As an independent online literary magazine, The Rumpus has provided space for a wide range of artistic communities since its 2009 inception. Now, in alignment with our mission and as a longstanding publication with a broad reach, we’re announcing a new quarterly spotlight, Beyond the Page, highlighting creative work in partnership with other mission-driven literary organizations, with a specific focus on nonprofit institutions and collectives invested in social justice and human rights.
Our inaugural spotlight features the work of poets and mentors writing and volunteering with We Are Not Numbers, a youth-led nonprofit project in the Gaza Strip. The included selection of poems—some written in the midst of violence and displacement, others written in witness to ongoing atrocities—responds to the realities of life under genocidal occupation. These poems urgently provide a voice to those who are often silenced and erased from news headlines and reportage. With more than 350 contributors and 1,300 works published, We Are Not Numbers is fostering a new generation of Palestinian artists.
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We Are Not Numbers (WANN) tells the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news and advocates for their human rights. The idea for WANN was conceived in 2014 by American journalist Pam Bailey and was brought to fruition in early 2015 in collaboration with Dr. Ramy Abdu, chair of the board of directors for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med Monitor). WANN is registered in Gaza under the umbrella of Euro-Med, and its fiscal sponsor in the United States is Nonviolence International.
Read more about WANN.
In Gaza, Before It Was Killed
Basman Dewari
If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d be at my house,
waiting to tell my friends how wide the Nile is,
what it’s like inside an Egyptian movie theatre,
and the best place in Cairo to order Koshari.
If Gaza hadn’t been killed, we’d be in a chalet,
playing cards. Ouda would be losing, of course.
He’d throw his cards, while Essa laughed at him.
We’d awkwardly sing “bring me to life.”
If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d be walking with Bassem
along Omar AL Mokhtar Street to Al Susi falafel shop.
We’d eat two falafel sandwiches with hummus, each.
Then to Abo Soad shop for hot Konafa.
If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d wake up early.
cursing all the alarms in the world, going to work,
drinking my morning coffee with the mates
and wondering if I will ever not be late to work.
If Gaza hadn’t been killed, I’d sit with Bahaa
at Al Baqa Cafe, where we’d repeat our daily jokes
about the drones forever passing overhead,
as Al Baha Al Abyad kissed the blushing sunset sky.
Basman Aldirawi (also published under Basman Derawi) is a physiotherapist who graduated from Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2010. Inspired by an interest in music, movies, and people with special needs, he has contributed dozens of stories to the online platform We Are Not Numbers, that gives a voice to the victims of Israeli aggression in Gaza; he has also published on many other online platforms. Basman contributed to the anthology Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, 2022 and the Arabic poetry anthology Gaza, the land of poetry, 2021. He is temporarily located in Egypt.
Haunted Nights
Haya Abu Nasser
Silent nights, haunted nights!
Like a crow casts its wings
across my sight,
flapping them with fury.
He is looming over me,
seizing me, choking me
in unending darkness.
My mind swirls in a deep coil
where I witness: children wail,
worn out hulls on the ground,
a girl with a missing leg
ahead with wide-open eyes
bolting towards us like the sun.
I’m cornered in darkness;
hands bound, feet numbed,
heart pounding like a frenetic drum.
No light to combat
the visions my mind recalls.
Every time I close my eyes
a soldier with a gun appears.
His thick boots step on the blood
of the child he just shot.
His shadow heaves on white tents.
Will he detain my brother,
massacre my kin,
or crush me with the tank’s treads?
He’d gouge my eyes out
to conceal his sins,
so I must keep them vigilant
throughout the long night.
Haya Abu Nasser is a human rights activist and writer whose family is originally from Deir-Sneid. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and humanitarian sciences, and worked for several non-governmental organizations in Palestine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in AGNI, Scoundrel Time, Evergreen Review, The Normal School, and Mizna. After being internally displaced in Gaza four times between October 2023 to February 2024, she managed to cross the Rafah border into Egypt in early March and will go to Malaysia to study for a graduate degree in International Relations.
If He Awakens
Shahd Safi
My soul-fire burns, while Gazan children spill their tears
like rain, their cries like gulls along the shore of our sea.
Our blue, living Al-Bahar Al-Abyad lies heavy now, and red,
as if the waves die with us as we grieve beside our sea.
The earth shakes as bombs shatter homes and schools
and crush our families as we flee, exhausted, to our sea.
They occupy the waters off our shore. They occupy our shore.
They occupy our hearts with fear and leave us dying by our sea.
A little child is sleeping on the beach alone, his parents gone,
If he awakens, he will hear bombs and the shushing of our sea.
If he awakens, he will laugh with other children who cannot yet
explain, yet know their parents will not join them playing by our sea.
If he awakens, and if he lives to grow and know the freedom
of a home and healthy body, he will love the sea of Falasteen.
If he lives, he will dream more than remember, of Ab and Um,
of flying kites and fishing with his father among the sea swells,
of falling in love, of speaking boldly, of dancing, of laughing,
of feeling again his mother’s heart embracing him, deep as our sea.
If he awakens.
Shahd Safi is a Gaza-based Arabic/English translator and teacher, freelance journalist, social media coordinator, and human rights advocate. She is a writer for We Are Not Numbers and has been published in the LA Times, Palestine Chronicle, Mondoweiss, and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
War on Gaza
Zeina Azzam
I was a witness
to my own death.
Glass shards,
sharp metal.
You killed me
at a checkpoint,
on the beach,
in my home.
I watched while
white phosphorus
ate my flesh,
bullets crushed
my bones.
I was a witness
to my children’s
death at school,
playground,
library, soccer
field. Bombs
dropped, drones
drove, charred
bodies stenched.
You looked for us
even at weddings
in our expensive
funeral suits.
Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-2025. She has been a mentor for We Are Not Numbers since 2015 and has been honored to work with many talented writers from Gaza. Zeina’s full-length poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You, was published in 2023 and her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, in 2021. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
A Psalm, for the Children of Gaza
Kevin Hadduck
On the seafloor, jarred
by inland detonations,
fragments of fish, seabirds,
and all the living things
that grace the waters,
rise and fall and rise
in rhythm with the waves,
then settle into oblivion.
But you remember
every living thing that falls.
The fish, the seabirds,
and all the living things ashore
fall and rise and settle naturally.
We mourn their passing, yet
we rejoice in their new births, until,
(my God, the children) our warring
slays them in their millions,
and they settle into oblivion.
Among the detonations,
remember them, the children.
Do not let them rise to fall
in shards again beyond what you
have given to nature’s dictates.
Tell us we will celebrate their births
in their millions and see them rise,
steadfast in their natural home
among all the living things
that grace the Earth,
Oh Lord.
Kevin Hadduck recently retired from a career in academia and lives in Montana. He taught many years of Freshman Composition, but most of his work involved directing first- and second-year seminar programs, tutoring and testing programs, and disability support services. Hadduck has three collections of poetry and one prose book published, including Beloved Brother, Beloved Sister: Poems for Palestine. He has poems published in about two dozen journals in the United States and has served as a mentor with We Are Not Numbers for nearly seven years.
