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Lena Khalaf Tuffaha — Dukka
00:15:55
Loving in the face of violence, danger, and distress is an act of defiance, as demonstrated in Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s achingly beautiful poem “Dukka”. The Palestinian American writer spotlights seven aspects of love in action — between father and newborn, for example, a journalist and her audience, a pair of intimates dining out. She shows us the “million ways to love” flowing through her community and cascading through generations, centuries, millennia, as inexorable and constant as the ocean and as bright and surprising as a rare meteor shower. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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My name is Padre Go Toma. And once when I was at a book event in Dublin, I asked people to call out a line of poetry that they'd remembered from school, and somebody called something out from Yeats, and somebody called something out from Noola Nicolnall. And then somebody shouted out, hope's the thing with feathers. And people kind of made noises of recognition of all of those poems. And then right after somebody said, hope's the thing with feathers, somebody quick as anything said, I don't know about feathers, but it's certainly got claws. Which got a great response. I thought it was magnificent. Best part of the night. And I loved that quip because it was so fast and so witty. And also it introduced some challenge to the lines of Emily Dickinson because we'd gone from talking about lines of poetry and reciting them to thinking about the content of that. And I loved the engagement with content. Not just recitation, not just the art of the art, but also looking at what the art is pointing you towards. It's also got claws. Dukkha by Lina Khalach Tufaha at the restaurant, the loudest sound is the ocean. A few blocks away, a meteor shower is forecast, a once in a lifetime event. But the freeway, flush with headlights, precludes us from viewing. The stars fall silently over us and the waves and the commuters. We review the menu. We help the waitress pronounce Dukkha. We talk about aging and what is left to risk. Love is paying attention, I remark, and you repeat it to me. Love is also the father who plants an olive tree for every newborn, trusting they will grow up to harvest it. Love is the elderly woman who stood inside Damascus Gate, knowing the settlers were on a rampage, knowing what her body would to endure. Love is a story we never tire of telling, just as Shireen told it with a microphone and a camera. Love lives in many rooms. In the kitchen where Nadia teaches, using only the Arabic names of ingredients. And in the car where Layma embroiders wine coloured roosters and cypresses on ancestral linen, waiting to pick up her children from school. Love is the children we carried at the protests, leading their own marches in the rain let the stars fall. I have no idea what hope is, but our people have taught me a million ways to love. This beautiful poem by Lena Khalaf Tufaha finishes with that line. I have no idea what hope is, and it has an intelligence of time. And rather than looking to something about what might happen in the future, it turns to the past with examples and examples and examples of love and allows that to shore up the present in terms of what the present is doing now to shape a future. It starts off in a place of hospitality, a restaurant, and the ocean's nearby and there's a forecast meteor shower. And the freeway with too many headlights and the stars are looking down silently, whether you can see them or not. You can't see them because of the headlights. There's characters in the poem. There's a we that's referred to the two people who review the menu. It sounds to me like two Arabs who are in a place where not everybody's an Arabic speaker because we help the waitress to pronounce dukkha. There's an intelligence of time that's so present the whole way throughout this poem, particularly, I think, in one of the turns towards the end, where we hear the speakers say about carrying children who are now leading protests. But earlier we see intelligence of time. The meteor shower is forecast and the events of the now, you know, the traffic and the menu and the conversation with each other. They're all about the present moment. And then time continues throughout. What her body would have to endure. The anticipation of pain from that woman at Damascus Gate. And the we never tire of telling is a way within which you touch back into repeated experiences of time. And the embroidering of wine coloured roosters and cypresses on ancestral linen has so many time markers in it. You know, the embroidery now, the ancestral linen, the linking of the present with the past by making something that'll endure as well as thinking forward to the future as to who use this, maybe the children who are being picked up from school. There are seven explorations of what love is in this poem. And the first one is love is paying attention, and then the other person, the friend, repeats it back to the speaker. So repetition is an important technology, technique, music, intelligence. In this poem, these two seem like old friends, maybe siblings, people who seem to have known each other for a long time. Just the casual way within, the reference to speaking to the waitress and talking about aging and talking about what is left to risk, also these things seem to imply an intimacy to me. So much of the background of this poem and the whole book is from the fact that Lina Khalaf Tufaha is a Palestinian American poet. And so the presence of pain and desire for freedom and profound celebration of identity and hospitality and language is present everywhere throughout this poem as repeated motifs throughout this whole book. Repetition is evoked in all kinds of ways. It can be desperation and it can be a form of music as well. Or the way that friends repeat old stories to each other. And the meteor shower is a form of repetition too. It might be only once in a lifetime for a person, but for the age of the universe, it keeps on happening over and over again. Repetition is everyday as well. You know, the things people do to show love and friendship with each other, their regular habits as well as then something lifelong. The repeated cry and yearning and hope for a better future, for justice. After the love is paying attention line. There are these other definitions of what love is too. Love is the father who plants an olive tree for every newborn, trusting they will grow up to harvest it. There again is the present and the future being evoked in the time of this poem. And love is the elderly woman who stood inside Damascus Gate, knowing the settlers were on a rampage, knowing what her body would have to endure. There's time, there's repetition, there's anxiety and anticipation about pain in the present or pain in the future. Here, love is a story we never tire of telling, just as Shireen told it with a microphone and a camera. Shireen, that's being referred to here is Shireen Abu Akhla, who was. She was shot dead by the Israeli military in 2022. She was a journalist. She was wearing a blue press vest and she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. And Shireen is spoken of in this poem by her first name. There's an intimacy in that. There's a love in that she was a hero for so many people in terms of how it is she covered and the many years of her journalistic integrity. Love lives in many rooms, we hear slightly later in the poem. And we hear these names, Nadia, Lema, and the children as well. And then love is the children we carried at protests. And then referring to the ways within which those same children are in a repeated way, continuing on at protests. Our people have taught me a million ways to love. This is all about love under pressure, the final mention of love, which is also the final word. Our people have taught me a million ways to love is a way of elevating this poem, of using the word love as a gathering call, as a focus, as a force as well, of holding together and of making a declaration and establishing community. This poem is in four stanzas, and the language is really vernacular, but the line breaks allow you to see all kinds of terrible things that could be possible in the impossible space between one line of poetry and another. So the first line at the restaurant, the loudest sound. What's going to come, you don't know. And with the space that the line break allows, you might wonder, is this going to be the sound of traffic or a crash or something violent? And then later in the stanza, the stars fall. Of course this is referring to a meteor shower, but if you just look at it as the way that the line stops there before the sentence completes itself to talk about the meteor shower, you can think of this almost like a dystopian vision present in this and we talk about aging and what is left, you know, that brings to mind what we leave behind and what changes. And of course it goes on to say what is left to risk. Love is the children we carried is another line that can be looked at by itself before the line break carries you on to the completion of the sentence. I find myself thinking of those people returning to Gaza City, those who survived carrying children love us, the children we carried at the protests. The line goes on to say, and then repetition, let the stars fall. I have no idea. The repetition again of the stars. There's looking to a future with a certain defiance to say even if the world is going to end, the repetition is to bring back again the sense of love in a certain sense, saying that let me think about hope, but cast it aside by saying, I don't know how to define it, because there are those million ways to love. The stars might fall, the countless stars, but the million ways to love of the poem's end are the million stars of community, of culture, of people, of connection that will endure forever. Dukkha By Leena Khalaf Tufah at the restaurant, the loudest sound is the ocean. A few blocks away a meteor shower is forecast, a once in a lifetime event, but the freeway, flush with headlights, precludes us from viewing. The stars fall silently over us and the waves and the commuters. We review the menu, we help the waitress pronounce dukkha, we talk about aging and what is left to risk. Love is paying attention, I remark, and you repeat it to me. Love is also the father who plants an olive tree for every newborn, trusting they will grow up to harvest it. Love is the elderly woman who stood inside Damascus Gate knowing the settlers were on a rampage, knowing what her body would have to endure. Love is a story we never tire of telling, just as Shireen told it with a microphone and a camera. Love lives in many rooms, in the kitchen where Nadia teaches using only the Arabic names of ingredients, and in the car where Lema embroiders wine coloured roosters and cypresses on ancestral linen, waiting to pick up her children from school. Love is the children we carried at the protests, leading their own marches in the rain let the stars fall. I have no idea what hope is, but our people have taught me a million ways to love. Dukkha By Lina Khalaft Faha appears in Something About Living, published in 2024 by University of Akron Press. Thanks to them for permission to use this poem and to Frederick Courtright of the permissions company. Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Siegmund and me, Padre Gotuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blued Out Sessions. These episodes were made in New York City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being Projected, founded and led by Krista Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Baedale foundation and Engaging the Census Foundation. Poetry Unbound will be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound substack or directly to On Being. For links to the substack and to find out more about Poetry Unbound books and events, visit poetryunbound.org.