Final spring I received 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 concerning the conflict. “A book?” I believed. I’d learn loads of poetry and diary-like accounts, however how anybody in Gaza might at that second discover the time, vitality, and materials sources to jot down a e-book was past me.
Muhammad al-Zaqzouq was a longtime author earlier than this mission, the creator of a prizewinning poetry assortment, Betrayed by the Soothsayers, quick tales, and common e-book and movie critiques and opinion items for magazines and journals. He was additionally answerable for working an in depth community of neighborhood libraries on the Tamer Institute for Neighborhood Schooling, a Palestinian group that works with kids, younger individuals, and caregivers throughout Palestine to advertise studying, present secure and nurturing environments for studying, and encourage self-expression via the humanities. Muhammad, in different phrases, believed within the transformative energy of literature.
The title of his e-book mission says as a lot, although we haven’t but settled on a passable translation. I Write, it declares, To not turn into a monster. Or: To withstand savagery. Or, longer: Lest I succumb to an animal-like depravity. Muhammad’s choice 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 drive 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 to 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 buddies and relations. 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 instantly 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 conflict 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 at all times 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 method for a brand new north-south artery. We wrangled with them for years, then ultimately gave up and acquired flats of our personal elsewhere. With that my mom needed to abandon her dream that each one her kids would reside collectively in a conventional household residence.
The morning of October 7, 2023, I awoke at 6:30 AM to the ear-splitting sound of rockets. My spouse, Ula, and I lived with our youngsters, 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 throughout the conflict of 2021—insisted we couldn’t keep the place we had been. So we referred to as a cab to the household home within the Khan Younis camp. By the point we received there, all my brothers had already arrived.
Our concern set in earlier than any Israeli response, however it was nicely based. We might think about what the upcoming conflict—as a result of conflict, inevitably, was on its method—would appear to be. 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 night time Israel was bombarding Khan Younis, like in every single place else within the Gaza Strip, nearly with out interruption. There have been greater than 5 distinct explosions per hour, the nearer the louder. Quickly newscasters had been asserting the mounting demise toll. Report after report advised of entire households worn out. These early stories had been startling and merciless; later, as we grew to become accustomed to listening to them, they had been lowered to mere particulars, drops in an ocean of ache.
Making ready for mattress that night, we divided ourselves up: one room for every of the 4 brothers and their respective households. We had 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 house blocks recurrently crumbled beneath Israeli air strikes like biscuits. My father joked that if we had been bombed and the asbestos panels caved in, at the very least they wouldn’t kill us: “You can’t say the same of reinforced concrete!”
That night time we tried to sleep, Ula and the children on the mattress and I on the ground. The youngsters dozed off shortly, 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 saved me on edge. Quickly after I lastly dropped off, a deafening blast woke everyone in the home, this time coming from contained in the camp. Within the morning we realized that the strike had killed an entire 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 night time, funerals throughout the day.
The home was crammed. Often 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 became heated exchanges. Our materials circumstances had been steadily worsening. The municipal water provide, which in strange occasions got here on for a number of hours a day, solely reached us twice every week. Electrical energy, which previous to the conflict switched on and off each eight hours, was reduce off altogether. Not like 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 rest room or kitchen. A visit to the bathroom required cautious planning—you needed to test there was at the very least a pitcher of water put aside, in addition to rest room paper—and I typically tried to restrict myself to going as soon as a day.
Within the second week of the conflict we began filling up jerrycans on the adjoining UNRWA faculty, the place 1000’s of individuals from Gaza Metropolis, the North, and the world 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 individuals staying there: they had been secure, I believed, from Israeli bombardment; they’d electrical energy and lighting at night time; and so they had been all collectively in a single place, which I assumed would make them really feel much less afraid. Then I noticed inside.
Individuals crammed each nook of the constructing. Those that hadn’t discovered a spot within the school rooms and hallways had pitched their tents within the yards, the shaded areas, and even across the packed bathrooms, the place we had been heading to refill our jerrycans. The scent 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 lady got here in slowly and effortfully, rapped laborious 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 night time at all times appeared extra brutal than the day. There have been extra raids then, and within the silence the bombs sounded louder and felt greater. I attempted to go to mattress early and rise up early, depart the home as shortly as doable, and sit on our entrance step or within the grocer’s throughout the road. Sitting outdoors meant being within the coronary heart of the conflict. It meant listening to individuals’s tales, to hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands 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 test in on buddies we seemed via the Fb pages and WhatsApp teams the place individuals posted updates concerning 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: throughout the 2014 conflict, each time I opened Fb I’d study that one other buddy had died.
One night time information arrived that greater than 5 hundred individuals 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 buddies had been killed. I’d met Mohammed Sami Qaraiqa—or simply Mohammed Sami, as he preferred us to name him—via my work on the Tamer Institute. A energetic, clever, charming younger man and an artist via and thru, he labored on all types 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 concerning the tales we’d gotten from writers. Within the night we’d proceed work on the mission at Bouquet, a preferred café on the seafront.
Earlier than the conflict we revealed a brief comedian of Mohammed’s on-line referred to as “Don’t Worry,” concerning the fixed energy cuts throughout the Strip. It circulated extensively. Just lately he’d advised me that he was about to complete another tales, together with one concerning the map of Palestine and the nationwide anthem during which a singing baby became a star. Now it appeared that Mohammed—who had at all times seemed past Gaza’s immeasurable struggling and the partitions that imprisoned it—had himself turn into a shining star. The information of his demise crammed me with a dumb, inflexible grief. I remained speechless, in a pale, twilight state, as if I’d instantly 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 had been in a brand new chapter of the conflict, 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 via Khan Younis alongside Camp Road. The jeeps and automobiles of workers of UNRWA and different worldwide companies and NGOs, just like the Crimson Cross and Médécins sans frontières—who’re normally knowledgeable upfront via particular channels, to allow them to evacuate hazard zones early—had been adopted by strange individuals 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 autos: blankets, mattresses, jerrycans, cooking utensils. They had been heading for schools-turned-shelters that had been already full of individuals displaced from east of Khan Younis Metropolis. Quickly the roads had been blocked with individuals searching for locations to remain. The luckier ones had relations or buddies in Khan Younis; the remaining both needed to courageous the overcrowding within the faculties or lease flats for inflated sums. Some even rented outlets and warehouses to sleep in.
Among the many new arrivals had 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 kids. I’d at all times felt an affinity with them: Abu Haytham was a kindhearted, honest, and principled man in his fifties; Imm Haytham was thoughtful, charming, and at all times beautiful firm. However once they arrived in an overstuffed taxi after a comparatively quick 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 method 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 drive not like something we’d ever seen. The bombing was so intense and so loud we thought the smoke and mud 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 world. 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 harm could not have been deadly, they stated, his son had probably bled to demise and due to this fact needed to be thought of useless.
For weeks the daddy refused to simply accept his son had died earlier than he might say goodbye. Touching a misplaced cherished one’s face, strolling of their funeral procession, scattering a handful of sand on their grave: these rituals assist us make our peace with demise. 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 better than standard, and the humanitarian disaster was worsening. We’d 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 received some three kilos of bread, sufficient for one meal. There was a separate, hours-long queue to refill a couple of liters of consuming water, and yet one more for water we might use within the kitchen and loo—limitless hours of ready and jostling, shouting and arguing.
Individuals appeared extra aggressive. They had been already frightened, however the disaster had injected anger and jitteriness into the ambiance. Probably the most trivial verbal disagreement simply became a brawl. Standing in strains of depressing individuals, we witnessed yelling, fists flying, blood drawn, even bones damaged.
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Residents of Khan Younis lining up for bread, October 15, 2023
If our days consisted of working in circles and ready in limitless queues, our nights had been filled with the sounds of bombs and sirens, the smells of explosives, the sights of frightened faces and trembling palms. One night time, after Ula and the children had been already asleep, I heard a panicked commotion out on the street: toes thundering, individuals shouting and gasping. I jumped off the bed and made my method outdoors with my elder brother. Entire households had been working, moms carrying kids 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 world was about to be bombed.
Nimsawi was hardly 150 meters from the household home. Within the Nineteen Nineties, after returning to Gaza within the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority constructed a dozen or so house blocks there, together with quite a lot of different residential developments. I’ve vivid recollections of going there with the opposite native youngsters 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 enticing and orderly than the slim alleyways and tin- and asbestos-roofed homes the place we lived. Through the second intifada the neighborhood was hit laborious, pummeled from Israeli positions only a kilometer or so away. One Israeli assault destroyed two whole 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, awoke. I can not describe the look in his eyes. He was overwhelmed by concern and I might solely try to reassure him, however it was ineffective: he knew nicely what was happening, 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 whole shut household, my aunt and grandmother, who lived collectively, and Abu Haytham’s household. Each time a airplane glided by overhead all of us froze and stared at each other uncomprehendingly. An hour glided by and no assault got here. Those that had been standing up started to get drained. The room appeared impossibly tiny for thus many individuals. One other hour glided by; nothing occurred. We had been all sleepy, however for a very long time no one 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’d be safer there if the bombers lastly got here.
The risk to Nimsawi was a warning. My older brother and I began to wonder if we had 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 not possible 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 an extended 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 outdoors, the place we noticed a younger man working barefoot down the center of the road with one hand clasped to his neck, which was dripping with blood. Individuals had 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 airplane and landed only a hundred meters from our home, injuring pedestrians. It brought on a flurry of tension and confusion. Why had been the Israelis sending a reconnaissance craft to bomb an empty patch of floor? We had been nonetheless speculating when the planes returned the subsequent afternoon. I used to be standing outdoors the entrance door ready for somebody to open it when a missile instantly exploded with such drive I believed 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 kids screaming. This was the primary time we had skilled a bombing so shut by.
As soon as we’d begun to recuperate from the shock, I advised my brothers and my father that it was too harmful for us all to remain the place we had 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 baggage, 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 motive force took to indicate up I began to have second ideas, which I pushed apart. After we received into the automotive, my household gathered round us as in the event that they had been bidding farewell to a cherished one who was leaving for a distant nation. I willed them to return 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 had been lined on each side by bombed-out homes and piles of rubble and particles. After we ultimately arrived, our neighbors who’d stayed put had been sitting outdoors beneath the awning. I attempted to disregard their gloating smirks as I unloaded our baggage. The reduction as we stepped throughout the edge was overwhelming. Ula let loose an extended, weary sigh of nostalgia. Our residence felt heat and secure. After we hurried into the lavatory and turned on the faucets, the water gushed out, highly effective and scorching.
Ula took the kids, who hadn’t had a scorching bathe for days, straight into the lavatory to clean. I went downstairs to the grocery store’s to purchase tea, sage, biscuits, cigarettes, and tubs of cheese. After I received again to the flat, I discovered the kids freshly bathed and relaxed. For a couple of moments it felt like we’d woken up from a nightmare.
And but because the night time fell I used to be stunned by a strong sense of foreboding. I attempted to distract myself by flicking via 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 night time, that the battery would final half an hour at most, that we’d be caught at midnight, that our telephones could be useless, and that the sound of the bombing would drive us out of our minds with concern. Ula didn’t wish to countenance any of it, however lastly she agreed, dissatisfied 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 night time was riskier. As we waited I wanted 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 had 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 automotive on the empty highway—a simple goal. Each second felt like a brush with demise.
Finally we made it. The household was amazed to see us. One after the other, everyone 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 night time. We wished the night time would by no means arrive, that the times would roll over into each other with out interruption, not as a result of they had been quieter or the bombing much less fierce however as a result of at the very least within the daytime we might transfer round and busy ourselves with our routines. At night time there was nothing to distract us.
I used to be preparing for mattress when an enormous explosion, shut by, once more despatched the roof flying into the air and again, overlaying us in mud and fragments of cement. I ran to the terrified kids, took Baraa’s hand, and pulled him shut. His coronary heart was pounding so laborious and his respiratory was so intense that it felt like an electrical present was surging via him. I believed the fear 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.
After we reached my aunt’s we discovered a crowd of individuals there. Civil protection officers had been ordering her to evacuate the home and depart the world. Nonetheless carrying Baraa, I ran down the road towards our cousins’ home, round 150 meters from ours. After I received there I noticed I used to be carrying 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 received there earlier than me—I had missed them at midnight. The home was bursting on the seams. Greater than ten households’ price of relations and neighbors had evacuated and are available right here for shelter.
Relieved that Ula and the children had been secure, I pulled myself collectively and requested a number of the males standing outdoors what was happening. Apparently a reconnaissance airplane had dropped a missile instantly on the home of considered one of our relations. 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 individuals inside didn’t notice their home had been focused till they went outdoors to ask round. They had been terrified: everybody is aware of that when a reconnaissance craft targets a home, bombers quickly observe 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 properties. We went inside. Everyone 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 properties. “Thirty years I worked to be able to build that house,” stated considered one of my father’s relations. “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 night time. We saved the radio on, quickly listening to stories that Israeli planes had bombed a café within the middle of Khan Younis that was getting used as a makeshift refuge, killing over thirty individuals. The sound of bombing would barely cease for a couple of minutes earlier than resuming even louder and extra closely. It continued till almost 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 had been relations I used to be used to seeing for a couple of hours at household gatherings, earlier than we every returned residence. Now we had been mendacity side-by-side beneath one roof, introduced collectively by our concern for ourselves, our properties, and our youngsters’s futures.
Round six within the morning my father and brothers awoke, adopted by our different relations and neighbors. My father and brothers determined we should always return to test on the home as quickly because the solar rose. After I ventured outdoors, I used to be assaulted by the sight of a donkey sprawled useless 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 demise was imminent, that anyone of us might have met the identical destiny. It was the third week of the conflict.
