Final spring I acquired an e mail from the Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli asking if I had time to translate some work by a Gazan colleague of hers who was writing a e book in regards to the warfare. “A book?” I assumed. I’d learn loads of poetry and diary-like accounts, however how anybody in Gaza might at that second discover the time, power, and materials sources to jot down a e book was past me.
Muhammad al-Zaqzouq was a longtime author earlier than this challenge, the writer of a prizewinning poetry assortment, Betrayed by the Soothsayers, brief tales, and common e book and movie critiques and opinion items for magazines and journals. He was additionally liable for operating an in depth community of neighborhood libraries on the Tamer Institute for Group Schooling, a Palestinian group that works with youngsters, younger folks, and caregivers throughout Palestine to advertise studying, present protected and nurturing environments for studying, and encourage self-expression by way of the humanities. Muhammad, in different phrases, believed within the transformative energy of literature.
The title of his e book challenge says as a lot, although we haven’t but settled on a passable translation. I Write, it declares, To not change into a monster. Or: To withstand savagery. Or, longer: Lest I succumb to an animal-like depravity. Muhammad’s determination to jot down is a refusal of the premise of this genocide.
As I’ve translated extra of Muhammad’s work, I’ve come to understand the power of this impulse extra clearly. Writing, he tells us in his emails, connects him to the world. His work-in-progress is an intimate account of his expertise of Israel’s try and annihilate Gaza, narrating not solely his each day struggles to outlive but additionally the transformation of his household ties, his friendships, and his relationship with himself. He works on his manuscript diligently, sending every new batch of writing to Adania, who edits it after which passes it on to me to translate. I nonetheless can’t fathom how Muhammad manages to do all this whereas residing in a tent with irregular entry to electrical energy, and seemingly spending most of his waking hours standing in line for bread, water, and different necessities.
For the reason that genocide started, Muhammad and his household have needed to relocate seven occasions and misplaced many pals and kin. Writing on January 21, he advised me he felt a “cautious happiness” that the bloodshed had stopped for now. However the cease-fire, he added, had additionally immediately precipitated an “intensified reckoning with everything that has been happening for these last 470 days.” The beneath excerpt provides some sense of the magnitude of that reckoning.—Katharine Halls
For the primary month of the warfare my household sheltered collectively in the home the place I used to be born. It was a humble residence within the Khan Younis refugee camp, with a flat asbestos-sheet roof, the place my mother and father lived with my two sisters. I had grown up there, within the camp’s streets and alleyways, and visits all the time introduced again recollections of adolescence, its blossom of recent experiences. My three brothers and I had lengthy needed to rebuild the home with a number of tales, one for every of us, however the municipality refused: the home, they stated, was slated to be eliminated to make manner for a brand new north-south artery. We wrangled with them for years, then ultimately gave up and purchased flats of our personal elsewhere. With that my mom needed to abandon her dream that every one her youngsters would reside collectively in a standard household residence.
The morning of October 7, 2023, I awakened at 6:30 AM to the ear-splitting sound of rockets. My spouse, Ula, and I lived with our kids, Baraa, Jawad, and Basel, in a flat within the Hamad Metropolis housing improvement, within the northwest of Khan Younis. Quickly we heard the information from neighbors: there was a shock, large-scale assault underway on the Israeli settlements and army positions adjoining to the Gaza Strip. On the cellphone, my older brother—whose family had miraculously survived Israeli bombing through the warfare of 2021—insisted we couldn’t keep the place we have been. So we referred to as a cab to the household home within the Khan Younis camp. By the point we acquired there, all my brothers had already arrived.
Our concern set in earlier than any Israeli response, however it was effectively based. We might think about what the upcoming warfare—as a result of warfare, inevitably, was on its manner—would seem like. Watching TV that first day, we awaited the roar of planes and the rumble of explosions. We didn’t have to attend lengthy: by that evening Israel was bombarding Khan Younis, like in every single place else within the Gaza Strip, just about with out interruption. There have been greater than 5 distinct explosions per hour, the nearer the louder. Quickly newscasters have been asserting the mounting dying toll. Report after report advised of entire households worn out. These early reviews have been startling and merciless; later, as we grew to become accustomed to listening to them, they have been decreased to mere particulars, drops in an ocean of ache.
Getting ready for mattress that night, we divided ourselves up: one room for every of the 4 brothers and their respective households. We have been afraid to be sheltering beneath an asbestos roof; for some cause it was an article of religion that concrete roofs withstood bombardment higher, though concrete condo blocks usually crumbled beneath Israeli air strikes like biscuits. My father joked that if we have been bombed and the asbestos panels caved in, at the least they wouldn’t kill us: “You can’t say the same of reinforced concrete!”
That evening we tried to sleep, Ula and the children on the mattress and I on the ground. The youngsters dozed off rapidly, exhausted after a day of adrenaline, and Ula wasn’t far behind them, however the whine of low-flying reconnaissance craft and the intermittent roar of bombers stored me on edge. Quickly after I lastly dropped off, a deafening blast woke all people in the home, this time coming from contained in the camp. Within the morning we realized that the strike had killed a complete household; a mom and youngsters had been pulled from the rubble in items. Their funeral handed our home on its method to the cemetery. It set the sample for the times that adopted: huge explosions at evening, funerals through the day.
The home was crammed. Normally it was a consolation to assemble as a household, like we did on holidays, however now life collectively was getting extra anxious by the day. Minor upsets was heated exchanges. Our materials circumstances have been steadily worsening. The municipal water provide, which in bizarre occasions got here on for a number of hours a day, solely reached us twice per week. Electrical energy, which previous to the warfare switched on and off each eight hours, was lower off altogether. In contrast to a few of our neighbors, we didn’t have further barrels to retailer water; those we had held sufficient for 2 or three days on the most. For the remainder of the week there was no water to make use of within the toilet or kitchen. A visit to the bathroom required cautious planning—you needed to examine there was at the least a pitcher of water put aside, in addition to rest room paper—and I usually tried to restrict myself to going as soon as a day.
Within the second week of the warfare we began filling up jerrycans on the adjoining UNRWA faculty, the place 1000’s of individuals from Gaza Metropolis, the North, and the realm east of Khan Younis had taken refuge, whether or not on their very own initiative or after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order on October 13. Earlier than my youthful brother, Hasan, and I made our first journey to the makeshift shelter, I’d discovered myself resenting the folks staying there: they have been protected, I assumed, from Israeli bombardment; they’d electrical energy and lighting at evening; and so they have been all collectively in a single place, which I assumed would make them really feel much less afraid. Then I noticed inside.
Folks crammed each nook of the constructing. Those that hadn’t discovered a spot within the lecture rooms and hallways had pitched their tents within the yards, the shaded areas, and even across the packed bogs, the place we have been heading to refill our jerrycans. The odor alone—an insufferable stench—assaulted you earlier than you even reached the door. Inside, determined males, ladies, and the aged jostled for house. The ground was filthy. At one level a portly older girl got here in slowly and effortfully, rapped exhausting on the cubicle door, and barked on the aged man inside to rush up. Quickly her agency and forthright method gave method to determined pleading. I needed to run residence, however Hasan satisfied me to maintain filling the cans whereas he ferried them again to the home to decant the water. It took an hour.
The evening all the time appeared extra brutal than the day. There have been extra raids then, and within the silence the bombs sounded louder and felt larger. I attempted to go to mattress early and stand up early, depart the home as rapidly as doable, and sit on our entrance step or within the grocer’s throughout the road. Sitting exterior meant being within the coronary heart of the warfare. It meant listening to folks’s tales, to tens of millions upon tens of millions of particulars, every of which tore out your coronary heart. The struggling was boundless. Questions raised threateningly at existence itself couldn’t be answered; bitter resentments spurted out and piled up.
To examine in on pals we seemed by way of the Fb pages and WhatsApp teams the place folks posted updates in regards to the state of affairs of their respective areas. We referred to as one another after we might. After I had Web entry I’d hesitate earlier than opening any of my social media accounts: through the 2014 warfare, each time I opened Fb I’d study that one other pal had died.
One evening information arrived that greater than 5 hundred folks had been massacred on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza Metropolis, which had been sheltering large numbers of displaced males, ladies, and youngsters. Entire households had been worn out. I sat with my father in entrance of the TV watching the footage. A man was gathering up items of our bodies, screaming, “These are my children in these plastic bags!”
After I checked the subsequent morning, it was as I had feared: the primary of my pals had been killed. I’d met Mohammed Sami Qaraiqa—or simply Mohammed Sami, as he appreciated us to name him—by way of my work on the Tamer Institute. A vigorous, clever, charming younger man and an artist by way of and thru, he labored on all kinds of initiatives on the institute, together with on a workforce that supported younger artists. I’d requested him to be part of Transit, the digital comics platform for which I’d obtained funding from the AM Qattan Basis in late 2022, and we frequently chatted in regards to the tales we’d gotten from writers. Within the night we’d proceed work on the challenge at Bouquet, a preferred café on the seafront.
Earlier than the warfare we printed a brief comedian of Mohammed’s on-line referred to as “Don’t Worry,” in regards to the fixed energy cuts throughout the Strip. It circulated broadly. Not too long ago he’d advised me that he was about to complete another tales, together with one in regards to the map of Palestine and the nationwide anthem wherein a singing baby was a star. Now it appeared that Mohammed—who had all the time seemed past Gaza’s immeasurable struggling and the partitions that imprisoned it—had himself change into a shining star. The information of his dying crammed me with a dumb, inflexible grief. I remained speechless, in a light, twilight state, as if I’d immediately dropped right into a deep gap the place no outstretched hand or rope might attain me.
In preparation for the bottom invasion within the following days, the Israeli military once more instructed residents of Gaza and the North to maneuver south of Wadi Gaza. Now we have been in a brand new chapter of the warfare, which might result in successive waves of displacement. Within the first wave tens of 1000’s of individuals got here from these two areas; we noticed them streaming by way of Khan Younis alongside Camp Avenue. The jeeps and automobiles of workers of UNRWA and different worldwide businesses and NGOs, just like the Purple Cross and Médécins sans frontières—who’re often knowledgeable upfront by way of particular channels, to allow them to evacuate hazard zones early—have been adopted by bizarre folks in pickup vans, buses, and all makes and sizes of automobiles.
It was a painful scene. Entire households had deserted their neighborhoods, villages, and camps within the north with no matter they’d managed to bundle into automobiles: blankets, mattresses, jerrycans, cooking utensils. They have been heading for schools-turned-shelters that have been already full of individuals displaced from east of Khan Younis Metropolis. Quickly the roads have been blocked with folks on the lookout for locations to remain. The luckier ones had kin or pals in Khan Younis; the remainder both needed to courageous the overcrowding within the colleges or lease flats for inflated sums. Some even rented retailers and warehouses to sleep in.
Among the many new arrivals have been Hasan’s in-laws. The entire household got here to remain: the daddy, the mom, three sons, and one other of their married daughters and her two youngsters. I’d all the time felt an affinity with them: Abu Haytham was a kindhearted, honest, and principled man in his fifties; Imm Haytham was thoughtful, charming, and all the time beautiful firm. However after they arrived in an overstuffed taxi after a comparatively brief journey, having spent a while sheltering in Al-Quds Hospital in Tall al-Hawa, they seemed awkward and unhappy. All of us did our greatest to allay their embarrassment and self-consciousness. Our residence was their residence, we advised them.
I used to be glad to have them there. Internet hosting one other household was a manner of sharing our concern and lightening its load. We’d sit down collectively within the evenings to hearken to the information. We watched collectively as large Israeli raids battered Rimal, within the coronary heart of Gaza Metropolis, with a power not like something we’d ever seen. The bombing was so intense and so loud we thought the smoke and dirt would explode out of the TV display. Bombers pounded the college campuses, ‘Umar al-Mukhtar Street, the Abu Mazen roundabout, and the al-Jawazat area, turning buildings to ash. Each wave of attacks caused so much destruction and killed so many people that we thought it must be the last.
The day after the annihilation of Rimal, Imm Haytham heard that a relative of hers had been martyred while returning to his flat there to collect a few things that had gotten left behind. When the bombardment began he was trapped inside. His father contacted the civil defense service, but they couldn’t even enter the realm. For 3 days he tried to succeed in his son, till the civil protection lastly referred to as to say they’d seen a physique within the flat, beneath a wall that had fallen in—although they couldn’t get to it. Though the preliminary damage might not have been deadly, they stated, his son had probably bled to dying and subsequently needed to be thought-about lifeless.
For weeks the daddy refused to just accept his son had died earlier than he might say goodbye. Touching a misplaced liked one’s face, strolling of their funeral procession, scattering a handful of sand on their grave: these rituals assist us make our peace with dying. For the daddy, the son was lacking; he’d gone to the flat on an errand and may but return.
By now the inhabitants of Khan Younis was many occasions larger than typical, and the humanitarian disaster was worsening. We might take turns standing in line on the bakery on the finish of our avenue: my father would be a part of the queue after daybreak prayers and keep there until 10:00 AM, then my brother would take his place and keep till two, then my different brother would relieve him and wait till 5, after we lastly acquired some three kilos of bread, sufficient for one meal. There was a separate, hours-long queue to refill a number of liters of ingesting water, and yet one more for water we might use within the kitchen and toilet—countless hours of ready and jostling, shouting and arguing.
Folks appeared extra aggressive. They have been already frightened, however the disaster had injected anger and jitteriness into the ambiance. Essentially the most trivial verbal disagreement simply was a brawl. Standing in strains of depressing folks, we witnessed yelling, fists flying, blood drawn, even bones damaged.
Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu/Getty Photos
Residents of Khan Younis lining up for bread, October 15, 2023
If our days consisted of operating in circles and ready in countless queues, our nights have been filled with the sounds of bombs and sirens, the smells of explosives, the sights of frightened faces and trembling fingers. One evening, after Ula and the children have been already asleep, I heard a panicked commotion out on the street: toes thundering, folks shouting and gasping. I jumped off the bed and made my manner exterior with my elder brother. Entire households have been operating, moms carrying youngsters and fathers carrying belongings, all panting and muttering incomprehensibly. After I stopped a person to ask what was occurring, he advised me the Israeli military had referred to as one of many residents of the Nimsawi neighborhood and advised them to evacuate instantly as a result of the realm was about to be bombed.
Nimsawi was hardly 150 meters from the household home. Within the Nineties, after returning to Gaza within the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority constructed a dozen or so condo blocks there, together with quite a few different residential developments. I’ve vivid recollections of going there with the opposite native children to play within the inexperienced, tree-shaded areas between the buildings. Again then it appeared so completely different from the refugee camp, a lot extra engaging and orderly than the slender alleyways and tin- and asbestos-roofed homes the place we lived. Throughout the second intifada the neighborhood was hit exhausting, pummeled from Israeli positions only a kilometer or so away. One Israeli assault destroyed two total blocks.
My brother and I hurried again inside. The uproar had woken up Ula. I advised her we wanted to get transferring and take the children to my maternal aunt’s home comparatively shut by, which had a cement roof. Simply then my six-year-old, Baraa, awakened. I can not describe the look in his eyes. He was overwhelmed by concern and I might solely try and reassure him, however it was ineffective: he knew effectively what was occurring, higher than any baby ought to. I didn’t have time to calm him down anyway—I simply took him by the hand, picked up our five-year-old, Jawad, with my different arm, and dashed out of the home. Ula was behind me with our youngest, Basel. All of us made a run for it.
At my aunt’s home we gathered in the lounge. There have been greater than fifty of us: my total shut household, my aunt and grandmother, who lived collectively, and Abu Haytham’s household. Each time a aircraft glided by overhead all of us froze and stared at each other uncomprehendingly. An hour glided by and no assault got here. Those that have been standing up started to get drained. The room appeared impossibly tiny for thus many individuals. One other hour glided by; nothing occurred. We have been all sleepy, however for a very long time no person was ready to return to the household home. My father went residence after three hours, then my brothers and I adopted. Our wives and youngsters stayed at my aunt’s home, sure that they might be safer there if the bombers lastly got here.
The menace to Nimsawi was a warning. My older brother and I began to wonder if we have been any safer in Khan Younis Camp than again in Hamad Metropolis. It was comforting to be collectively, however the water disaster within the camp had reached its worst, and it was rising unattainable to get by with so many people in the home. I discovered myself longing to return to our flat.
Someday I made up my thoughts. The Web had simply been restored after a protracted outage, and I used to be sitting with my father, my brothers, and Abu Haytham catching up on the information after we heard a deafening explosion above our heads. We leapt up and rushed exterior, the place we noticed a younger man operating barefoot down the center of the road with one hand clasped to his neck, which was dripping with blood. Folks have been standing on each side of the road, speechless and grim. Within the younger man’s eyes there was an odd combination of all-possessing concern, intense ache, and embarrassment on the stares of the onlookers.
The rocket, we realized, had been fired by a reconnaissance aircraft and landed only a hundred meters from our home, injuring pedestrians. It induced a flurry of hysteria and confusion. Why have been the Israelis sending a reconnaissance craft to bomb an empty patch of floor? We have been nonetheless speculating when the planes returned the subsequent afternoon. I used to be standing exterior the entrance door ready for somebody to open it when a missile immediately exploded with such power I assumed it was proper above my head. The signal of my brother’s stationery store—his bid to flee unemployment—got here clattering to the bottom. Inside, everybody was crying hysterically: the explosion had whipped the roof panels into the air and despatched them crashing again into place, showering mud and items of cement and asbestos. All the home smelled of explosives. We rushed to my aunt’s, the youngsters screaming. This was the primary time we had skilled a bombing so shut by.
As soon as we’d begun to get better from the shock, I advised my brothers and my father that it was too harmful for us all to remain the place we have been. Three of us brothers every had a flat in Hamad Metropolis, and I proposed dividing ourselves up between them, however my father and grandmother refused. Lastly I made a decision to strike out alone and take my household again to our flat. Ula and I packed our luggage, my mom pulled collectively three kilos of flour and a few tinned meals, and I referred to as a taxi. Within the ten minutes the driving force took to indicate up I began to have second ideas, which I pushed apart. Once we acquired into the automobile, my household gathered round us as in the event that they have been bidding farewell to a liked one who was leaving for a distant nation. I willed them to come back with us, however the taxi pulled away.
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The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, October 16, 2023
The roads that led again to Hamad Metropolis have been lined on each side by bombed-out homes and piles of rubble and particles. Once we ultimately arrived, our neighbors who’d stayed put have been sitting exterior beneath the awning. I attempted to disregard their gloating smirks as I unloaded our luggage. The aid as we stepped throughout the edge was overwhelming. Ula let loose a protracted, weary sigh of nostalgia. Our residence felt heat and protected. Once we hurried into the toilet and turned on the faucets, the water gushed out, highly effective and sizzling.
Ula took the youngsters, who hadn’t had a sizzling bathe for days, straight into the toilet to clean. I went downstairs to the grocery store’s to purchase tea, sage, biscuits, cigarettes, and tubs of cheese. After I acquired again to the flat, I discovered the youngsters freshly bathed and relaxed. For a number of moments it felt like we’d woken up from a nightmare.
And but because the evening fell I used to be shocked by a strong sense of foreboding. I attempted to distract myself by flicking by way of my cellphone and speaking to the children, however the misgivings solely intruded extra forcefully. I turned to Ula.
“I want to go back to the camp,” I stated. “To my parents’.”
She thought I used to be joking. When she realized I used to be critical, she was surprised.
“But why? Things are better here. Let’s stay. Please.”
I attempted to order my ideas. I advised her I’d realized that we didn’t have an influence supply to maintain the lights on at evening, that the battery would final half an hour at most, that we’d be caught at midnight, that our telephones can be lifeless, and that the sound of the bombing would drive us out of our minds with concern. Ula didn’t need to countenance any of it, however lastly she agreed, upset and glum, to return. We hadn’t even been residence three hours.
I ordered one other taxi for double the worth I’d simply paid: transferring round at evening was riskier. As we waited I needed I’d by no means left the household home. I used to be dwarfed by my concern, feeling smaller and extra alone with each minute that glided by. When the taxi arrived a neighbor requested the place we have been going. I advised him I’d left one thing vital behind at my mother and father’ and couldn’t depart my spouse and the children alone to return for it. He was clearly unconvinced, however I didn’t care. Planes roared overhead and ours was the one automobile on the empty street—a simple goal. Each second felt like a brush with dying.
Finally we made it. The household was amazed to see us. One after the other, all people started to snicker. “I knew you’d be back!” my older brother stated. “There’s nothing worse than being alone when you’re afraid. Much better to die in company!” I attempted to look braver than I felt. “It would have been too dark at the flat,” I advised them. “We’ll go back again once I change the battery.” Nobody was fooled. Again in our room, our our bodies collapsed from the stress. We did our greatest to disregard the explosions and shortly fell right into a deep sleep.
One other day got here, one other evening. We wished the evening would by no means arrive, that the times would roll over into each other with out interruption, not as a result of they have been quieter or the bombing much less fierce however as a result of at the least within the daytime we might transfer round and busy ourselves with our routines. At evening there was nothing to distract us.
I used to be preparing for mattress when a large explosion, shut by, once more despatched the roof flying into the air and again, masking us in mud and fragments of cement. I ran to the terrified youngsters, took Baraa’s hand, and pulled him shut. His coronary heart was pounding so exhausting and his respiratory was so intense that it felt like an electrical present was surging by way of him. I assumed the phobia may cease his coronary heart. I snatched him up, planning to make a run for my aunt’s home, and launched myself towards the door, adopted by Ula, Jawad, Basel, and my brothers and their households.
Once we reached my aunt’s we discovered a crowd of individuals there. Civil protection officers have been ordering her to evacuate the home and depart the realm. Nonetheless carrying Baraa, I ran down the road towards our cousins’ home, round 150 meters from ours. After I acquired there I spotted I used to be sporting just one shoe.
I couldn’t see Ula and the children behind me. After I went again to search for them, the crowds and the civil protection males wouldn’t let me previous, so I retraced my steps to our cousins’ place. Now I noticed that Ula, Jawad, Basel, and everybody else had acquired there earlier than me—I had missed them at midnight. The home was bursting on the seams. Greater than ten households’ value of kin and neighbors had evacuated and are available right here for shelter.
Relieved that Ula and the children have been protected, I pulled myself collectively and requested among the males standing exterior what was occurring. Apparently a reconnaissance aircraft had dropped a missile instantly on the home of one among our kin. It was the constructing instantly reverse ours, and residential to the grocery store’s the place I sat every morning. Reconnaissance missiles make extra noise than they do direct injury; when this one hit, the folks inside didn’t understand their home had been focused till they went exterior to ask round. They have been terrified: everybody is aware of that when a reconnaissance craft targets a home, bombers quickly comply with to scale back it to rubble.
An hour glided by and we waited for the subsequent strike, however nothing occurred. Our nerves relaxed ever so barely. The home was filled with households from all of the neighboring houses. We went inside. All people was surprised and afraid, however quickly fatigue took over and we divided ourselves up for mattress, the ladies and youngsters in a single flat and the lads in one other. There have been over twenty males, and none of us might get to sleep.
For some time we fell silent, then the dialog picked up once more and we began reminiscing about our houses. “Thirty years I worked to be able to build that house,” stated one among my father’s kin. “It was the whole family’s dream. I can’t bear the thought it might be destroyed. If we come out of this war safe and sound, and the house is still okay, I’ll slaughter a sheep and hand it out to the poor to give thanks to the Lord.”
It was a horrible evening. We stored the radio on, quickly listening to reviews that Israeli planes had bombed a café within the heart of Khan Younis that was getting used as a makeshift refuge, killing over thirty folks. The sound of bombing would barely cease for a couple of minutes earlier than resuming even louder and extra closely. It continued till practically daybreak. I pretended to be asleep, however I used to be trapped in a whirlwind of ideas. Who would have believed that this was how I’d be spending my nights? Subsequent to me have been kin I used to be used to seeing for a number of hours at household gatherings, earlier than we every returned residence. Now we have been mendacity side-by-side beneath one roof, introduced collectively by our concern for ourselves, our houses, and our kids’s futures.
Round six within the morning my father and brothers awakened, adopted by our different kin and neighbors. My father and brothers determined we must always return to examine on the home as quickly because the solar rose. After I ventured exterior, I used to be assaulted by the sight of a donkey sprawled lifeless on the bottom, killed by a bit of shrapnel from the bombing. Shock and concern erupted inside me. The donkey, I knew, belonged to one of many households taking shelter within the close by faculty. Seeing its blood-covered physique, I felt extra clearly and sharply than ever that dying was imminent, that anyone of us might have met the identical destiny. It was the third week of the warfare.
