On the battlefield of Gaza, a priest gets an apple.
On the battlefield of Gaza,
Where naked horror reins,
In hunger’s domain,
A priest gets an apple,
After six months of fasting,
Enforced by those who control all the means,
From production to consumption,
While using them both from death to destruction.
There a priest gets an apple,
Convulsed by hunger, his entrails don’t ask,
Was the apple the one that brought the humans,
From the heavenly world, or the Garden of Eden?
As he takes his first bite,
His sight catches faces looking like shadows,
Sitting on stones, some lying on the floor,
dying of hunger.
He looks at the sky to the merciful God,
Finding no signs, he slices his apple into a few small parts,
To share his fruit with three other people,
to salvage the truth the Trinity once preached,
But lost in ambiguity had nothing much to teach.
While the rest of the world,
Stuffing its bellies, on the festival of their creed
May it be Christmas or the day of Eid,
With all the waste it scarcely needs
And no one is ashamed of this hateful deed.
No one cares for those living to the tears,
But the priest in Gaza, who gets an apple.
Saulat Nagi
April 10, 2024
After six months of Israeli blockade and deprivation, Father Youssef Assad, the priest of Holy Family Church in Gaza City, receives an apple and shares it with three people.