Indian Summer & the War in Gaza

Listening to a Palestinian poet as he spotlights the human cost to his people

I love you
The best
Better than all
The rest

That I meet
In the summer
Indian summer

(Robby Krieger & Jim Morrison of The Doors)

 Like many poems, this stanza (actually a song lyric) has a cryptic quality. But then many aspects of life can be cryptic, not to mention unfathomable, even beyond comprehension.

Part of my weekends are spent driving around the countryside of Fowlerville, with an excursion into neighboring rural Howell, delivering our weekly newspaper. My part of an overall effort that includes other carriers and services of the US Post Office.

I do so in all kinds of weather—often of the foul variety.

However, this October I’ve been treated to warm temperatures pushing at times into the 80’s, balmy breezes, bright sunshine, and a colorful landscape. The trees lining the roadway have been radiant in their fall foliage of yellows, reds, remaining greens, and russets. The picturesque woodlots along the horizon offered a similar palette. The fields that had been recently shorn of their soybean plants, now had a bleached tan surface. That was contrasted by the cornfields with their rows of dry, dead brownish stalks—the ripe ears and leaves drooping downward, a far cry from when they were a tall and stately green, crowned with tassels, stretching upward toward the heavens.

 The red sumac, along with the overgrown meadows covered with weeds of various shapes and sizes and earthtones, have added to the soothing scene.

At 73, it’s a familiar sight. The Michigan countryside at the turn of autumn. That brief interlude between the departing summer and the arrival of those dismal, dreary winds of bare November.

An Indian Summer to relish and savor.

* * *

As I often do while delivering the papers, I listen to the radio. On Saturday mornings that means listening to Scott Simon, host of ‘Weekend Edition’ on National Public Radio.

This past Saturday (Oct. 19), Simon talked with Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha about his new collection of poems “Forest of Noise, and about the conflict in Gaza. Abu Toha also has written a column in the New Yorker magazine called ‘Letters from Gaza.’

The interview started with Abu Toha reading from his poem “Younger Than War” which had the closing lines “No need for radio. We are the news.”

To which Simon followed up with the question: “What do you hope these poems might help depict that the news may not?”

His reply was that “Well, what the news is doing is depicting a list of names. If someone has his name on the news, he's lucky to be recognized as a person with a name or an age. But what the news failed to do is to mention that these people existed as individuals—people with their dreams, their hopes, their previous lives, their family relationships.”   

He then made this poignant observation: “What the news does not recognize is that these people are not dying by themselves. They die with their children, their grandchildren, sometimes with their grandparents. So, it's really devastating that the news generally does not recognize these facts, which I, as a Palestinian, know very well, because I lost 31 members of my extended family in one airstrike on October 14. And I didn't get the chance to see these people to bid them farewell.”

Simon then asked him “What’s the power of a poem now?” and the accompanying question “Why do you devote yourself to poetry?”

“… the power of the poem is that it preserves, and it delivers the power of the experience and also the emotions and the feelings that come with it. So, what I'm doing is documenting what I'm seeing and witnessing and also how I'm feeling - the devastation, the hopelessness, the fear. Because what happened to the people in the book could have happened to me.”

Being a good journalist, Simon asked about the suffering of Israelis, namely the families of those killed last Oct. 7^th in the unprovoked attack by Hamas as well as to those who had loved ones taken hostage.

Abu Toha agreed that “that there are some Israelis who lost family members and who lived through horrible things,” but then grew upset at this being used an equal comparison. A’ tick for tack’ if you will.

“The thing that I cannot compare here—what happened to Israelis on October 7 and what has been happening for us in Palestine for 76 years,” he replied. “I was born in a refugee camp. I was not born in Jaffa, the city where my grandparents were expelled from. My parents themselves were born in refugee camps.

“And I told you, I lost 31 members of my extended family,” he continued. “I am one person. And I can't even think about the Israeli suffering because I have suffered all my life. I recognize that they suffer, but you can't bring this to me as a Palestinian who has lost 40,000 people.”

His words became more accusatory when Simon asked “Do you see an end?”

The Palestinian poet answered that “The end will come when the United States stops supporting the genocide in Gaza.”

He noted that the American government’s stance is that Israel has the right to defend itself and to this argument Abu Toha said, “I don’t have any objection.”

“But on the other hand, when you say that Israel has to minimize the civilian casualties, what did you do exactly? Did the United States do anything in order to force Israel to minimize civilian casualties? No. They never did that.”

The interview ended with Abu Toha telling Simon that as to how he and his family are doing, “I'm not living a normal life. I'm just spending my time. I'm not living. There's different between living and spending time.”

He then posed his own question: “I'm wondering how the United States, how the whole world really expects the people of Gaza to be like after this ends - do they expect that these people would be normal?”

* * *

There are policy issues at play in what’s happening in Gaza and the rest of the Mideast. Geo-political realities. Political calculations. Competing interest groups and loyalties. The reality of age-old conflicts. The consequences of decisions made over 75 years ago. The potency of religious beliefs that are influential.

But also the human element. The people caught in the crosshairs. The innocent victims that get called ‘collateral damage.’

Without making any judgment on those seeming larger matters of consideration, I try to put myself in Abu Toha’s shoes as far as the human cost…those suffering from the war or who have lost their lives that he attempts to spotlight and give voice to with his writing.

What if my home and those around me were destroyed by bombs, the towns of Fowlerville, Howell, Webberville, and Williamston—my home territory—reduced to rubble, with thousands of displaced people living in makeshift shelters, scrounging for food and drinkable water, but more horrific yet, losing so many of my family and friends?

Would I say “Well, Israel has a right to defend itself and to defeat Hamas so that its citizens can live their lives with a measure of safety and security and, what’s more, Hamas started this with their ruthless attack on Israel civilians and the taking of hostages?”

Or would I think the response out of proportion, perhaps a case of events having spun out-of-control, with the displacement and deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians having tipped the scales of justice and humanity beyond a fair and defensible balance.

Could I (also being a writer) look at this devastation and the losses of loved ones, deal as well with the feelings of rage mixed with helplessness, and respond by creating poems? Would this wish to do something, anything to turn the tide be worthwhile, or more a futile gesture?

I don’t know.

But in writing these poems and by creating enough of them to publish a book, Mosab Abu Toha has been able bear witness and, in doing so, had the opportunity to talk on a national radio program in the United States... with listeners (like me) hearing the pain of loss, his anger at what’s happened in Gaza to his fellow countrymen, and also the pointed finger at those in the United States and Europe who debate the situation, urge a peaceful resolution and restraint, but still supply Israel with the weapons and munitions.   

A poem versus a bomb.

One life-giving and the other life-taking.

One an act of hope and the other of deadly finality.

The cryptic, the unfathomable, and the seemingly unimaginable…dealt with in a collection of words expressing thoughts…bearing witness of “man beating on neighbor near.”

At 73, this is my Indian Summer. Or maybe a closing act.

With all that’s going on in the world—so much of the bad and ugly casting shadows that obscure the good—is the act of putting words to paper worth the effort? Can a poem, or even a commentary, turn the tide?

Will the deadly forces of hate, discrimination, violent reaction, and cruel behavior carry the day? Or can the beauty of an autumn day in Michigan, transcending human affairs and conceits, provide us with a shared experience and perhaps prevail on us to take a gentler path?

Indian Summer…I still love you best.

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan commentator.

Note: You can go to the ‘Weekend Edition with Scott Simon’ website, click on the October 19 Playlist to find the audio interview as well as a transcript.