Refaat Alareer

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Refaat Alareer (1979–2023) was a professor of world literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2013). A native of Gaza City's Shijaieh neighborhood, he received his M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University College of London (U.K.) and earned his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia with a dissertation on John Donne. He was killed by an IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023, along with his brother, nephew, his sister, and three of her children. His poem, "If I Must Die," has been translated into more than 40 languages. Source

If I Must Die

Translated into Spanish by D. P. Snyder

 

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

 

Published:

2011

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Bilingual

Death & Loss

Faith & Hope

Family

Violence & War

Literary Devices:

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Antanaclasis

The repetition of a word within a phrase, in which the second use of the word utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first.

End Rhyme

when a poem has lines ending with words that sound the same

Imperative

an instruction or a command

Internal Rhyme

A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.

Interrupted Clause

a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times