Noor Hindi

My guest today is the fantastic Palestinian-American poet, journalist, teacher and activist Noor Hindi.

Her debut poetry collection  ‘Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow’ published by Haymarket Books, was an honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award. 

She reads us several  poems from this collection  – ‘Palestine’, ‘Breaking News’, ‘Swearing Allegiance’. And ‘A Day, A Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?’ for Rouzan al-Najjar after / in defiance of a piece published by the New York Times about al Najjar’. 

She’s currently editing a Palestinian poetry anthology Heaven Looks Like Us also published by Haymarket Books – which is due out in May. 

We talk about this anthology and her insights into political writing, organising and radical art, the power of stories especially in the Palestinian context, going beyond witness towards action and much more…

With thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for funding.

Find Refaat Alareer’s final poems and prose – ‘If I Must Die’ here. And Mohammed El-Kurds, ‘Perfect Victims, and the politics of appeal’ here.

Previous ep: Helen Hutchinson // Palestinian poets: Marwan Makhoul // RIP Saleem Al-Naffar

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Transcript: Noor Hindi

Bairbre Flood: My guest today is the fantastic Palestinian-American poet, journalist, teacher and activist, Noor Hindi.

Her debut poetry collection –  ‘Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow’, published by Haymarket Books, was an honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award. 

Noor Hindi: What comes after awarenes. And then what? And then what?

There’s a bird. No. It’s a drone.

My tax dollars pay

for the bombs that kill my people.

Bairbre Flood: She reads us several  poems from this collection  – ‘Palestine’, ‘Breaking News’, ‘Swearing Allegiance’, and ‘A Day, A Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?’ 

for Rouzan al-Najjar after / in defiance of a piece published by the New York Times about al Najjar. 

She’s currently editing a Palestinian poetry anthology called, ‘’Heaven Looks Like Us’ – also published by Haymarket Books – which is due out in May this year. 

We talk about this anthology and her insights into political writing, organising and radical art.

MUSIC

Noor starts by reading her poem, ‘Pledging Allegiance’:

This is Noor Hindi:

MUSIC

Noor Hindi: 

I am tired of language. I don’t want to make metaphors. About olive trees. About wearing a keffiyeh. About About About. The dream has not ended. My grandma is back in Jordan. She loves her passport. What does it mean to love a country? A book? A people? To say ‘I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty’, while thinking about Palestine. While holding the key to your father’s first home. While While While. The news keeps screaming, the headlines chew at our eyes. A bald eagle burdens its wings with suitcases, then drops them in another land. 

The language isn’t enough. 

Here – an image of homeland. The word colonization, a photo of a fruit so bloodied. I hold a beam of light to a wall, make shadows of Palestine I try to catch. Olive tree, Israeli soldier, a metaphor of Palestine as a woman. 

In workshop a white classmate says, some of us celebrate diversity. Someone wants to talk about hummus and falafel (pronounces them both wrong, then asks me for the labor of forgiveness). 

I’m supposed to be feeding them whatever is the opposite of guilt. I want to move beyond. Where? There are bodies. And then there are fewer bodies. This is the formula. 

Ask me about a two-state solution, about caring for a world that does not love you back. About holding a knife and tearing into a map. But, oh–

There’s the cliche again. But the deaths. But the deaths. But the deaths. Have they, too, become a cliche? A transgender Palestinian teen is stabbed. Israa Ghrayeb is dead. Gazan families continue to face an electricity crisis.

And still– I didn’t even know any of this is happening. // Thank you for educating me. // Do you like living in America? // But what about those terrorists? // When you say Palestine, do you actually mean Pakistan? 

What comes after awareness? And then what? And then what? There’s a bird. No, it’s a drone. My tax dollars pay for the bombs that kill my people.

MUSIC

Bairbre Flood: So that idea of witness and being witness to what you’re seeing, what does that mean to you?

Noor Hindi: Yes. I think the answer to this question has changed and continually changes because at the time when I was reporting, we had yet to arrive at this moment where we were watching the first live streamed genocide in history.

This idea of witness at that time versus beginning October, 2023 when you saw this impulse by Palestinians to pull their phones out and record and continually document and continually argue and to present these real atrocities to the world.

And I think that we’re seeing the idea of what it means to be a reporter or a documentarian change. And you see that power shift, right? 

So when I was reporting, the magazine I was working with was very passionate about making sure that people were seen as experts in their own story. And rather than this traditional system of reporting – of a reporter, coming into a community as an outsider and reporting from it and narrating everybody else’s experience with a specific angle for the purposes of seeming objective, now we see people turning to non-traditional news sources. And I think this started with the emergence of Twitter when it was Twitter and not X. But people swarming to people who are on the grounds living and just everyday civilians to document and to be seen as experts. 

And I think that is a beautiful thing and these people in particular are asking us to witness, but I also think the idea of witness is limited in that I think it is the beginning of a process for social justice and community building, not the end. So I’m very careful about what I guess people have this impulse to believe that they are engaging in social justice or creating change through just the proliferation of information, right?

Like when we’re going through Instagram, you share these things on your story. Maybe you pat yourself on the back and your job is done. But I think because of the sheer amount of violence we’re facing and extremism that we’re facing, I think that we need to move beyond this idea of witness too.

Maybe the first step is awareness of an atrocity and knowing that some violence is happening and sharing it and talking about it, and then maybe the next step is organizing around a way to help.

MUSIC

Palestine 

is a woman. A child

in a thobe. Olive pits in

my hands. The tatreez

on my grandmother’s scarf.

Is thirty-four Palestinians killed.

We don’t wake up. American

politicians. Occupied

country. Israel has the right

to defend itself. Ahed Tamimi,

ice cream on tongue,

flavor unknown. Are you grateful

your parents came to

this country? Three hundred

dead. Open-air prison. Ten-year

blockade. Rouzan al-Najjar,

accidental bullet. Pomegranate

so bloody. My grandmother,

born ten days before Nakba,

gunpowder in her blood.

Stop killing us.

Stop telling us how to fight.

Is grape mint hookah, country

I’ve never visited. Woman,

body bruised and policed.

Is queer. Is fuck the patriarchy.

Is three hundred thousand Palestinians killed.

My father crying

to Omayma El Khalil. Sweet black tea,

fresh mint stuck on the roof

of my mouth. Two state “solution.”

We thought the house

was empty. Is stranger living

in my great-grandfather’s home,

eating the pomegranates he once planted.

So how do you say

your name again? Is

????? Palestinians killed. Sunflowers

on their graves. Seeds

we crack between our teeth,

spitting out each shell

before digging another grave.

MUSIC

Bairbre Flood: You obviously this poem was written before the current genocide. It’s all the same genocide, but the current-

Noor Hindi: Escalation. 

Bairbre Flood: Escalation, yeah. 

Noor Hindi: Yeah. It’s really strange, I was facing this issue as I was, ’cause I started my second book in 2021, which is a continuation of these ‘breaking news’ poems, which I’ll read one of them.

And. I just finished this book. I’m soon to send it out, and midway through working on it, the genocide began and it was amazing to jump back into the book and realize how much of this violence and this massacre that we’re seeing is a continuation. Because one might think that you would have to radically change what you’re writing about.

But in fact, so little has changed. It’s only escalated on a I think it’s received global attention now and it’s also the sheer brutality of it feels like it’s increased. But it is strange to have written this book before and then now see the number of doctors who’ve been killed, doctors who’ve been kidnapped, and almost every single hospital in Gaza bombed.

The reason I focused in this book on Rouzan al Najjar is because at that point I was really amazed by the New York Times complicity in this.

And it was complicity that it came after six months of them sending an entire team of reporters to investigate what had happened to her and whether or not it was accidental and. If you send a team of reporters to an occupied country and you invest thousands of dollars to go through footage from the military, and you invest time to interview her family, and then you still come to this. Incredibly cowardly conclusion. That it was an accident, supposedly. 

And the whole, it was this really long expose and her life and what she was interested in. And it’s almost beautiful except it refuses to grapple with the actual violence of this murder. And the violence of the occupation and and now we see them twisting their bodies to argue that this is not a genocide. And you see these passive headlines being written.

MUSIC

Noor Hindi: The title for this poem is The New York Times headline for this story, which is- 

‘A Day, A Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?’ 

for Rouzan al-Najjar after / in defiance of a piece published by the New York Times about al Najjar. 

And what about the flowers 

 on her scarf? Her white 

  medical coat, now red? 

Nails painted pink 

 as a tongue, a sunset, 

  a pomegranate? How tear gas

forms clouds above 

  the dead. How a land –

   force fed bullets and blood –

ruptures its stomach 

  and swings it at a flag. 

   Tell me why my people’s 

deaths become a hopeless, endless 

  conflict and the lives war wastes. 

   What murders become accident, 

unintentional in the eyes 

  of those who name my father’s tears 

   an unending and insolvable 

cycle of violence. Tell me about the 30 witness 

interviews and one thousand photos and videos

   It took for you to name our resistance

As drama. Tell me, in a country that 

allows four hours 

  of electricity a day, how a people live 

  in darkness, hold the keys to homes

blown up by soldiers, while a mother 

 clutches her daughter, now dead, takes 

off 

  Rouzan’s white gloves grieves 

  the sun 

and its impenetrable light. Remembers 

 the toy stethoscopes Rouzan played 

 with as a child, then stares 

into the eyes of an Israeli soldier. 

 And laughs.

MUSIC

Bairbre Flood: You said just before you read that poem that you would just talk a little bit about how or why it’s important or what space the arts have as a witness or as a political witness, as a form of resistance. 

Noor Hindi: Sure. Yeah. I get this question and I’ve grappled with this question myself where it feels that we are at a moment that is beyond words, that is beyond comprehension, that is almost beyond art. 

And I think where art becomes integral to the movement is the acknowledgement and the honoring of lives. And I think this is not something that we receive from death counts and from reports and from journals and magazines and articles that emerge.

The death toll becomes so high at some point that we lose the body behind the name and we lose the soul behind that body and the story of that person and all of the ways that they breathe life. And I think that there is a way that we can honor our dead. Christina Sharp talks about, how do we honor the dead in her book, in ‘The Wake’. And I think arts is one of those ways that we do 

You almost forget the child behind the headline of a hundred or so kids who’ve been murdered. 

And further, I think art is so important specifically to the history of Palestine because I think that storytelling is how we have preserved our stories and documented our stories and our, and the violence that we’ve seen. And I remember being so little as a child and my grandmother would in the middle of family gatherings, just begin telling us a story about the Nakba or about the 1967 war or about our old house in Palestine before the occupation. 

And it is one thing they cannot take away from us, and I think it is so important considering how many institutions have been bombed. How many artists have been killed. 

We recently saw bookstore owners in Palestine get tried. And fascism and violence and genocide, it begins with the arts and for a specific reason, it is to kill the soul of that people. 

And so I think it is so important. I think those in the diaspora, we have a duty because we are able to. Writes and creates and make art without literal bombs outside of our homes to, to be the people who are documenting our family stories.

Bairbre Flood: Yes, for sure. Do you, did you watch Mo, the, what did you think of that? The TV series?

Noor Hindi: It’s stunning, and I actually think that the ending is incredibly aggressive. That final scene of the Israeli soldier destroying that tape and the show cutting there specifically is, I think, says everything there is to say about the destruction of artifacts and family history and lineage and ancestry.

Yeah. I think that show is incredibly sophisticated in how it displays the occupation, and I think it’s really bold in the ways that it does. The humor, even the humor feels pointed, right? Yeah. And the ways that it intersects with his personal life, with his relationship, with his family. And I laughed and cried through both seasons of that show.

MUSIC

Breaking [News]

We’ll wake up, Sunday morning, and read the paper.

Read each other.

Become consumers 

of each other’s stories – a desperate reaching 

for another body’s warmth, it’s words 

buoying us through a world. We carry 

graveyards on our 

backs, and I’m holding a lightning bug 

hostage in one hand, it’s light dimming

in the warmth 

of my fist, and in the other, a pen, to 

document its death. Isn’t that terrible? 

I’ll ask you, shutting my fist once more. 

In interviews, I frame my subject’s 

stories through a lens to make them 

digestible to consumers. 

I become a machine. A transfer of 

information. The stories – a plea for 

empathy – an over 

saturation, a feelings will fail at 

transforming into action.

What’s lost is incalculable.

And at the end of the summer, 

the swimming pools will be gutted 

of water.

And it’ll be impossible to swim.

MUSIC

Bairbre Flood: It’s two separate things as well. It’s breaking as in. I don’t know. Do you mean like your heart’s breaking, like things are breaking? 

Noor Hindi: Yeah. Yeah. In the news, ’cause this constant question of what constitutes as news, what makes a headline, what makes the news, what makes something worthy enough to elevate. And how it’s reported. 

Bairbre Flood: Yes. How it’s, yeah, framed. Yeah. 

Do you have any advice actually for writers that are writing about politics or writing about things that are happening? Writing as witness, do you know, just kind of anything. Maybe even especially younger writers on how to preserve their sanity or how to keep going?

Noor Hindi: Yes. I would say to hold on to your fury, not be afraid of it, and channel that to the page. And especially if you are someone who is so impacted by what you’re seeing in the world and what you are seeing in your community I think it’s incredibly important to, to write, if you have a desire, if you have an inclination to write, there is a reason for that.

Not to get spiritual about it, but I do think that there is a reason why some people are born with this inclination to document and to interview and to narrate their story. I think it’s very powerful and I would encourage folks to lean into that. And I would also encourage folks to read a lot, read everything.

There are so many beautiful, kind and brilliant writers who have been doing this for many years before all of us. And there is a whole lineage that we can learn from and continue. And so I regularly tell my students to be sure, especially in the beginning, that you are reading more than you are writing while you find that voice and what you, what it is you want to say.

And also that it is okay to not be shoehorned into writing about your own trauma if you don’t want to. I remember when I first started out, I just wanted to write about just being sad and anxious and silly. Drama I was having with partners and lovers, and I felt very shoehorned into writing about Palestine because I was a Palestinian writer.

And it seemed that was what people really wanted to hear about and talk about only. And I think you have to give yourself the permission to narrate whatever it is that you want to narrate and everything else will inevitably touch on politics because we live in a political world and we cannot escape this.

And in fact, even white straight male writers are also people of politics and people who are impacted by politics. And so there is no separation. There cannot be. I think that is the advice I would give. 

Bairbre Flood: That’s nice. Yes. That’s good. And it’s important for, I think it is important for people to read a lot and to look at what other people are doing in the past and now, and to connect in with other writers and to just keep going and keep it flowing. Keep it. 

Yes. Don’t keep it in. I think that’s the worst thing that can happen is that the feeling of hopelessness or feeling of there’s no point or my voice isn’t important, or this has been said before or any of the, or the world is hopeless anyway, so what’s the point? I think. It’s, it is a constant struggle for everyone.

Noor Hindi: Yeah. 

Bairbre Flood: It’s not like anyone escapes that. There’s no magic way around it. 

Noor Hindi: Yeah. You’re here anyway. You might as well do it. Yeah,

Bairbre Flood: Exactly. And I can’t remember who the writer in America was that said, oh, damn, I can’t think of her name. But it was something like, write your own story because if you don’t, they’ll kill you and say that you enjoyed it or something. It’s yeah, I’ll try and find out who that was and put it in the show notes.

But yeah, so it’s important. And also, yeah, like you’re not just a Palestinian American writer. You have, you’re a human being and so you have, you can be playful and you can write about love and yes. Anything. Yeah, whatever. Yes. Yeah, that is. I did an interview with an Indian Irish poet during the week, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan,

And one of the things that since she’s gotten citizenship is that she’s been able to play more with her work because it relaxed a little bit. She wasn’t such an ambassador and she the issues around getting papers wasn’t so pressing. So yes it’s okay to play and I think it’s hard to do that sometimes because things do upset us so much and sometimes it’s hard to do that when there’s so much going on.

Noor Hindi: Yeah, and it’s difficult also to reckon with, I want to be playful because I am not a Palestinian who is living in Palestine, who is living in Gaza. But it’s also important to remember that people in Palestine and Gaza also dance, and they also love and they also fuck, and they also make arts and they have entire worlds and days that are not in some ways are defined by the occupation.

But in other ways, these are human beings that are going about their weeks and months. And often when we only consume news about them, we forget their humanity. We forget that they also have desires and crushes and moments of laughter and moments of joy with their children. Yes. And dance. 

Bairbre Flood: And faults. I hate that idea of the perfect immigrant.

Noor Hindi: Yes, I would highly recommend Mohammed Al Kurds new book, ‘Perfect Victims’. Ah it’s beautiful. It’s out with Haymarket right now. I think the publication date was yesterday, so this is very new. But it’s a gorgeous book that speaks on this topic of what it means to be a perfect victim.

Bairbre Flood: Brilliant. Okay. Mohamad Al Kurd, what’s it called? Perfect Victims? 

Okay. Brilliant. Would you just tell us a little bit about the anthology? 

Noor Hindi: Yeah. So this anthology began in 2021 and we sought out to create a-  nothing can be comprehensive – but a book that really captures what it means to be Palestinian and writing today.

And so we have contributors from the United States, from Canada, all over Europe and Palestine.

And a couple of our contributors have been murdered. Allah yer hamhum. Including Refaat Alareer including who we were in contact with before his killing. 

And the anthology is, I think over 400 pages, more than 100 contributors. We have a lot of people, like m ian in it that are known. And then we have people who it’s their first time publishing in the work.

And the most beautiful part of making this anthology was discovering newer voices who, you know, writers we had never heard of writers who submitted their work and took our breaths away. And writers writing about everything from queerness to genocide to love to what it means to lose someone you love during a war to skateboarding in the West Bank to, all of these different subjects. And I’m incredibly excited for its release. It comes out May, 2025, so in just a few months. And we are working on having a couple of launch events for the book. 

Bairbre Flood: Brilliant. Oh, that sounds amazing. Yeah. I think was it, OR Books had Rafaats collection there recently. I got it again on a digital format. I think if you go to the OR books website, you can get it there. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. I’m not sure. I feel like most Mosab Abu Toha to had something to do with it. 

But I’ll put a link anyway to the where it is. OR books. 

Noor Hindi: Oh, please. Yes. 

Bairbre Flood: And Haymarket books are really interesting ’cause I read about the background to them and it’s, yeah, they publish a lot of really interesting writers. Really good stuff. Obviously your book was published by them too. 

Noor Hindi: Yes. So was Mosab – he’s is one of our contributors for the anthology too. 

Bairbre Flood: Okay, cool. 

Noor Hindi: Yeah, he’s got a gorgeous poem in there. Which was in his book, ‘Palestine A to Z.’ 

Bairbre Flood: He’s an amazing writer. Okay, great. So May, 2025.

MUSIC

Noor Hindi: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Bairbre. 

Bairbre Flood: No, thank you. I really appreciate it and I’ll let you know when it’s going out and all that. 

Noor Hindi: Great. Cool. I’ll see you soon. 

Bairbre Flood: Okay. Bye-bye. 

MUSIC

Bairbre Flood: A huge thanks, shookran jazeelan to Noor Hindi for her unwavering dedication to the Palestinian people, for all her work over the years, and for her beautiful poetry.

I highly urge you to go get her book, ‘Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow’ published by Haymarket Books. I’ll put a link to this and a link to the anthology she’s co-edited with George Abraham.

That’ll be out in May this year, it’s called, ‘Heaven Looks Like Us’ and it’s also published by Haymarket.

Also don’t forget there’s still time to enter the open call we’ve put out looking for poems. I’m especially interested in Palestinian poets, and if you know of anyone who’d be interested please pass it on.

There’s payment for the five shortlisted poets and three will get a poetry video especially created by the artist Silvio Severino. 

All the info is up on the website – bairbreflood.org/wander-submissions 

Thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for the funding support, and thank you for listening. 

From me, Bairbre Flood, bye for now.