Qana Poetry | شعر قانا
"She teaches children poetry in Qana, near the site of miracles and massacres. He's the UN observer documenting Lebanon's complexities. Between tragedy and hope, they write their own verse. 'Inti el qaside el wahidi' (أنتِ القصيدة الوحيدة)."
Qana Poetry
شعر قانا
Qana holds everything.
Where Jesus made wine from water, where children died in shelters. I teach poetry here because someone must bring beauty.
Then the observer arrives, taking notes.
I'm Maha.
Fifty-one, teacher, built by years of comfort food and comforting others. My students write poems about flowers blooming from rubble.
Anders Lindqvist documents what most ignore.
"You teach poetry after massacres?"
"I teach poetry because of massacres." I hand him a student's work. "Read this."
He reads. A ten-year-old's words about olive trees surviving bombs. His eyes change.
"This is extraordinary."
"This is survival."
He's fifty-four.
Swedish, UN human rights observer, here to document and report. His reports change nothing. He knows it. I know it.
"Why do you keep coming back?"
"Because witness matters, even when action fails."
"Then witness this—joy existing despite everything."
He attends my classes.
Not to document—to learn. Watches children recite Darwish, write their own verses, heal through metaphor.
"You're doing more than the UN," he admits.
"I'm doing different. Both matter."
"Both feel futile sometimes."
"Then we do them anyway."
Evenings, we walk Qana's hills.
He tells me of other tragedies witnessed; I tell him of this one lived. Understanding builds between us.
"How do you stay hopeful?"
"Who said I'm hopeful?"
"Your students did. Their poems."
"That's their hope. Mine is more complicated."
"Share it."
"Shu?"
"Your hope. Your complication." He takes my hand. "Inti el qaside el wahidi."
"The only poem?"
"The only one I want to understand."
The kiss happens where children play now.
Over ground that held different children. His mouth on mine is witness and wonder.
"Anders—"
"This is unprofessional—"
"This is human. Isn't that your job?"
We make love in my small house.
Where I've lived alone since my husband's death, years ago. He undresses me gently.
"Mashallah." His northern eyes soften. "You're—"
"Large. Lebanese. Different—"
"Beautiful. The word is beautiful."
He worships me with witness intensity.
Every part observed, honored. Mouth on my neck, my breasts, lower—
"Anders—"
"Let me see all of you. Let me finally see joy instead of tragedy."
His tongue between my thighs.
I grip sheets, crying out in the dark. Pleasure in a place that knows too much pain.
"Ya Allah—"
"Yes. Yes. That's what I came to witness."
When he enters me, I feel documented.
We move together—his rhythm and mine, foreign and familiar, together.
"Aktar—"
"Yes—"
The climax is testimony.
We cry out together—proof that joy survives. Then silence, holding, the kind of peace Qana rarely knows.
Two years later
Anders extends his mission.
Stays in Lebanon, stays with me. The UN changes nothing. We change what we can.
"Worth witnessing?" I ask.
"I found poetry in the last place I expected." He kisses me. "Found you."
Alhamdulillah.
For villages that hold everything.
For observers who see beyond tragedy.
For teachers who make poetry from rubble.
The End.