23/04/2026
Sometimes, a woman’s silence is louder than any explosion. In the heart of Beirut, a voice that devoted her life to deciphering mysticism and human fragility through poetry has been extinguished.
Khatoon Salma Kershet was not only a researcher and graduate of the American University of Beirut; she was a poet, one of those withdrawn, profound voices that choose the shadow of reflection over the glare of fame. Through works such as “Embracing a Waiting Woman” and ”The Last Inhabitants of the Moon”, Salma explored the pain of exile with a sensitivity only those who have walked along the edge of the abyss can hold.
Her death, alongside her husband Mohammed in an attack in Tallet al-Khayyat, is not only a biographical loss. It is, as has been said, a “massacre of language.” When a poet dies in this way, we lose the words that had not yet been written to name our own suffering and our hope.
Salma wrote about the wound in a language that resembled nothing but truth. Her interest in Sufism went beyond the academic; it was a search for light within darkness, a way of understanding that even in the most absolute loss, there is an essence that cannot be destroyed.
Today, her name joins that of so many other voices silenced by war’s violence, reminding us that culture and poetry are often the most vulnerable targets, and at the same time, the most resilient. We speak of her not only to mourn her death, but to affirm the right of every woman for her voice, her thought, and her life to be sacred.
How many more words must we lose before we understand that every silenced woman’s voice is a part of our own humanity fading away?
We are poetry, we are voice, we are scream.
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