How Do I Leave the Prison of Gaza?
How Do I Leave the Prison of Gaza?
By Husam Maarouf
During the genocidal war on Gaza, I realized that we have no control over anything, neither over our fates, nor over the exit doors from cities that turn into open cemeteries. Gaza, that little spot that the world sees only on the news or in online images, has been rendered unlivable by the war. It is a laboratory. A giant laboratory where the world is testing our tolerance for hunger, fear, and humiliation.
I have started to hate the mirror. The mirror doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t know the meaning of solidarity or empathy. Whenever I stand in front of it, I see myself slowly disappearing. My face shrinks. My protruding bones resemble the wires of a rusty cage. I see hunger, not as a philosophical idea of deprivation, but as a monster slowly devouring me. At times, I have begun to lose feeling in my limbs. My head spins at the slightest movement. Everything becomes heavy, even thinking.
Hunger robs you of more than food; it robs you of security. It makes you look at everyone around you with suspicion, not trusting anything. Eyes turn into closed cages, hearts into silent bombs. I feel like a box full of screams, an inner voice that growls incessantly, a scream that no one hears but is about to tear me apart. This sound is hunger, and it has turned into a creature that lives inside me. It gnaws at my chest, driving me to the brink of madness. My features have changed: my face is sharply angular, pale as a discarded sheet of paper, my brain is getting smaller and smaller, not functioning efficiently, and my eyes are sunken as if they are watching a death postponed.
There are moments when I feel the end, not as a poetic metaphor, but as a biological fact. Sometimes, it feels like I’m separating from my body, and I’m watching myself from somewhere else, as though I’ve stepped out of this emaciated body to remain just a shadow flitting in this camp. Hunger is not just the pain of an empty stomach, it is a disconnection from the world, a severing of the last cord that binds you to life.
Fight monsters or starve to death
Getting food here is like fighting a battle in a forest full of monsters. Aid comes in, but you can’t get close. The savagery with which people treat trucks loaded with flour makes any attempt to get a bag of flour a kind of suicide. You see men scrambling like wolves, some collapsing underfoot, others stealing the sustenance of others with a cruelty that resembles the law of the jungle. There is no longer a “line” or a “turn.” The only way to eat is to turn into a wolf like them, to push, to hit, to snatch a crumb of bread like a soldier snatches his weapon from his opponent’s hand. But I can’t. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t born to be a monster. Maybe it’s because I still insist – strangely – on being human, even if the price is hunger.
I don’t know what makes life go on. Maybe habit. Maybe fear of death. But this is no ordinary death. This is another kind, a slow and humiliating death. To live inside an enclosed space, hearing promises of travel and survival, promises from a consulate whose answers never change: “Wait.” A municipality in France – Cluny – promises to welcome you and your family, but your papers turn into something stuck in the diplomatic mail. Emails back and forth, staff saying “sorry.” Everything is on hold. Time here doesn’t pass. It rots.
I know I’m not alone in this experience, but what makes it even crueller is that I’m living it with full awareness. I know people are traveling. That there are lists that come out every week. That someone woke up today to find their name among the “coordinators” to travel through the crossing. And me? I’m still on the waiting list, like I’m applying for a small job, not a chance to survive a war of annihilation.
Irony
More ironically, Israel recently decided to “evacuate donkeys.” Yes, donkeys. The creatures that are the butt of jokes everywhere are now the subject of international sympathy. European organizations talk about “animal welfare” and “rescuing donkeys from war zones.” Can you imagine? A donkey has a better chance of getting out of Gaza than I do. Sometimes, I feel less valuable than a donkey in the eyes of this world. I laugh at this dark truth, but my laughter doesn’t come out of my throat.
I live every day in an economy of madness. If I want to withdraw some money from my balance, half of it immediately goes as a cash-out price. A forced commission, the thief shares your money with you. And if you have anything left after this “institutionalized” theft, it’s eaten up by stupid prices. A kilo of sugar is more expensive than the idea of survival itself. Everything is priced by fantasy. And so your life diminishes digitally: Half of it goes to brokers, the other half to greedy sellers.
I try to look strong in front of my family, but I see them melting like me. My wife is not what she used to be. Her body has weakened to a blood count of eight. Her lymphoma is eating away at her, and hunger adds another layer of pain. Sometimes she smiles to say, “We’ll get out of here.” But her eyes lie. The children? They don’t ask for food as much anymore. Their bodies seem to have learned to surrender. It’s as though hunger has become the new normal.
Sometimes, I think this is all a test of our patience. But I don’t want to take tests anymore. I want to get out of the classroom. From this rat lab. I want to travel at any cost. I want to escape this city that has turned into a bad metaphor for death.
I no longer have much faith in culture, civilization, or concepts like “human connection,” “international networks,” and “cultural solidarity.” I used to think that writing would save me. That words could be an umbrella. But the war burned all my umbrellas. Writing is now a luxury, like trying to clap with an amputated hand. All the projects I dreamed of have ended up in zero. Every text I wrote now seems like a small lie I used to convince myself.
“The world is small,” they say. But Gaza taught me that the world is too big to be shaken by the small tragedies that happen here. Too big to care about a starving human being who only dreams of crossing a crossing.
There is a moment I wish I could forget, when I heard the sound of the occupation airplane dropping a small leaflet: “Leave your homes immediately.” I laughed. Where do we go? We don’t have the keys to leave. The crossings are closed. The sky is closed. The sea is closed. And death is as open as a mall.
Roundabout
The world has become a festival of black irony. They send us humanitarian warnings before they kill us. They send us statements of solidarity after they let us wither like plants in the desert.
I am writing this article in a state of vertigo. My body has lost its mass. My thoughts are seeping out of me like sand between my fingers. I try to resist the complete fall into nothingness by writing. Writing is the last wall between me and madness.
I live day by day with a sense of futility. But I write, not because I believe the world will change, but because writing becomes the last cry of the voiceless. A cry that says: “I am here. I’m not dead yet. But I’m about to be.”
If you are a distant reader, in a quiet city, under a roof not shaken by explosions, if you are reading this at a table, with a cup of coffee, know that I am writing from somewhere else. A place where coffee is a luxury and bread is a miracle. I am writing from a city that has lost all its colors, leaving only the gray of hunger and fear.
Do I want to live? Yes. But not here. Not in this space that has turned into an open prison for human rats. I want to escape with my family. To Cluny. Anywhere else. Somewhere where my body doesn’t have to negotiate with hunger, where my soul doesn’t have to beg from the slow-moving institutions of the world.
This is a personal plea. A humanitarian appeal. A desperate plea:
Get me out of here. Get me out of this laboratory where the world is practicing its cruelest experiments. Get me out before what’s left of my humanity turns into complete disbelief in everything.
-Husam Maarouf.
Editor’s note: There is currently a campaign to get Husam and his family residency in France, through the PAUSE program; however, we need to raise additional funds. You can contribute to getting Husam out here.
Read more by Husam Maarouf:
Husam Maarouf on Launching New ‘Gaza Publications’
How War Transformed My Literary Taste
What Do Gazans Read During War?
Laughter Without Joy: Between Gaza’s Reality and Beckett’s Stage