Rifqa

Mohammed El-Kurd centers this collection on the figure of his grandmother, Rifqa, who survived the 1948 Nakba and spent decades resisting displacement in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The poems document the specific mechanics of settler-colonial expansion, detailing the seizure of homes, the presence of military checkpoints, and the bureaucratic erasure of Palestinian identity. El-Kurd utilizes a confrontational, documentary style to record private family memories alongside the public reality of legal battles and forced evictions under Israeli occupation.

Readers seeking an unvarnished account of dispossession and systemic injustice find a direct look at the physical and psychological toll of life in a contested territory. The text serves those interested in the intersection of lyricism and political activism. A reader walks away with a clear understanding of the generational trauma inherent in exile and the specific language used to claim space against overwhelming state force. The work provides a firsthand witness to the daily friction between domestic life and geopolitical violence.