From the War Diaries of Gaza

Gaza and Other Things

The night sky is a copper-orange sphere.
Is this Gaza?
Or a newly discovered planet — wilder, untamed?
My imagination, once pure, now runs rampant. I let it wander through corridors that lead to nowhere, certain only of reaching my extinguished desire.
Do not trust the easy climb to your dreams.
Do not trust the safe walk through the woods.
We are the voiceless victims of this endless noise.

December 31, 2024—The Final Day of the Year

War races forward, plunging into another year, dragging with it ruin, destruction, and more martyrs — of flesh and stone.
But this war is different. Unlike the ones before.
Here, love and war are separated by the thinnest of lines. A single softened letter. A brief dance before the ceasefire is declared.The last night of December — one of war, one of love — was terrifying.
I returned home at four a.m., the ceasefire had momentarily dimmed the chaos, though dozens had already fallen. I arrived at my new exile, weary, broken.
And in the fleeting, desperate hope of a lovesick fool, I wished for one thing —
Please, let the Wi-Fi still be working. . . . It is.
And her?
She must be asleep, otherwise she would have replied.
I scrolled through an old chat on WhatsApp, searching for something to ease my fear, my anxiety — something to drown out the roar of rockets and bombs.
Tonight, I search for you.
Honestly, it feels like a first date.
A night full of death and martyrs.
I stare at our old messages, smiling at her fragmented words, her teasing remarks, our clumsy attempts to hide our desires between rewritten lines.
I took a screenshot of one phrase — one line of love and longing.
I am obsessed with you.
In writing.
At midnight.
With every explosion that shatters the night, leaving more bodies in its wake.
Note: The time difference between Gaza and Montreal unsettles me.
The buzzing of the drone above haunts me.
Your modest clothing frustrates me sometimes — when we are alone, in the last quarter of the night.
I remember another moment, another conversation on Messenger.
There, I found a sigh. A tear. A smile with silent witnesses.
A memory I will dust off, so it shines as if it had just been born.
And I — a traveler to my own past, ascending faster than a cheetah, plummeting faster than a missile shaking the heart of the land.

The Moment

My senses ignite, burning with the scent of local apricots, clay-baked bread, gunpowder.
I love everything about you —
Even your gloom in the winter.
Even your unjustified anger at the war that shattered all your dreams.
Even your exhaustion within the fortress you call home.
When will you be freed from the taste of medicine, from the central heating, from the scent of damp wood in winter?
Before I was displaced to Rafah, I could still write — about you, about war, about tragedy.
To convince my heart that I still exist.
That day, on Instagram, I found a single word — telling me you were doing fine.
That day, the wind was my compass, swaying with longing.
And sometimes we are forced to endure —
To sit through self-improvement lectures, to listen to prophetic prayers with bowed hearts, to uncover the secrets of the battles we waged, surrendering to our glorious defeats.

Freedom Has Only One Meaning for the Tormented

I do not dream of more than dignity —
A dignity worth fighting for, one that teaches me the essence of love, one that teaches me grace.
And in the presence of a love long dead, I will not forget what happens in our streets.
I will tell you stories —
So that you may bear witness with me to this absurdity we call war.

The Moment

The warplanes bomb a house overflowing with civilians.
Ambulances rush toward the wreckage, fire trucks trailing behind.
By the time they arrive, only one survivor remains — a mother, screaming.
She searches the faces of the crowd, eyes frantic, scanning the rescuers, the medics, the firemen — searching for someone, anyone, who can help her.
She seizes one of them by the arm.
“Please, sir — my daughter was in the shower when they bombed the house . . . for God’s sake, cover her as you pull her pieces out . . .”
The shelling and bombing dragged on.
A tower collapsed, leaving behind nothing but rubble, dust, and bodies.
Nearby, a tin-roofed house partially caved in. Ambulances swarmed the scene, retrieving the dead, carrying the wounded — children among them. The oldest younger than ten.
Among the dead was a boy, torn to pieces.
His father hailed a taxi, chasing after the ambulances bound for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, clinging to the desperate hope that his son was among the injured, not the dead.
At the emergency entrance and amid the chaos, he ran — his eyes darting, his breath shallow, searching for his child.
Then he saw them.
The paramedics, lifting shattered flesh, wrapping it in a white cloth, preparing it for the morgue — until the time for burial.
The father rushed toward them.
Hysterical, he gathered the scattered remains, laid them on the ground, and stripped off his shirt.
With a strangled voice, he cried out:
“Do you see this, Biden? Do you see, Netanyahu?”
He raised his hands to the sky.

“I intend to pray over the remains of my children, for the sake of God Almighty”

“Allahu Akbar”
As he collapsed to the ground over the mangled body.
The crowd stood frozen, transfixed by the horrors of the scene.
“What more do you want me to say?”
The war continues until all their goals are met.
And us? We, the exhausted, the disoriented, the ones left wandering through the wreckage — what of our goals?
We do not know.
Should we flee again? Leave our home behind?
I do not know.
But I know one thing —
I will not leave.
I remember my neighbor, Mohammed, Nashat’s brother.
When the bombing intensified, when the sky turned black with smoke, he ran — fled his house in terror.
In his panic, he forgot his child.
Left behind in the wardrobe.
Dangling along with the dresses.
He turned back.
Rushed inside.
Found his son, still breathing, still alive — while the rest of his family lay buried beneath the rubble, swallowed by the earth.

War, My Dear, Is a Curse

It has struck us, and we have nothing left —
Nothing but patience.
Nothing but writing.
We write to survive this unbearable reality.
A reality with no face or form.

Last Night, I Wrote a Few Pieces

I hope you will review the paragraphs, the punctuation, the repeated words.
Discuss with me the nominal sentences, and how we might shift the past tense into the present —
So that the events remain alive, never-ending.

Translation from the Arabic