Mohammed Moussa

Thank you for having me here at the Scottish Poetry Library for the second time.

First of all, growing up in Gaza is actually interesting because from a very young age you are exposed to so many different realities and your memory as a child or

your memory as a grown-up man right now is always connected or linked to so many beautiful and ugly things like the wars, the continuous wars that you live as a child and you recall the first time, for example, you saw a tank, a soldier, the first time the war happened

And as a grown-up man also it's difficult because the childhood place that you planted and nurtured is no longer there.

The faces that you grew up with, some of them are no longer there.

But there were so many beautiful things to recall.

Your love for the sea, for example, and how your soul as a Gazan is connected to what the sea is.

I remember being a child and walking to the sea early in the morning with my friends.

whom half of them has been killed in this genocide and enjoy the sea in the early days of summer and I remember also so many beautiful things about the food the taste of the food in Palestine and in Gaza we cook the best food and the smell of there are certain herbs that remind us what home really is

So the relationship you built with Gaza from a very young age is really beautiful and it's really unique.

Somehow the place you grew up in or built your memories in shape who you are.

So you look like the place you grew up in most of the time as you look in the mirror and see the features of the place you grew up in and who you are.

My father worked with the Red Cross.

My mother was a housewife.

And he was a lovely man.

He speaks three languages.

He speaks Hebrew, speaks Arabic for sure, and speaks English.

And there were times he was working with the Red Cross and translating from Arabic into English to the Palestinian prisoners inside the occupied territories.

And he spent half of his life working with the Red Cross.

And he's a hard-working man, you know, and a lovely man, you know, very sociable.