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 via Instagram after I got here throughout a good looking picture of Palestinian journalist Wael Dahdouh embracing his daughter.
It was the work of Mahasen al-Khateeb, one in all Gaza’s most prolific artists. One put up 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 might illustrate them?
I shortly made a word of her title on my cellphone and determined to succeed in out as quickly because the warfare would finish, excited by the prospect of collaborating along with her.
Just some days later, on the night time of October 18, Israel launched an air strike and killed Mahasen. She is one in all 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 demise is a tragedy with out measure. Mahasen was killed along with her whole household; one other 20 folks had been additionally slaughtered in Jabalia that very same night time. However Israeli bombs didn’t simply kill Mahasen; in addition they killed her artwork, her aspirations and her hopes – together with these of each single sufferer who was murdered along 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 demise has on the residing – on those that cherished 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 drastically affected by her demise. I can solely think about how those that knew felt.
What number of extra goals will perish on this warfare? What number of aspirations, scribbled within the margins of notebooks, jotted down in diaries, or tucked away in a quiet nook of the thoughts, shall be lowered to nothing right away? The bombs don’t solely shatter buildings and refugee camps. Additionally they obliterate goals.
Goals of kids too younger to grasp. Goals of training in colleges utterly eviscerated. Goals of jobs and careers. Goals of journey exterior the slim streets of refugee camps buried beneath smoke and rubble. Goals of success of a small enterprise that collapsed within the blink of an eye fixed. Goals of affection and companionship smothered by weddings postponed indefinitely or cancelled ceaselessly.
We’re painfully conscious of all this demise. Life in Gaza is available in fragments, transient moments that we attempt to grasp absolutely. We don’t plan as a result of we have no idea if there shall 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 usually are not grand or harmful. However someway, they terrify our oppressors. They concern our goals as a result of we search freedom and persist in opposition to all odds. They concern our goals as a result of they problem the established order. However goals can’t be suppressed ceaselessly, 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 inconceivable.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
