Friday 21 March, 2025

I’m afraid I’ll become tomorrow’s news, that my name will pass casually, and all my dreams will be buried with me while everyone watches. But I ask myself, what will they do, really? If they can’t help themselves, how can they help us stop dying! Then, what’s the motivation that would make them stop our deaths? Who are we?!

Then, I remember Sayed Imam, humming Masekeen Benadhak ( We Laugh Pitiably ) with joy, and nostalgia takes me back to the image of our old house, which no longer looks the same - shattered now. A cold breeze used to come into my room through the window, but now the whole storm enters through the broken wall. The storm destroyed all the nylon I had put up instead of the shattered walls. The shelling that killed my friend Dirgham tore apart the nylon on the windows because his house was close to mine. I saw the house burning, and I heard the explosion, but I didn’t know it was his house. Everything flutters and makes annoying sounds in the dark of the night.

Life is strange; it doesn’t give itself to anyone who wishes for it. It struts like a girl who never ages, sitting without hiding her body because she knows you’ll always see her the same way no matter the years. And you, poor soul, fall into her treacherous trap, and your heart breaks every time you look at her because you know she’s elusive, and you know you’re too weak to have her.

The streets of Gaza are very narrow compared to the streets of other cities I’ve visited in my imagination. Tunis, with its soft streets, and the feeling you get when you wander through it, as if it’s laying its hair on the ground for you. Then there’s Syria, with its ancient Jasmine streets. I don’t know why my mind associates Damascus with Jasmine and the wide, open square. In my imagination, that wide square links to the houses we see on TV, the ones with large courtyards, and some of these old houses I’ve visited in Gaza. I always felt that when my right foot crossed the threshold of such a house, I had entered Damascus, and my imagination would drift to the Syrian dishes, of which i have only tried kibbeh 

Then I get lost again in my thoughts about the rough, cold streets of Berlin. Every time I visit Berlin, I feel the need for a heavy coat, which is not a good sign because the streets that don’t give you warmth, of course, don’t love you, but there’s something that makes me want to visit it despite its coldness. 

Then Egypt takes me out for a night in its endless streets, with all its misery. This misery is similar to Gaza’s. And Amman, I feel that the streets of Amman are very narrow and noisy, and I only feel at ease in its alleys because they try to be true to themselves. 

Then, my friends and I gather in a café that’s less than ordinary on a destroyed road, complaining and cursing the distances and the checkpoints, cursing Gaza with all the love we have for it. And then what? Then we return with nothing, except that we carry our disappointments and love that defeats us repeatedly because we know that even if we leave these lands, we’ll remain strangers wherever we go.

I want all those small things that used to make my heart happy: falafel from Sousi in downtown, hummus from Al-Khazandar, the old café by the Saraya and the sea. The whole sea. I don’t want another place, but all of this is gone!

Then the sound of the bombs returns, making you hate everything, even yourself. I don’t want anyone to feel sad about everything I’ve said because, at this time, emotions have become so cheap. Everything has changed and become fake. I feel like I want to escape from everything, not because I can’t face it, but because everything happening now is simply ridiculous.