If I Must Die
A Poem by Refaat Alareer
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been slain in just over two months. One of them is writer and professor Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an airstrike by the Israeli military 6 December, along with his brother, his brother’s son, his sister and her three children.
Refaat shared countless narratives about the horrors of the Israeli occupation and system of apartheid, and he mentored so many Palestinian writers, including Yousef Aljamal, whose essay about Gaza appears in our forthcoming issue. Yousef describes his friend as “the giant of the Palestinian narrative coming out of Gaza.”
Refaat’s poem “If I Must Die” has been shared widely since he was killed. On social media, an impromptu effort translated it into dozens of languages: Spanish, Italian, Tamil, Urdu, Tagalog, Greek, Japanese, Yiddish and more. Here, we offer it in English and Arabic.
—Ari Bloomekatz
“فال بد أن تعيش أنت” / “If I Must Die”
ترجمة سنان/ by Refaat Alareer
أنطون رفعت العرعير/ Translation by Sinan Antoon
إذا كان ال بد أن أموت فال بد أن تعيش أنت لتروي حكايتي لتبيع أشيائي وتشتري قطعة قماش وخيوطا (فلتكن بيضاء وبذيل طويل) كي يبصر طفل في مكان ما من ّغّزة وهو يح ّّدق في السماء منتظرًاً أباه الذي رحل فجأة دون أن يودع أحدًاً وال حتى لحمه أو ذاته يبصر الطائرة الورقّية طائرتي الورقية التي صنعَتها أنت تحّلق في الأعالي ويظ ّّن للحظة أن هناك مالكًاً يعيد الحب إذا كان ال بد أن أموت فليأ ِِت موتي باألمل فليصبح حكاية If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale