Over the previous 20-odd years, I’ve written a collection of poems. I’ve saved them locked away in a folder, dreaming of publishing them accompanied by illustrations that might convey every poem to life. I wanted somebody to assist rework my phrases into highly effective photographs.
One October night, earlier this yr, I used to be scrolling by way of Instagram once I got here throughout a ravishing picture of Palestinian journalist Wael Dahdouh embracing his daughter.
It was the work of Mahasen al-Khateeb, one among Gaza’s most prolific artists. One submit led to a different and I quickly discovered myself pulled deep into her artwork.
Till that second, I had by no means heard of her. However the extra time I spent on her web page, the extra I felt a connection to her easy but highly effective and vibrant drawings. Like most of her followers, I felt the artwork Mahasen produced struck a chord deep inside. I later puzzled if it was time to retrieve my previous folder and rekindle the almost-forgotten dream of publishing my works. Maybe Mahasen may illustrate them?
I shortly made a word of her title on my cellphone and determined to achieve out as quickly because the conflict would finish, excited by the prospect of collaborating together with her.
Just some days later, on the evening of October 18, Israel launched an air strike and killed Mahasen. She is one among tens of artists, designers and documentary filmmakers Israel has killed within the final 14 months. Mahasen was within the north, in Jabalia, the place there was no media or prepared entry to help teams or meals and water.
Each loss of life is a tragedy with out measure. Mahasen was killed together with her total household; one other 20 individuals had been additionally slaughtered in Jabalia that very same evening. However Israeli bombs didn’t simply kill Mahasen; additionally they killed her artwork, her aspirations and her hopes – together with these of each single sufferer who was murdered together with her.
Per official statistics, greater than 45,000 Palestinian lives have been misplaced within the ongoing genocide. What this quantity doesn’t seize is the ripple impact each single loss of life has on the dwelling – on those that liked the sufferer, who relied on them, who discovered hope of their being. Reflecting on this actuality plunges the thoughts and coronary heart right into a painful rupture.
I didn’t know Mahasen, however was enormously affected by her loss of life. I can solely think about how those that knew felt.
What number of extra goals will perish on this conflict? What number of aspirations, scribbled within the margins of notebooks, jotted down in diaries, or tucked away in a quiet nook of the thoughts, will likely be decreased to nothing instantly? The bombs don’t solely shatter buildings and refugee camps. In addition they obliterate goals.
Desires of kids too younger to grasp. Desires of training in colleges fully eviscerated. Desires of jobs and careers. Desires of journey outdoors the slender streets of refugee camps buried beneath smoke and rubble. Desires of success of a small enterprise that collapsed within the blink of a watch. Desires of affection and companionship smothered by weddings postponed indefinitely or cancelled eternally.
We’re painfully conscious of all this loss of life. Life in Gaza is available in fragments, temporary moments that we attempt to grasp absolutely. We don’t plan as a result of we have no idea if there will likely be tomorrow.
And but, we nonetheless dream. We draw, write, love, and resist. Each smile we share, each story we inform, each poem we write, is an act of defiance, a declaration that, regardless of the destruction, life continues to beat in our hearts.
Our goals will not be grand or harmful. However by some means, they terrify our oppressors. They worry our goals as a result of we search freedom and persist in opposition to all odds. They worry our goals as a result of they problem the established order. However goals can’t be suppressed eternally, irrespective of how a lot blood is spilled.
As I now put my folder of poems again to the place I had saved it, part of me realises the necessity to seize each second earlier than it’s taken from us by a missile, a shell, or a bullet.
I proceed to dream of the day Gaza will rework from a battleground right into a vacation spot of magnificence, a metropolis that stands tall, having survived annihilation. And with me, all Palestinians proceed to dream of breaking free, even when that appears distant and unimaginable.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
