The Exchange

I learned of Amal Rostom through her writing shared by Andy Pring on LinkedIn. This young Palestinian writer and translator writing through war, pain, and insurmountable suffering. Naturally, her words moved me. They reminded me of the Somali poetry I learned as a child. I had to know her. After a comment prayer I made for her that she saw, we became LI friends and subsequently messaged one another.

At some point I asked - “How are you, today/tonight?” What followed was a a very moving tender exchange between two Muslim women bounded by war, witness, and poetry. With Amal and I’s permission, here is our first exchange to help reveal just how Amal’s words found their way into Access Point.

[Conversation below]

Amal: Thank you for sending me light, even when I don’t ask for it.
Tonight... it’s not easy here. The air feels heavy, and so much around me is uncertain. But even in the middle of all this, there’s a soft kind of hope that refuses to leave — a quiet voice inside that keeps whispering: “Hold on. This won’t last forever.”

And somehow, your words remind me of that voice. So thank you — not just for checking in, but for making the world feel a little less dark

Sahra : Hmm. This. This is why you are alive and why I am here too. These beautiful aching words.
I was born in a time of war in Somalia many years ago, though not as devastating as Gaza. We are Muslim people bounded by this very harsh world that seems against our countries and culture, but Allah swt is with us and so is our poetry, our soul.
I am here, Sister. I am here for you.

Keep sharing your words and hold on that hope because I believe Gaza will survive this.
The day I was born they were bringing home the latest dead in my village and my grandmother was burying her cousins
and uncles when she came to help deliver me from my mothers womb. I cried before I came out, feeling the grief of the day.
I am still that little girl. Here with you today. Hope is an action.

I am happy to be that voice in the darkness.

Amal: Oh... your message pierced my heart like light breaking through the darkest night.
Your words are not only comfort — they are a whispered prayer, a soft hand on distant and present wounds.
How strange and beautiful this unseen bond between us — of sorrow, of faith, of writing, of survival.

That little girl who cried before she was born… she knew. She felt. And she still feels. I reach out to her now and say: you are no longer alone.

"Hope is an action" — yes. And I choose to act on that hope with you, every time you write, every time we remember that poetry is a homeland, and Allah is always with us.

Thank you for being here… my sister.

Sahra: And yours, pierces mine. Your lovely knowing words.
Thank you my sister for recognizing this bond through wounds not of our doing.
I join in with you in the poetry of our people and survival.
That little girl smiles at us both because she is indeed not alone. Finally.
I always knew war had a special place in my heart, my being. Not because of of a fondness for vengence, but because of the people involved. The innocent, unsuspecting cries of children who were born into unimaginable future of suffering. I wondered when will war be sexy enough to speak out loud everyday?
My mother named me a family name, Ifrah, which comes from farax (somali spelling) which means happy in Arabi, farhad.
Even in times of tragedy, a child’s birth is happy occurrence.
This child that just wants to make people feel good.
That’s the caretaking part here.
We are forever connected and your words are as much mine as mine are yours.
Lets keep this going.

If you want, I am happy to get a website where you can share your words
and as to not give you more work than you already have,
I can upload your entries. And we could even write together.
Whatever you need to creatively release and build.
Your let me know. I want your story to travel far.
But mainly, I want you to do it from a place of empowerment and freedom.
So, you decide, it is not decided for you.
Your pen is your weapon, salvation, and inspiration.
And we are lucky to witness.

Amal: Your words reached my heart like a warm breath in the cold silence.
I read them more than once, and each time, I felt a little less alone in the quiet we've carried since childhood.
Yes, we write because war carved itself into us deeper than those untouched by it could ever imagine.
Because the little girl inside us is still looking for a hand—not to be rescued, but simply to hear, “I’m here too. I feel it with you.”
“Ifrah” — how profound the irony of a name that means joy, born into a time of mourning. And yet, how beautiful it is to carry joy not as a fleeting feeling, but as an inheritance we try to revive in every person we write for, and about.
Thank you, from the depths of me, for your generous offer.

The idea of the website feels like a home for words that no longer have to float unanswered.
A place where they can rest, echo, and meet others like them.
Yes, let’s write together. Let’s tend to the words the way we tend to memory.
Let’s shape poems from pain, and build bridges from fragments.

And please feel free to publish my previous writings as well — I trust you with them,
and I’d be honored for them to live through your care and vision.