Mojtaba

“One of the things you have to do during times like these is listen to the news and follow every statement, every scrap of new information. But at the same time, it’s unbearable to listen. The way they talk about us, refer to us, speak for us, decide things for us, without ever asking any of us to speak, is disgusting.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“The challenges facing Palestinians are harder than anything we could have imagined; the moment the challenge isn’t just ‘how to survive today’, a whole world of future suffering will open up to us. I remembered my early thought, when I was in the north, that the real war starts when the military operations end. It’s true, both politically and at the level of human drama. When the guns are shut down, the pain and despair of ordinary people will come to the surface. It will be that moment of realisation: both of the loss they’ve suffered and the new conditions they have to live with. In this sense, thinking of tomorrow is more difficult than thinking of today.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“The Palestinian logic is that in war we should all sleep in different places, so that if one part of the family is killed, another part lives.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“A few years ago, someone daubed on the wall of the UNRWA school east of the camp a strange slogan: ‘We progress backwards.’ It had a ring to it. Every new war drags us back to basics, back to the beginning. It destroys our houses, our institutions, our mosques and churches. It razes our gardens and parks to the ground. It leaves us nothing for the future. Every war takes us years to recover from, and before we have recovered from it, a new war arrives. It doesn’t trigger warning sirens or send messages to your phone. It just arrives. We find ourselves suddenly in the middle of it.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide