army met these peaceful protestors with brutal force to completely and immediately dismantle the demonstrations that were taking place daily.

Second, in May, during Ramadan of that year, the occupation invaded al-Aqsa mosque multiple times, attacking Palestinian worshippers there with tear gas bombs and batons and arresting more than 300 people. Both the al-Aqsa mosque invasion and the Sheikh Jarrah solidarity protests sparked a smaller uprising, especially amongst the youth of Jerusalem, historic Palestine, and refugee camps in the West Bank. The mobilization coming from Palestinians with Israeli citizenship presented an unhappy surprise to the occupation state. It completely infuriated the occupation government and a large-scale arrest campaign was conducted as a result. Following al-Aqsa raids and as a stand of solidarity, the resistance in Gaza began firing missiles at the occupation state, marking the start of the 2021 war on Gaza, which Palestinians call the “Sword of Jerusalem” battle. On a military level, supposedly, the Palestinians have won. However, the broken hearts and limbs of the orphans and the parents without their children resonate forever. Finally, in September of that year, six prisoners managed to heroically escape Jalbou, one of the most secure Israeli prisons, by digging a tunnel to freedom, though they were all later found and re-arrested.

These intensifying aggressions by Israel caused the birth of many combatant battalions to re-form, especially in refugee camps across the West Bank, synchronizing with the new generation’s moment and experience. Jenin is no exception. The Jenin battalion re-emerged, uniting combatants belonging to different political parties. The last three years have been tough on the seven-decade-old refugee camp and its inhabitants. With every weekly invasion, Palestinians, including children, are killed, as houses are burnt and damaged. Nonetheless, collective punishment is central to the strategic policy of the Zionist army. As their bulldozers destroy the infrastructure in nearly every invasion, they are cutting off people’s water pipes, electricity, and transportation, causing an obstruction of the refugees’ everyday life. In July 2023, Israel conducted an aggression against the camp, the largest since 2002. Today, many of the camp’s residents have temporarily left because a normal daily life has been rendered impossible. Many of them are sheltering with families and friends who live in the city of Jenin. 

Looking at the destruction and death in Jenin’s Camp, I feel something similar to the pain I feel while looking at the destruction and death in Gaza, the pain of knowing that those who are suffering now were always in vain, even before this renewed pain, knowing that the water pipe and electricity cable, were fixed 365 times last year, knowing that so many loved ones were lost already, and before even reconciling with that, a new loved one is lost. They were all young, so young and full of life.  

Through a broken brick wall, a segment of a sign of an UNRWA project reads “Jenin camp rehabilitation project.” The moment several Western countries unjustly cut off their funding from UNRWA, they cut it off from 5.6 million Palestinian refugees, including the roughly 2 million refugees in Gaza. That politically motivated decision, defying the orders of the International Court of Justice regarding the genocide case raised by South Africa, is an unnegotiable act of collective punishment that extends geographically to the remaining Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Indeed, this biased act that submits to an Israeli historical strategy to eliminate the Palestinian refugee and their right of return; one that has an immeasurable impact on Palestinian refugees everywhere, including refugees of Jenin camp that depend on the aid for their survival. 

It is difficult to accept today’s reality that keeps resurfacing amidst the genocide. The reality that it is the refugees, who lost their homes and land in 1948 and have been living under difficult conditions for 76 years, are the ones targeted the most in this murderous war, and are thus paying the highest price of all. It is difficult to accept that it is mostly the refugees who are willing to pick up the weapons and fight a nuclear army with their own blood, whether it is the refugees in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank. 

The slogan in all Palestinian refugee camps remains: “One day, we will return.”

Noora Said is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist. Said is also a co-founder of an audiovisual production house, Sirdab Studio. With an MA in Artist Film and Moving Image from Goldsmiths College University of London, and a BA in Film and Media Arts and Sociology, Said’s work delves into contested spaces, identities, and narratives, through socio- and geo-political lenses.

Yousef Hammad is a professional and self-taught Director of Photography and filmmaker from Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem. With a distinct filming and visual identity, Hammad has worked with prominent Palestinian, Arab, and international directors, artists, and cultural and human rights organizations. Hammad is also the co-founder of an audiovisual production house, Sirdab studio.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post 1500 Invasions Later: Photos of Destruction and Resilience from the Jenin Refugee Camp appeared first on Mizna.

The 2025 Mizna Film Series presents some of our favorite archival classics from the past 60 years of Iran’s cinema history. Beginning with a beloved film from Abbas Kiarostami and ending with a tribute to Dariush Mehrjui, we’re proud to present these films in collaboration with the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Collective, Archives on Screen, and the Trylon Cinema.

Learn more about the Mizna Film Series here.

Tickets

In-person Trylon tickets: $10
Virtual Tickets: Pay what you can, $5 suggested donation

UPCOMING

JAN 19: CELLULOID UNDERGROUND BY EHSAN KHOSHBAKHT

(2023, DCP, 80 m, English and Farsi with English subtitles) dir Ehsan Khoshbakht
After the Iranian Revolution, a movie collector in Tehran hid thousands of films
to prevent their destruction by the new Islamic regime. Despite arrest and
torture, he refused to give up his secret. His story of resistance and obsession is
told by the boy who became his partner in crime, recalled years later from exile
in London.

This screening is presented in collaboration with the Iranian Film Festival at the Main Cinema.

Watch in-person only on January 19, 2025, 1pm at the Main Cinema.

JAN 22: WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? BY ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

(1987, DCP, 83m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Abbas Kiarostami
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity—a boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Shot through with all the wonder, beauty, tension, and mystery one day can contain, Where Is the Friend’s House? established Kiarostami’s reputation as one of cinema’s most sensitive and profound humanists.

Watch in-person only on January 22, 2025 at 7pm at Trylon Cinema

FEB 16 AT IL CINEMA RITROVATO ON TOUR

THE SEALED SOIL + MARJAN AT IL CINEMA RITROVATO ON TOUR

THE SEALED SOIL

(1977, 90 m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Marva Nabil

Writer-director Marva Nabili made history in 1977 with The Sealed Soil, the first feature film directed by an Iranian woman to be preserved in its entirety to this day. In pre-revolutionary Iran, a young woman refuses to follow the path imposed on her after reaching marriageable age. Meanwhile, we observe the day-to-day life of her family and an entire village forced to move by government order. The young protagonist’s persistent need for independence causes her family to question whether this is a case of demonic possession, and they turn to an exorcist to free her from these undue thoughts and desires. The Sealed Soil is a powerful story of female empowerment, proving that revolutions can also be internal and silent.

MARJAN

(1956, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Marva Nabil

Marjan (1956) is the first Persian feature film directed and produced by a woman in Iran. Filmmaker Shahla Riahi (Ghodrat-ol-Zaman Vafadoost) plays the lead role of Marjan, a Roma woman whose doomed romance with a young school teacher has multiple endings, according to key sources. Shot on 35mm black-and-white film with a runtime of 105 minutes, Marjan was the inaugural production of Arya Film Studio, founded by Riahi herself in 1956. Unfortunately, only two reels of the film can be viewed today, preserved by the Iranian film collector Ahmad Jorghanian, while further surviving reels in the Iranian National Film Center remain completely inaccessible. Film scholar Farzaneh Ebrahimzadeh Holasu will present the surviving fragments in person.

This screening is presented in collaboration with the Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour at the Main Cinema.

Watch in-person only on February 16, 2025 at 1pm.

APRIL 23: BRICK AND MIRROR + THE HOUSE IS BLACK

BRICK AND MIRROR

(1965, DCP, 131m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Ebrahim Golestan 

With this landmark debut feature, director Ebrahim Golestan delivers a jolt of modernism to pre-revolution Iranian cinema, laying the groundwork for the first new wave. When a mysterious woman (feminist literary icon Forugh Farrokhzād, and director of The House Is Black) abandons a baby in the backseat of his cab one night, Tehran taxi driver Hashem (Zakaria Hashemi) begins a journey through the city’s unfeeling bureaucracy as he attempts to find a home for the infant—a situation that soon puts him in conflict with his nurturing girlfriend Taji (Taji Ahmadi). Melding the influences of Persian poetry, 1960s European art cinema, and Wellesian expressionism, Brick and Mirror offers a portrait of a crumbling relationship that reflects on many contemporary social and political dynamics. 

THE HOUSE IS BLACK

(1964, DCP, 22m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Forugh Farrokhzād 

The only film directed by trailblazing feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzād finds unexpected grace where few would think to look: a leper colony where inhabitants live, worship, learn, play, and celebrate in a self-contained community cut off from the rest of the world. Through ruminative voiceover narration drawn from the Old Testament, the Qur’an, and the filmmaker’s own poetry as well as unflinching images that refuse to look away from physical difference, Farrokhzād creates a profoundly empathetic portrait of those cast off by society—an indelible face-to-face encounter with the humanity behind the disease. A key forerunner of the Iranian New Wave, The House Is Black is a triumph of transcendent lyricism from a visionary artist whose influence is only beginning to be fully appreciated.

Watch IN-PERSON ONLY April 23, 2024 at 7pm at Trylon Cinema

The post Mizna Film Series 2025: Iranian Classics appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna is honored to share an excerpt from Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha’s heartbreaking collection of poetry, Forest of Noise. For readers in the Twin Cities area, see Mosab Abu Toha speak at the Palestine Festival of Literature on Dec. 9, 2024, link to purchase tickets here.

Before I Sleep

Before I sleep,
Death is always
sitting on my windowsill,
whether in Gaza or Cairo.
Even when I lived
in a tent,
it never failed
to create a window
for itself.
It looks me in the eye
and recounts to me
the many times
it let me live.
When I respond, “But you
took my loved ones away!”
it swallows the light in the tent
and hides in the dark to visit next day.

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild. He recently won an Overseas Press Club Award for his “Letter from Gaza” columns for The New Yorker.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post Before I Sleep—Poem from Forest of Noise appeared first on Mizna.