Books I’m Reading

I recently finished In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra by Amal Awad.

I wish this book had existed years ago. I felt like it was written for me. It is the first thing I’ve read by Awad but it won’t be the last.

I found a copy of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha.

As with all poetry books, I read a bit and then put the book done. These poems are about survival and trying to make a life in Gaza. It is a book that needs quiet, reflection, to make notes. It puts also words around the recent months.

I came across Abu Toha on Twitter and was grateful to stumble across his book.

This is from page 8.

In August 2014, Israel bombed my university’s administration building. The English department was turned into a ruin. My graduation ceremony got postponed. Families of the dead attended, to receive not a degree, but a portrait of their child.

Some thing snapped inside me reading this. I put the book down and couldn’t stop crying on the bus ride home.