When Mosab Abu Toha last read his poetry at the ArtRage gallery in 2022, he brought the copy of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear from which he read back to Gaza to add to his personal library.When Abu Toha fled his house with his family on Oct. 12, 2023 – less than a week after Hamas’ deadly attack and Israel’s subsequent bombing and invasion of the entire Gaza Strip – he brought that copy with him.When Israel Defense Forces soldiers detained Abu Toha at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, Abu Toha dropped the small bag he was carrying. After two days that Abu Toha says were filled with blind-folded torture and interrogation, IDF soldiers told Abu Toha they had made a mistake and returned him to the Rafah border crossing.The bag was still there, and within it, his book.Abu Toha brandished that copy Saturday night at the ArtRage Gallery, where more than 100 people had gathered to hear his poetry and personal experience fleeing the war in Gaza.“So, this book had the journey,” Abu Toha laughed as he spoke of the book that had survived alongside him and his family. Abu Toha, a Syracuse resident, is an artist in refuge. Mosab Abu Toha, a Plaestinian poet, poses for a portrait. His poetry is acclaimed and he is known for activism against violence and for literacy in Palestine. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentBorn in al-Shati refugee camp in 1992, Abu Toha lived and taught in Gaza before coming to Syracuse University to attend the creative writing M.F.A. program. The award-winning author has chronicled the Palestinian experience in his essays and poetry, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He released his first collection, Things You May Find Hidden in my Ear, in 2022, while he was still earning his M.F.A. at SU.Reading to a Syracuse crowd for the first time since 2022, Abu Toha began the event with a slideshow of photos from Gaza that were important to him; some showed now-deceased friends, and others depicted now-destroyed locales like the Gaza seaport.He showed a picture of his former student, Hatem Al-Zaneen, who used to text Abu Toha while he was studying in Syracuse. Abu Toha remembers video-chatting with Al-Zaneen while walking to campus, showing his student what Euclid Avenue looked like.Al-Zaneen wanted to study in America. Abu Toha told him he was his smartest student and promised to help him apply to programs abroad. “He was killed in an air strike while he was looking for firewood to support his family,” Abu Toha said. His former student was 15 years old when he died last October, Abu Toha said.After landing on an image of two fishing boats asea bearing Palestinian flags, Abu Toha read the title poem from his copy of Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear that had survived the journey out of Gaza.The Gazan writer then shared selected poems from his new collection Forest of Noise, which he says was partially written in Syracuse.Though many of the poems depict the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes, some of the pieces detailing destruction were written prior to October 7 and the ongoing conflict.In “My Son Throws a Blanket Over my Daughter,” Abu Toha describes the scene conveyed in the title after watching it play out in his living room during an Israeli bombardment in 2021.The poem recounts Abu Toha’s son, Yazzan, comforting his little sister, Yaffa, who is scared of the sound of fighter jets and their payloads, by “hiding” her in a blanket.“As for me and my wife, Maram,” the poem concludes, “We pray that a magic blanket would hide all the houses from the bombs and take us to somewhere safe.”Some attendees held their heads in their hands as Mosab Abu Toha recounts the young students and friends he’s seen killed. The audience was especially tense and quiet as he played audio recordings of Israeli airstrikes in Palestine. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentAbu Toha’s poetry takes the objective observations of a wartime journalist and imbues them with the idealistic sensibilities of an artist, creating scenes entangled with beauty and destruction.In an interview with Central Current prior to Saturday’s poetry reading, Abu Toha said his poems depict what the photos emerging from Gaza cannot capture. He used the example of five year old Hind Rajib, who was killed in a car alongside her family in Gaza City after the IDF fired on them as they tried to flee the approaching army. Before she was found dead, Rajib begged for help from within the car during a 3-hour phone call with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.“What was happening before Hind was killed? What was she asking her parents about when they were in the car?” Abu Toha wrote. “… What was happening after the body was abandoned in the car?”His poems frequently explored that last question, tracing with horrific detail the macabre scenes which follow mass death.In “The Moon,” Abu Toha describes a malnourished cat reaching out to feed on the unburied corpse of a young girl.“The cat gets close to try the flesh; a bomb pounds the street. No flesh, no girl, no father, no cat,” Abu Toha wrote. “Nobody is hungry. The moon overhead is not the moon.”The poet closed out his selections from Forest of Noise with “Under the Rubble,” a sprawling soliloquy that asks, “Where should people go? Should they build a big ladder and go up?”In that poem, Abu Toha asks what was happening before and after a father was killed on his way to get bread for his family: “Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids. No need for a table, no need for bread.”“It’s one of the most important things that I wrote, because every poem is representative of the genocide in Gaza,” Abu Toha said. Abu Toha closed by reciting a new poem written after Forest of Noise was published, which features the repeated refrain, “They bomb us.”During a question and answer session following the poetry reading, Abu Toha fielded questions from passionate attendees asking what they can do to help Palestinians.“As a Gazan, what would you like the people in this room to do to get the word out so that our government will stop participating in this genocide?” One woman asked.“I think that most people here have been doing the right thing, which is to amplify the people and tell the personal stories of people who have been killed,” Abu Toha said. Abu Toha also credited sympathizers with marching, protesting, and contacted their elected representatives to call for a ceasefire. In his opinion, though, the biggest change that could help Palestinians is a change in the rhetoric with which Americans talk about the conflict in Gaza. Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wraps up his poetry reading at ArtRage Gallery with a Q&A session, where he discussed the history of violence in Palestine, its correlation with colonialism, and his hope for the new generation to make a better future. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wraps up his poetry reading at ArtRage Gallery with a Q&A session, where he discussed the history of violence in Palestine, its correlation with colonialism, and his hope for the new generation to make a better future. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reads poetry from his new book, Forest of Noise, and talks about the violence in Gaza and what people in America should know of the humanitarian crisis. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reads poetry from his new book, Forest of Noise, and talks about the violence in Gaza and what people in America should know of the humanitarian crisis. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentSome attendees held their heads in their hands as Mosab Abu Toha recounts the young students and friends he’s seen killed. The audience was especially tense and quiet as he played audio recordings of Israeli airstrikes in Palestine. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reads poetry from his new book, Forest of Noise, and talks about the violence in Gaza and what people in America should know of the humanitarian crisis. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reads poetry from his new book, Forest of Noise, and talks about the violence in Gaza and what people in America should know of the humanitarian crisis. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentPalestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wraps up his poetry reading at ArtRage Gallery with a Q&A session, where he discussed the history of violence in Palestine, its correlation with colonialism, and his hope for the new generation to make a better future. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentAttendees of Mosab Abu Toha’s poetry reading and talk at ArtRage Gallery sit with rapt attention as the Plaestinian poet discusses his memories of Gaza, his dead friends, the violence visited on his people, and how poetry is to remember. Credit: Surya Vaidy | Central CurrentAbu Toha pointed to Hillary Clinton, who recently received the presidential medal of freedom from president Joe Biden, as an example of American public leaders’ refusal to address the reality of the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza.“When the students were organizing, she said, ‘these students, they don’t know anything about Israel-Palestine,” Abu Toha said. “…These are the smartest people in the country. And when they organize and oppose the genocide, you say, ‘you know they don’t know about history.’”Ultimately, Abu Toha believes the unwillingness of American officials to reign in their Israeli allies is an obstacle to achieving a ceasefire. Furthermore, Abu Toha criticized Western reluctance to call Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide.“Genocide is not about how many people died or the percentage of the people who died,” Abu Toha said. “It’s about, ‘what happens if this does not stop?’ because Israel’s intent is very obvious.”When asked after the event what chance poetry stands against quadcopters, tanks, and fighter jets, Abu Toha said that poetry bears witness to these forces for destruction and provides a lens to examine the victims of these forces.“It’s showing what it means to have a tank in a refugee camp,” Abu Toha said. “It shows the lives of the people who are killed by this thing, and poetry hopes to prevent such destruction from happening again and again.”Through his vivid depictions of life amid death and beauty beneath dread, Abu Toha is preserving the plight of Palestinians and hoping to awaken international compassion.“We are watching humanity genocided,” Abu Toha said. “Not the Palestinian people.” read more of central current’s coverage Syracuse-based Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha showcases his war-torn words at ArtRage Gallery Abu Toha is a 2023 graduate of Syracuse University’s creative writing master’s program. 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