Quiero estar despierto cuando muera Quotes

“For Gazans, war is like the weather, we live through it continually. We have no say in it; it just comes and goes, from the day we’re born. Most Gazans have never left the Strip; they don’t know what life feels like where war is not the norm; they don’t know what freedom is either. They know they want it, but they’ve never really tasted it.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“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 Israeli Army’s instinct seems to be to kill as many as they can. The death toll’s not important, what’s important is that Gaza dies. To them we are just numbers, and when you’re turned into numbers, it doesn’t matter if it’s ten or ten thousand. It’s just a number.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“La lógica palestina es que en guerra todos debemos dormir en lugares diferentes, para que, si una parte de la familia es asesinada, la otra sobreviva.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Quiero estar despierto cuando muera: Diario de un genocidio

“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

“Memories of war are strangely positive, because to have them you must have survived.”
― 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

“Feeling the claustrophobia I look up at the sky, then remember what’s up there.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“Some kids have invented a new, clever way of making sure their story is told, or at least recorded, even after they’ve been torn to pieces by an Israeli missile. To make sure their bodies are recognised they have taken to writing their names, with markers, on their hands and legs. They are sharing this practice on social media. Some are even writing their family’s mobile numbers so they can be called and informed of their death. It is almost impossible to think about the world carrying on after we die, but these kids are doing it: putting their loved ones first, hoping to lessen their suffering by saving them from the purgatory of not knowing. They do it also, I think, for themselves: the idea of dying and not being mourned by anyone is unbearable.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide

“On the first day of the war, a friend of mine texted me: ‘What is happening in Gaza?’ I replied: ‘The proper question is not what is happening, but what has been happening, all this time—for more than 75 years.’ We live in a war film, and the director, who is also the producer and the star, does not want it to end. The Hollywood studio behind the film keeps feeding the script with new scenes, keeps adding millions of dollars to the budget. Early screen tests have proven it’s going to be a blockbuster, but only if they keep filming. And never stop.”
― 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

“As I write this, I hear about an airstrike on Karmel Tower. The building takes its name from the famous high school, opposite it, which in turn is named after the great Carmel Mountain that stands above Haifa. The impressive tower was hit from more than one side. Many media centres and offices are located in the tower. The Israeli’s always go for these kind of buildings: new, impressive, exciting hubs of development and investment. I remember the destruction of Basha Tower, al-Shorouk Tower, and of course the Italian complex in 2014. The aim is always to send us back in time, to make the city look poor and ugly again.”
― Atef Abu Saif, Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide