Flour Massacre (Poem)

 Flour Massacre

        This bag of flour [. . .] it's

            the most expensive food ever made.

            ~ Mohammed al-Simry, father of four

On Leap Year Day, aid trucks at last

arrive, and the crowd, having gathered

in al-Rashid Street the night before,

makes for the goods.

 

 

Once, what came before the trucks

with their sacks of flour, 

before the bread to be baked

and then heaped with hummus,  

 

before the fattoush salad,

the soups of lentils and fava beans,

the eggs or chicken,

the copper pitchers of sous,

 

was the anticipation of taste,

the clarity of a satisfied stomach,

eyes delighting at the sight

of knafeh and date-filled ma'mool. 

It is four forty-five a.m.,

the morning of February 29,

and the trucks arrive.

So, too, do the soldiers.

Look: they are anywhere,

even everywhere, 

the aid trucks are.

But these soldiers,

they make no exceptions

for the food-deprived.

They feel the hunger.

Dropped sacks of flour

dust the heads  

of hundreds, there

in al-Rashid Street.

No one clamors now

for bread. 

No bread

will be made this day.

_______________________________________

For articles on the event that has come to be known as the "Flour Massacre," see Zaina Arafat's essay "Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry" (The New Yorker, March 11, 2024) and Simon Speakman Cordall, Mohammed R Mhawish, and Mat Nashed's reporting, "When Israeli Soldiers Shot at Hungry Palestinians" (Aljazeera News, March 5, 2024).

Fattoush is a type of Middle Eastern (Lebanese) chopped salad that uses, among other ingredients, pomegranate molasses, sumac and other herbs, mixed greens and vegetables, and toasted pita chips.

Sous, or erk sous, is a licorice drink typically imbibed during Ramadan.

Knafeh is a cheese-filled sweet made with filo dough and ma'mool are sweet cookies, often stuffed with dates.