-Essay-
BEIRUT — Gaza awaits the ceasefire to take effect — It will be the end of the nightmare.
Eyes, ears, senses and limbs are looking towards Cairo, waiting for that moment the deal turns into reality.
Shall we rejoice?
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The people of Gaza have already begun to celebrate, they will resume their lives from where the monster stopped them. They will return to their homes, even those that have been destroyed. Loved ones will be reunited after a long separation, and far too much death.
They will hug each other with amputated arms, extinguished eyes, broken hearts and exhausted bodies. They will hug each other a lot, long and tightly, as if hugging is the only expression of survival, of life…
Shall we rejoice?
The Gazans have begun preparing for more funerals, counting the victims, searching for the missing… Is there a cemetery that can hold all these bodies, amputated legs, fingers and palms? Is there a cemetery in the world that can receive this number of bodies all at once? Can hearts bury all this sorrow and forever cover it with the dust of oblivion?
But should we rejoice?
15 months of tears
The Gazans have begun to recognize the features of their cities, towns and streets — and the features that have disappeared. Some many details gone, forever. Gaza from north to south is obliterated. Oh God, how can we ever get used to this amount of devastation?
Should we rejoice?
Gazans will remain in the open. They will set up tents on the rubble.
Oh God, whoever survived is a heavenly gift, a miracle worthy of prostration.
Oh God, whoever remains alive is reborn, despising death, defying the machines of so-called civilization and that timeless art of inventing methods of death and destruction.
Whoever remains alive will be more efficient in creating and protecting humanity than all the covenants, treaties and agreements we know.
The tears and blood have dried up
All who remain alive are a lesson to the monster of war, that souls are more solid than rocks, and that bodies cannot be uprooted, even in the face of the heaviest of your gunpowder boxes and tools of extermination.
Shall we rejoice?
The Gazans are now praying, they have been praying since October 7th, the prayer has been long and its arrival has taken too long.
The Gazans are now crying, they have been crying since October 7th, but the world has closed its ears. Fifteen months of crying until the tears and blood have dried up, and no one has wiped their tears or put their hands on their hearts to calm them down…
Joy? No.
Joy is not forbidden, but it is a joy deeply tinged with sorrow; a joy that came from the womb of oppression, not the womb of happiness, a joy without mercy, because it came from cruelty, a joy whose only taste is bitterness.
Why did all this happen? Who did this? For which god?
This joy cannot be a celebration of life. What is the meaning of life in the midst of all this death? This joy is not a celebration of survival. No one has survived, not even those who remain.
Should we rejoice?
I asked the question to Fidaa Ziad, my colleague from Gaza and she replied:
You know, since the beginning of this month, I have been thinking about the Fairuz song lyrics: “They forgot each other and were at ease;” also the words of Umm Kulthum: “Oh, how afraid my heart is of tomorrow”
Since the beginning of the war, the question has been ‘Why did all this happen? Who did this? For which god?’
Personally, I no longer have space inside me for joy. All the spaces that I had been preparing for joy are still occupied by sadness…
Fire of our pain
Gaza was the last occupier. It shackled me with chains of guilt, of a sense of nihilism. It locked me up inside a cell of helplessness, in which I am unable to do anything, neither to live for joy in my life nor to die to finally rest.
It was the voice of Hind Rajab, the little girl who was surrounded by the tank and called for help from the Red Crescent paramedic, then we heard the bullet that killed her.
Bury your dead and spread out in your land.
It was the face of Narmin Shaath, whose fetus and amputated foot were placed in a single box and buried next to her husband and children.
The pictures of Yamen, Kenan, Orkida and Karmel, the four slain children of the Gazan poet Alaa Al-Qatrawi.
These are the true images and stories, and hundreds of years would not be enough to extinguish the fire of our pain.
Oh great and mighty people of Gaza, bury your dead and spread out in your land, rejoice, because you are the victors, as long as the war was not able to annihilate you…
Bury your dead and continue your lives, do not wait for answers to explain what happened, do not blame or reproach, turn your backs on this despicable world, do not ask about the human conscience, you know that it died and was buried in an unknown land.
