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March 14 - April 14, 2024
Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit… . —Chinua Achebe, in Anthills of the Savannah
Gaza Writes Back comes to resist Israel’s attempts to murder these emerging voices, to squander the suffering of the martyrs, to bleach the blood, to dam the tears, and to smother the screams. This book shows the world that despite Israel’s continuous attempts to kill steadfastness in us, Palestinians keep going on, never surrendering to pain or death, and always seeing and seeking liberty and hope in the darkest of times. Gaza Writes Back provides conclusive evidence that telling stories is an act of life, that telling stories is resistance, and that telling stories shapes our memories.
Indeed, storytelling is itself a major theme of some of the stories in this book, because the writers know well that stories outlive every other human experience.
Palestine is a martyr away, a tear away, a missile away, or a whimper away. Palestine is a story away.
Baba, what would make this kind of human rejoice over the fact that I am living the agony of being fatherless, with an uncompleted story?
smell the sweet scent of a calm Gazan night, feel the fresh air going straight to my heart, and think of you, of me, of Palestine, of the crack, of the blank wall, of you, of Mama, of you, of my history class, of you, of God, of Palestine—of our incomplete story.
It doesn’t matter how strong you are or pretend to be, life is going to get to you sometimes and that doesn’t make you weak, sweetheart; it makes you human.”
He says people fight and die to regain our Palestine. But those freedom fighters don’t come back, nor does Palestine.
I had to be thankful for my faith, for you have to make that leap of faith if you ever want to heal. Years may be the length of one’s life, but faith is, undoubtedly, the width.
She always prides herself on the fact that she taught you to spell it just right. You had always believed in its bigness. “P for passion, A for aspiration, L for life, E for existence, S for sanity, T for trust, I for You, N for nation, E for exaltation.” And then you wrote it just right. You wrote it everywhere you could—on walls, on tables. You carved the stunning letters into trees, and ended up with them engraved in your heart.
Hamza whiled the night away, his book in his lap, his hands flipping the pages, one after the other. He had not known he would have such persistence during a night spent with no company except that of cold darkness and the amusing wheezing of his little sleeping brother, a persistence that empowered him to satiate his hunger lavishly by devouring the words mercilessly. He breathed a thoroughly new life into himself.
Our neighborhood was blown to smithereens in a split second. No more games were played. No more goals. No more cheering. And my friends grew up in one second.
As we now commemorate the Land Day, we honor the people who stood up for their Land in 1976, when Israel announced thousands of Palestinian dunums would be confiscated. During marches held to protest that declaration, six people were killed. The 30th of March brings back a memory of our Land, my father’s Land.
That an Israeli soldier could bulldoze 189 olive trees on the Land he claims is part of the “God-given Land” is something I will never comprehend. Did he not consider the possibility that God might get angry? Did he not realize that it was a tree he was running over? If a Palestinian bulldozer were ever invented (Haha, I know!) and I were given the chance to be in an orchard, in Haifa for instance, I would never uproot a tree an Israeli planted. No Palestinian would. To Palestinians, the tree is sacred, and so is the Land bearing it.
Between Palestinians and their Land is an unbreakable bond. By uprooting plants and cutting trees continually, Israel tries to break that bond and impose its own rules of despair on Palestinians. By replanting their trees over and over again, Palestinians are rejecting Israel’s rules. “My Land, my rules,” says Dad.
The refugee card was and continues to be an insult to remind us of the little that refugees get in comparison with what they have really lost. Would a bag of flour compensate for the farmland they once had?
Her hand moved up swiftly to wipe it off, as though it were a sin for her to cry. She must not cry. She hated that. But how could she not? Two years passed now since the war. And she…well, she had been strong all along.
“I will be cursed. I will be blamed. And I will be helpless, yet responsible for people’s lives!” she thought to herself, rubbing both eyes with her cold fingers, “Maybe I should quit medical school. Will I ever be strong enough for it, to keep up with it? It’s been two years now. Two bloody years.”
Laila did not hate the little baby whose file was sent instead of her father’s. She only hated Israel for making it so that the doctor had to choose. She only wished this baby would survive, grow up, and become a freedom fighter. “No, I can’t drop medical school. Not after all that has happened,” she said under her breath. Laila sat in her bedroom, the candle burning out, and as she heard the sound of an Israeli Apache ripping through the sky, she looked over, and in that weak moment and in the memory of all the suffering following her father’s injury, she muttered through clenched teeth,
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Omar realized that the soldiers, who used to scare him as a five-year-old boy on his way to kindergarten, still invaded every little aspect of his life.
It was the Nakba. And since then, they moved two or three times to different destinations, having to endure saying “no” to their offspring who asked, “Are we going back?”
“Funny that we fear the light. Funny that the dawn has become scary. You see, son, this is what I always tell you. They took my house—my history, my roots, and my land. And now, look at me, I am destroying it. This can’t go on forever, and I can’t rely on bastard politicians.
Occupation is evil. Yes, it steals and damages, but it also teaches people hate and, even worse, distrust.
Sooner than anyone expects, faster than it takes to memorize their names, death would perch on the ward, extend its wings right and left, and claim them all. A week, two weeks—a month maximum—and new faces would replace the previous ones. Similar faces with different names all would share the same fate.
If two juxtaposed houses were separated by a mere meter and a half, then the two of them were blessed enough not to hear their neighbors snoring at night. I wondered what degree of privacy any of them could have. Then I figured that privacy was the last concern for people who were so deprived of their basic needs as human beings.
That night, all sounds were hushed, almost reverent in sympathy with Gaza’s second, sad anniversary of the Israeli war, which left a deep wound inside each heart and soul.
“This is a good chance to challenge your sorrow; if you fail, as usual, you will have to live with more pain and more sleepless nights.”
These were the words my bleary mind and aching heart would pronounce ever since I had lost my much-praised abilities to express myself through words, the means that used to be my advocate whenever I got the chance to hold a pen and write. This night, I decided to follow the calls of my soul. They were calm and calling for me peacefully to write a letter to the innocent kid I lost that night.
I put my pen to the paper and started to ruin its purity with some connected black lines that formed the characters of my letter.
I put my pen down in a depressed attempt to stop the flood of the painful memories that started rushing into my exhausted mind. I couldn’t. My son should know each detail in order to forgive me. I went on.
“She is still lamenting. She keeps on writing every night but those who die never come back.”
“I would swear that sometimes this stone wakes me at dawn to pray al-fajr.” “Of course it does. If you sleep with the stone in your pocket and you turn to sleep on the side where you put the stone, it will wake you up,” Yusef retorted with heavy sarcasm.
Yes, even peace can be dark.
It was one o’clock in the morning. The air’s loose strings were circling me like ghosts. I asked my mother, “If something bad happens to us, what should I do?” “Escape, sweetheart.”
It was not a time of war when she died, but it was not a time of peace either.
