She slept on her bed,
never woke up again.
Her bed has become her grave,
a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,
the ceiling, a cenotaph.
No name, no year of birth,
no year of death, no epitaph.
Only blood and a smashed
picture frame in ruin
next to her.

For years, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha explored the fragility of life under Israeli siege as the theme of his writings, emphasising small, defiant acts of living amidst destruction. 

Then, in October 2023, when Israel launched its war on Gaza, the conflict reached his doorstep, adding another layer of emotions to his poems – dark and grim – that captured the mood of Palestinians threatened by a genocidal war.

His house was bombed and his relatives were killed. The poet – who was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize in 2025 – became a survivor of the same devastation he had long described.

Now, the story of Abu Toha and his journey from Gaza to the US, and of his family, is being told on screen. 

A 24-minute documentary produced by TRT World is currently making the festival circuit, offering a closer look at the human impact of Israel’s war on Gaza and how sharing suffering may help alleviate the pain.

A. Harun Ilhan’s ‘Free Words: A Poet from Gaza’ chronicles the plight of Abu Toha and Gaza through his eyes as a backdrop of death and destruction. 

Since the war started, Israel has killed nearly 69,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children.

The film is showing in special screenings in Türkiye: at the 13th Bosphorus Film Festival on November 7-14, as well as the 36th Ankara Film Festival on November 13-21, competing in both the National Documentary Film segments.

Abu Toha, then an English teacher at the UNRWA school, had only worked for a few days before the war began on October 7, 2023. 

Besides losing his home and family members, his labour of love—the library he built for Gaza’s readers—was also destroyed by the Israeli strikes.

In 2014, after salvaging a book from the debris of a bombed building, Abu Toha established the Edward Said Library in Beit Lahia, Gaza’s first English-language library.

A second branch opened in Gaza City in 2019, providing one of the few cultural sanctuaries in a place marked by war. Both libraries are now reduced to rubble by Israeli bombardment.

“My goal was to create a space where the community, especially the younger generation, could gather around books,” Abu Toha tells TRT World. 

“The libraries became destinations for school trips and meeting places for cultural groups to come together and create art.”

Alareer: Poet, mentor, champion

In 2023, a year after its publication, Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian professor, poet, and writer, introduced Abu Toha’s first book of poetry, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear,” in class. 

The two friends organised a book signing event, but it never took place because Abu Toha’s home was bombed on 28 October 2023, destroying his books, while “Refaat was assassinated about five weeks later”.

Director Ilhan says he “felt a responsibility to do something about the events in Gaza”.

Interested in poetry, Ilhan was inspired by Alareer's poem "If I Must Die", which gave him the idea of ​​approaching Gaza through poetry.

The film is dedicated to Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on his home. 

“As of October 2025, the documentary has been selected for 65 film festivals both domestically and internationally, winning 12 awards,” Ilhan, the director, tells TRT World

He believes that the film has “resonated with people’s inner worlds”.

“Our documentary also aims to fulfill the poem Refaat Alareer wrote before his death, which could have been his last will and testament: ‘If I Must Die, You Must Tell My Story’," Ilhan says.

The documentary is scheduled to be shown on “TRT channels and digital platforms by the end of 2025”.

Ilhan is a director and producer at TRT World's Investigative Documentary department, which produced the film, with Aslihan Eker Cakmak as executive producer.

Abu Toha too talks about Alareer in the film: “A talented teacher and lover of poetry and drama, Refaat didn't want to die”, Abu Toha says, alluding to his late friend’s widely read poem, If I Must Die, translated into dozens of languages after his assassination: “If my death is a necessity, let it be a tale, let it bring hope”.

‘Home is where I was born’

Abu Toha won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his work in the New Yorker, “on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combines deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel,” the Pulitzer Board says.

The essays chronicle his and his family’s lives, culminating with his memories of being raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, as Abu Toha laments, “I no longer recognise many parts of my homeland. Only my memories of them remain”.

After much deliberation with his extended family, he and his wife agreed that they should bring their three young children to safety, evacuating them to a place away from Gaza.

When he, along with his family, began their journey to leave Gaza via the Rafah crossing into Egypt, Israeli forces separated Abu Toha from his wife and children and detained him in prison.

When Abu Toha was permitted to leave the Israeli prison a few painful days later, he tried to reconnect with his family.

His wife Maram told him that she had alerted friends around the world, who pressured Israel for his release.

When asked about what he considers home, Abu Toha tells TRT World: 

Home is where I was born, where my parents were born, and where my grandparents were born. 

“It is where my loved ones are buried, and where I first learned to write my name in Arabic.

Home is the beach where I barbecued with family and friends.

“It is the guava tree beneath my window, the one I haven’t watered in two years, still waiting for me. Waiting for me to lean against its trunk, to climb its branches, and to feed its fruit to the children coming back from school.”