As voices from Gaza are steadily falling silent, and as those who survive face ever greater barriers to being heard beyond the high walls, barbed wire, and watchtowers, Njihov krik je moj glas ('Their Cry Is My Voice') brings into the Slovene language and cultural space the most authentic of voices: poems from Gaza.

Written by Hind Joudah, Nima Hasan, Yousef el-Qedra, Ali Abu Hatab, Dareen Tatour, Marwan Makhoul, Yanya Ashour, Hiba Abu Nada, Haidar Al-Ghazali, and Refaat Alareer, these texts, in Zarja Vršič’s outstanding translation, bring us closer to the raw reality of witnesses of genocide. The biographies of the authors, which provide a deeply moving contextualization of the poems, are read almost inseparably from the verses themselves.

Alongside their cry, the book also brings us other voices: a foreword by Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian, political scientist, and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, as well as a substantial introductory essay by the editors Antonio Bocchinfuso, Mario Soldaini, and Leonardo Tosti. The volume concludes with Chris Hedges’s letter to the poet Refaat Alareer, a lecture by the Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, and a note by the translator Zarja Vršič on the process and significance of translating these works into Slovene.

All of these accompanying texts seem to respond to the imperative expressed in Refaat Alareer’s verses:

“If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story”
(If I Must Die, trans. Sinan Antoon)

We invite you, through reading Njihov krik je moj glas, to assume the responsibility of telling this story and carrying these voices forward.