Wednesday 11/10/2023

Cold stings. After many attempts at falling asleep and overcoming the sounds of explosions, the cold stings you so that you don’t miss out on the entire scene that is happening to you. Now: a new massacre in the Karamah Towers in Gaza. People are crying out for ambulances but the area is still being bombarded. News of people who have charred, without anyone reaching them; the bombardment hasn’t stopped and white phosphorus and concussion bombs are perishing  our bodies. 

At this moment, with the cold and my chest pain, together with the bombing of Al-Rasheed Street, I am reminded of the sea. Every winter, I begin to feel something like chest cracks with the cold and I’ve never known the reason behind this pain despite running many tests. Al-Rasheed Street, which overlooks the sea and is called the corniche and which is the only haven for the residents of Gaza, is being fiercely bombarded.

Do you have a sea? 

The cafe by the sea that brought us together with friends for years, that witnessed our rising voices, our shouts, our laughter, our tears, our complaints, the secret dates of lovers and the first time you learn to hold the hand of the girl you love for the sea to protect you — all, are bombed.

Between each word I write, I hear the sound of an explosion and as I write, I receive a message from my friend Mohammad from Nuseirat, the four houses around my house have been threatened and the entire neighborhood has been displaced. Between each moment there is death and displacement.

And our friend wonders who turned the schools into shelters. Schools, despite their educational purposes, and especially the UNRWA schools in which the residents seek shelter, are but another face of the occupation, the occupation of knowledge, and division. It distinguishes those who were displaced from their 1948 lands to Gaza through a different uniform, injects the curriculum with poison and prevents students from expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause in any form. The occupation is not satisfied with military control; it tries to also exert its control on knowledge in order to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Seventy-four years of occupation. I was born in 1996 and I haven’t fallen into the trap of the occupation of knowledge.