Rubble

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     For Mosab Abu Toha

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So many books—so many I’d never even opened.

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Clearing out my office and the books that had been cramming the shelves for how many years.

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How many decades?

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Who would want them?

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Even libraries were throwing away their books.

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Then a colleague friend tells me about a young poet, a “scholar at risk,” who is planning to open a library.

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In Gaza City.

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An English-language library in Gaza!

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	~

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The young scholar arrives with empty cartons—many empty cartons—and a friend waiting in the parking lot.

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We start going through my books.

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Volumes of fiction and poetry covered with dust.

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Shelves upon dusty shelves.

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Novels and poems, multi-volume anthologies of English and American literature.

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And writing handbooks.

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Who could possibly want those?

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But how better, the young scholar asks, for people in Gaza to learn the English language?

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He keeps stuffing the empty cartons.

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Until all of them are full.

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	~

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I see photos.

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The sparkling library.

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The new home for my old books—many of them still unopened, still unread.

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	~

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Then the war.

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The young poet—our scholar-at-risk—seized from his family, brutally beaten.

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His visa confiscated.

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His wallet.

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And Gaza bombed.

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Civilians bombed.

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Gaza City turning to rubble.

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The English-language library, with so many books still unopened, still to be read.

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Rubble.