Downstairs, from heavenly Aleppo
“Your stories will come back to my ears, like a child who sits on his grandmother’s knees.” In this poem, Mati Shemoelof addresses Aleppo as a city of memory, poetry and Arab-Jewish heritage. Mourning its destruction and the displacement of its people, he imagines a future built not with weapons but with words, compassion and freedom.
By +972 Magazine February 18, 2017
Aleppo, your stories will come back to my ears, like a child who sits on his grandmother’s knees.
By Mati Shemoelof
Tariq Al-Bab, Aleppo, 2013. (Basma/Foreign and Commonwealth Office)
Aleppo, I, Matityaho Ibn Shifra, your old daughter, a grandson of your Arab-Jews, mourn the erasure of your city of poetry,
Aleppo, how did they forget to save your libraries?
Aleppo, was it not fireworks that lit the skies of the Arab spring? Or were the night stars shining all night long?
Aleppo, tell me who is the devil that drops explosive barrels upon your residents, and thinks that in this way — they will write his name in love,
Aleppo, will you listen to the old, weeping Iraqi who lives inside of me? Here, at the gates of our European towns, stand thousands of your sons and daughters, standing with keys to lost homes, waiting to enter.
Aleppo, rich poems will flourish in your botanic gardens; Free, we will walk among your Middle Eastern shifting sand-novel-dunes; freedom will be tattooed on our children’s hands, red words of prayer will spread in the wind,
Aleppo, torn poetry books fly in the wind; your children’s memory squashed beneath the rubble,
Aleppo, the few who read your heart’s beating poems fighting with those who don’t know shit about the little girl who dances while she writes a love letter to her mom,
Aleppo, your daughters, are the new Jews, who are exiled between the libraries of the world, and inside their headphones you can hear the compassionate womb of the Oud,
Aleppo, we will not fight with weapons that lead to victory. Nope. We will put our hopes in the gentle candle wax and surrender to mountains of words where the sweet snow melts into rivers; where love springs out,
Aleppo, tell us again how we can raise neighborhoods of believers and atheists; among the alters who scattered our souls,
Aleppo, your stories will come back to my ears, like a child who sits on his grandmother’s knees.
January, 2017.
Mati Shemoelof is an Israeli author, poet, editor, journalist and activist based in Berlin. Visit his website here.
First published on 18 February 2017, in +972 Magazine.
Category: Articles and Essays
Tags - Mati Shemoelof, +972 Magazine, Poetry, Aleppo, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Syrian Refugees, Arab-Jewish Identity, Arab Jews, Mizrahi Identity, Jewish-Arab Relations, Middle Eastern Poetry, Political Poetry, War and Poetry, Displacement, Exile, Migration, Refugees in Europe, Syrian History, Iraqi Jews, Arab Spring, Middle East, Oud, Hebrew Poetry, Contemporary Poetry, Berlin, Memory, Libraries, Freedom, Coexistence.
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