Salim al-Naffar
a Palestinian poet and writer
Arch of Triumph There, I used to take shade beneath it, receiving, from the gate of the sea, the evening breezes, brimming with the alphabets of pottery. And if a night went mad around us, from the darkness I would see my beloved’s face, washed with the dew of day. Slowly, she speaks to me, her voice carrying the details of longing, and the horizon vowed to an hour pregnant with the colours of joy. Do not destroy their arches, you who tamper with them. “Gouraud” will not return. For a thousand Maysaluns and Maysaluns are waiting for you. Do you not see?
Salim al-Naffar was a Palestinian poet and writer, born in Gaza in 1963. He spent years of his life in Syria and Lebanon before returning to the Gaza Strip in 1994. His writing is preoccupied with questions of exile, memory, and homeland, approaching the Palestinian experience through a poetic and human sensitivity in which personal biography intersects with collective transformations. He published a number of poetry collections, prose works, and novels, including The Guardian of Waiting, A State of Homeland, Lanterns of the Camp, and Latakia Nights. He worked at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, was a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Writers and Authors Union, and contributed to the founding of the “Cultural Creativity” group in Gaza. He was murdered, along with members of his family, in December 2023 during the genocide in Gaza, leaving behind a significant mark on the Palestinian poetic and cultural scene.