Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Falasteen shuhadaa jo pardes main kaam aaye (Palestinian martyrs who came in handy abroad) was written decades ago, yet its pulse beats in every corner of Gaza today. The poem, composed as an elegy for the exiled and martyred Palestinians who could never return home, transcends time to speak directly to the living ruins of the present.

In Gaza, today “home” means a tent – a patch of cloth staked against the wind, where children sleep in rows and families ration not only food but hope. Faiz’s lines – Main jahaan par bhi gaya arz-e-watan/Teri tazleel ke daaghon ki jalan dil mai liye (Wherever I wandered, O soil of my homeland, I carried the burn marks of the scars of your disgrace) – capture the ache of a people who carry their homeland with them in grief.

Wherever they go, the humiliation of displacement burns within their hearts. The poet becomes the voice of millions who have wandered, haunted by the memory of a land that exists more in remembrance than in reality.

For the Palestinians scattered across refugee camps and exile, Faiz’s vision of a homeland carried “in the heart” is not metaphor but actual endurance – a daily act of survival and remembering.

Even in devastation, Faiz finds an ember that refuses to die – the many chiraagh (lamps) lit to revere Palestine’s sanctity. Today, amid Gaza’s broken skyline and pulverised streets, that lamp still flickers. Mothers line up for bread at UN bakeries, children scavenge for water, yet life persists.

In every tent city, where hundreds queue for rationed meals, there is quiet defiance – the belief that survival itself is resistance. The poet’s imagery transforms this endurance into sacred devotion. The lamp, dim but steadfast, mirrors the courage of those who refuse to surrender their humanity.

To the world watching Gaza, Faiz’s verse reminds that Palestine’s struggle is not only about borders or sovereignty – it is about dignity, the right to live with head held high, even amid ruins. The “lamps of reverence” are lit not in mosques or monuments, but in the eyes of mothers who bury their children and still whisper prayers for peace.

In exile, memory becomes both wound and refuge. Faiz’s words, Teri ulfat, teri yaadon ki kasak saath gayee (Your love, your memories, accompanied me) express how remembrance turns into a form of homecoming. For displaced Palestinians, memory is the last possession that no army can confiscate.

They remember the scent of citrus groves – Teray naaranj shagoofon ki mehak saath gayee – a fragrance that, as Faiz wrote, travels into even the most desolate exile. Today, those groves are fields of rubble; yet, the aroma of oranges and olive trees survives in lullabies, in stories grandparents tell children born under the blockade.

In these recollections lies an entire geography of belonging – a map drawn not by cartographers but by the heart. Faiz’s Palestine is not just a place on a map but an idea, eternal and indestructible, reborn wherever its people remember it.

In Faiz’s vision, exile is both literal and metaphysical – an unending journey through the “merciless passages of foreign lands”. Today, millions of Palestinians inhabit that same loneliness. From the refugee camps of Lebanon to the crowded shelters of Gaza, their lives echo Faiz’s haunting description of “unnamed lanes” and “stranger cities”.

Even after ceasefires and humanitarian convoys, the condition of exile endures. Aid offers survival, not return. Gaza’s displaced people may find temporary relief in tents and donated meals, but the dream of home remains deferred.

Faiz’s lament is not only for those who have left Palestine – it is for the world that is complicit in their exile. His poetry indicts silence, exposes the moral fatigue of nations that normalise suffering, as if it were natural like a seasonal occurrence. The “foreign streets without name or mark” are not just physical – they are the corridors of global indifference.

Faiz turns martyrdom into a metaphor of renewal. “Wherever I unfurled the flag made of my blood, the flag of my homeland Palestine waved there.” In this verse, he envisions every drop of spilled blood as an act of creation – a defiance that transforms suffering into continuity.

In today’s Gaza, where children’s bodies are wrapped in shrouds bearing the colours of their flag, Faiz’s words ache with prophetic power. Every demolished home, every funeral procession, becomes an assertion that Palestine still lives. The poet’s blood-soaked banner is visible in the rubble, fluttering amid dust and despair.

This is not romanticism but realism of the highest kind: a recognition that when power destroys, poetry rebuilds. Through language, memory and sacrifice, a people assert their existence against erasure.

When Faiz writes, “Your enemies destroyed one Palestine,” he speaks to a historical truth that has been repeating itself. The occupation has changed in methods, but not in intent. Gaza’s siege, the fragmentation of the West Bank, the continued expansion of settlements – each act deepens the dispossession he mourned.

But Faiz does not end with despair. He answers destruction with regeneration: Meray zakhmon ne kiye kitnay Falasteen aabaad. His wounds, he declares, have created many Palestines. This is the poet’s radical optimism that from the ruins of one homeland, countless new homelands arise in hearts, in resistance, in art and in solidarity, across the world.

Today, every protester raising the Palestinian flag in Johannesburg, Istanbul, Delhi or New York fulfills Faiz’s vision. Every voice demanding justice is one of the “many Palestines” his wounds gave birth to.

Kitnay haathon say hum aghosh mera haath raha: The solidarity of the unseen

Faiz’s poetry was never solitary; it imagined a collective embrace: “The hands of my friends remained clasped with mine.” In the present, this fellowship manifests in the global solidarity movement that refuses to let Palestine’s pain be forgotten.

From student rallies to humanitarian campaigns, from artists to journalists risking their lives to bear witness, the unseen companions of Faiz’s dream walk among us. They hold his metaphorical hand, extending compassion where politics has failed.

In a world fractured by borders and ideologies, Faiz’s lines remind us that empathy is a form of resistance. His Falasteen becomes a universal metaphor for all struggles against occupation, silence and exile.

Leh-lahata hai wahan arz-e-Falasteen ka alam: The flag that refuses to fall

Finally, Faiz envisions a Palestine that endures not through power, but through poetry; not by weapons, but by will. The flag of Palestine, made from his blood, “waves wherever it is unfurled”.

Today, amid the ashes of Gaza, that flag still rises – in the drawings of orphaned children, in the songs sung at funerals, in the steadfastness of those who rebuild, again and again.

Faiz’s Palestine is no longer just a nation: it is a conscience. It lives wherever people stand against injustice, wherever compassion outweighs fear.

Epilogue: The many Palestines of the heart

Faiz once wrote that even if his homeland were wiped from the map, it would bloom again in his wounds. That prophecy breathes through every tent in Gaza, every exile’s memory, every act of resistance.

The world may witness one Palestine destroyed, but as long as words, love, and courage endure: Meray zakhmon nay kiye kitnay Falasteen aabaad.

From the ruins rises a republic of resilience – a nation without borders, bound together by memory, poetry and the unyielding will to live.

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