April 2026 marks the fourth year since Arab Heritage Month was enacted to the House of Commons of Canada in 2022 under Bill C-232, dedicating the month to acknowledging the histories, cultures, and contributions of Arab Canadians.
This Arab Heritage Month, we at Room Magazine sit with the contradictions of celebrating Arab histories and cultures while grieving how Arab communities are deeply impacted by an imperial violence “Canada” is complicit in. In West Asia, Palestinians continue to resist genocide perpetuated by the same Zionist entity that continues to violently displace the people of Lebanon, and US-Israeli leaders continue to wage war on Iran; in “Canada,” Arab communities face increasing violence, particularly Anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, and in Quebec, a ban on religious symbols.
Over the last few years, many of us in the Global North have all borne witness to the Zionist entity’s mass destruction of lives, homes, infrastructure – a continuation of the entity’s long-standing attempts to destroy the future of a multitude of Arab peoples – and we have seen unwavering resistance from the many Arab communities undergoing unimaginable catastrophe. Arab Heritage Month is an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to futures where Arab communities can thrive and flourish, and to take material action to do so.
Alongside the reading list below, we urge readers to refer to our resources to support Palestine and call for an end to the US-Israeli war on Iran, and direct financial support to fundraisers supporting mutual aid networks and those forcibly displaced in Lebanon.
Reading list:
Excerpt from “What Happens When a Drone Strike Has No Killer and a War Has No Dead?” by Omar El Akkad via The Walrus, from One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“Language is never sufficient. There is not enough of it to make a true mirror of living. In this way, the soothing or afflictive effect of the stories we tell is not in whether we select the right words but in our proximity to what the right words might be. This is not some abstraction but a very real expression of power—the privilege of describing a thing vaguely, incompletely, dishonestly is inseparable from the privilege of looking away.”
Excerpt from “Social Skills Training” by Solmaz Sharif, from Look (Graywolf Press, 2016)
Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What’s the problem? Studies suggest it’s best the help reply My pleasure and not No problem. Studies suggest it’s best not to mention problem in front of power even to say there is none.
Excerpt from “‘Looking for Palestine in Santiago, Chile’ & other work” by Sarona Abuaker, via Mizna
The flags suffocate us.
In this glittering nightmare I find your palms
and trace the recycled histories as the wave approaches.
There is no redemption in a world created for starvation.
They’ve built this mass grave in a school playground. Reach for me, won’t you? I’ll be here waiting.
Excerpt from “If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English,” By Noor Naga, via Literary Hub
And then Mother placed a single peach on a saucer at the center of the table. With a carving knife, divided it in four. Dinner, she said. My grandmother, whose perfect teeth were singly stolen by a dentist working from his one-room across the river and seating patients on the bed he sleeps in, took all the peach quarters and squished them into her ears. Such greed, said Mother, sucking the hollow seed. Father breathed. Swinging her elbows like a race-walker, Grandmother busied into the kitchen and climbed inside the stove. The next day they placed her collection of paper cranes into the ground with her, so I left. This was ten years ago.
Excerpt from “Letter to June Jordan in September” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, via Mizna
I met a girl from the camp at a reading in Beirut. She asked if we could talk about the life of poetry. Our families are hauled off to the world of the dead, and every day it is on screen. In Gaza, we’re watching Ferguson, and in Atlanta we’re watching Jerusalem watching Minneapolis watching. Their weapons and their training programs indistinguishable. The word almost flickers for a nanosecond. Here I note the shelf-life of self-censorship, legacy of our era. Some days poems are scrawled on pieces of cardboard and carried on our shoulders at the protest like martyrs. Here I should say something about hope. Here I should say something about living.
Excerpt from “An Interview with Fargo Nissim Tbakhi,” by Summer Farah and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, via Poetry Project
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi: Something I think about in particular in “Craft Talk,” is that every failure is also a success. What I mean by that is the ethical and political failures that I’m demonstrating in that poem are also me, or the speaker, being a successful poet. Our collective failure to stop the genocide of Palestinians is also our success at being neoliberal subjects. The understanding of the world’s foundation being contingent on the brutality against Palestinians means that every time we don’t stop it, we are being good citizens. I feel the same way about the idea of ethical failures in writing. More often than not, [that] means we are successful writers. We are good “literary citizens,” for example, a phrase that I find truly repulsive, but actually useful. It comes with all the violence that a citizenship contains.
“All the Names We Will Not Know” by Naomi Shihab Nye, via Poets.org
Before dawn, trembling in air down to the old river,
circulating gently as a new season
delicate still in its softness, rustling raiment
of hopes never stitched tightly enough to any hour.
Excerpt from Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
One sunny day at the start of a ceasefire, a father drove with his son down towards where the fighting had been. A cadaver had been lying on the ground for days, mutilated. The son, who was named Pavlov, and his father, an undertaker, loaded the remains into plastic bags and carried them to the hearse. The cadaver’s belly had been opened by a bullet wound and vermin had claimed it and multiplied inside the soft organs, gorging on the entrails. Father and son gathered the scattered items that belonged to the dead: a loose shoe, a bag filled with mouldy food, broken glasses.
“Composition: give up your own” by Trish Salah, via C Mag
“The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song” By Noor Hindi, via Split This Rock
I won’t make metaphors out of fish. If I have to die, I choose the ocean. If I have to live, I choose you. You: Everyone I’ve ever mourned.
“Against Dying,” by Kaveh Akbar, via Poets.org
if the body is just a parable
about the body if breath
is a leash to hold the mind
then staying alive should be
easier than it is most sick
things become dead things
Excerpt From We Have Always Been Here, by Samra Habib
Sonia and I were the same age and instantly liked each other. She had a mischievous way about her that pulled me in. She always smelled of oranges, her fingers sticky from sucking on slices of the fruit as the juices dripped down her chin and hands. She left a trail of orange peels everywhere she went. I was in awe of her pin-straight hair that could do anything she wanted it to but mostly rested on her shoulders, two vertical lines framing her gamine face. Mine was curly and unruly, and my mother insisted on having it fashioned into an unflattering bowl cut. Since I was no longer allowed to go outside or visit friends without my parents chaperoning, much of our playing happened at our house. Sonia never asked why—I just let her believe it was because my parents were extremely religious. When we weren’t building blanket forts, we spent afternoons on the veranda flashing everyone who walked by, spreading our legs wide open and exposing our vaginas, breaking out into peals of laughter with each look of horror we received.
“I Belong There,” by By Mahmoud Darwish, via Poets.org
I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as
everyone is born.
I have a mother, a house with many windows,
brothers, friends, and a prison cell
with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by
seagulls, a panorama of my own.
Excerpt from “You Will Not Kill Our Imagination” by Saeed Teebi, via The New Quarterly
One of the most terror-inducing aspects of writing is how much of it is an act of faith. It requires the writer, while they are alone conjuring words on a screen, to believe that the experiences of which they are writing, no matter how idiosyncratic, will strike readers as familiar, resonant, or interesting. The belief is made less foolhardy only by the knowledge that readers possess imaginations to assist them in navigating different worlds.
