On Imagining in Gaza

On Imagining in Gaza

In Conversation: With Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi

Nineteen-year-old Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza, is an English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through her writing, she seeks to amplify Gaza’s voice and illuminate stories that are too often left untold. Here, she talks with ArabLit about her education, her writing, and the importance of poetry and speculative fiction. You can find more of her work at tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app/. That’s also where you can order her zine, Gaza Calling – Will the World Pick Up?  

Education has been endlessly disrupted during the last two years of genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza: internet outages, notices to leave home, loss of home, famine, the endless sounds of drones. Can you tell us something about where you write and study now? How it has changed over these last two years? What does it mean to you, in this time?

Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi: I write and study at my desk, which has become both a fragile shelter and a lifeline. What was once simply a desk for books and notebooks is now transformed into a space of survival—a place where I try to preserve a sense of normality in the midst of constant abnormality. It was supposed to be a place of calm and concentration, where I could hear the quiet rustling of pages, the tapping of a pen, or the exchange of ideas with classmates. Instead, I write while the sky outside shakes with explosions, while the walls vibrate from nearby strikes, and while the constant buzz of drones fills the air like an unwanted soundtrack to every thought. The silence I once dreamed of has been replaced by the loudest kind of silence—the silence of fear, of loss, of destruction.

I was meant to study at the Islamic University of Gaza, to walk across its campus, to sit in lecture halls surrounded by peers, to exchange knowledge face-to-face with professors. That dream has been shattered. The university has been reduced to rubble. Instead of sitting among classmates, I sit behind a screen, disconnected from the spaces that nurtured generations of students before me. Since July, my education has been entirely online—an exile not only from physical classrooms but from the very sense of belonging to a university community. It feels like studying in fragments, with the weight of absence always present: the absence of a campus, of teachers we have lost, of books buried under debris.

And yet, I continue. I continue to write because writing is my survival. It is my therapy, my refuge, my small act of defiance. Through writing, I can breathe in a space where air is suffocated. I can create meaning where reality feels meaningless. Writing is how I refuse to be silenced. It allows me to share the stories of Gaza with the world, to make sure that behind the numbers and headlines, the humanity of my people is not erased. I write because if we do not tell our stories, others will—and the only version the world will hear will be the fabricated narrative of the occupation. Writing, for me, is not only a passion but a duty, an obligation. It is the thread that ties me to my people, to their resilience, and to the memory of what has been destroyed. It is how I preserve voices, experiences, and moments that would otherwise vanish unrecorded.

I also persist in my studies because education is one of the most powerful forms of resistance. The occupation knows this—this is why it bombs schools, why it demolishes universities, why it assassinates professors and intellectuals. It fears education because education empowers us to imagine, to build, and to resist not only with weapons but with ideas. Knowledge itself is an act of liberation. Even as our schools are destroyed, even as libraries burn and classrooms crumble, they cannot destroy our hunger for knowledge. Education runs in our veins; it is a kind of inheritance that no bomb can erase.

For me, to stop studying would be to allow the occupation to succeed in erasing my future. It would mean surrendering my time, my youth, my dreams. Continuing my education, even in these impossible conditions, is how I claim my right to exist, my right to become, my right to dream. Education for Palestinians is not only about personal success—it is about survival, dignity, and continuity. Without education, our lives lose direction, and our future collapses into nothingness.

I want to prove, through every page I write and every lesson I learn, that we are human beings with dreams that reach far beyond walls and borders. We are not defined by rubble; we are defined by resilience. Even under genocide, I choose to study, to write, and to hope, because these are acts that the occupation cannot destroy. I want the world to see that from beneath the ashes, we continue to rise, carrying books instead of weapons, holding pens instead of bullets, and dreaming of a life where our humanity is finally recognized.

You said that, among other things, you took a sci fi filmmaking workshop. What do you think science fiction, as a framework, might offer to writers in Gaza? Do you imagine producing speculative fiction?

TAAW: I used the science fiction filmmaking workshop as a way to escape from the harshness of reality into a realm of imagination where dreams could actually be realized. In Gaza, the weight of daily life is often unbearable—bombings, destruction, loss, and uncertainty surround us constantly. Science fiction gave me a rare space where I could step outside of this suffocating present and envision other possibilities, other worlds. It allowed me to imagine futures not defined by war, but by creativity, innovation, and freedom.

For writers in Gaza, science fiction can be a powerful framework. It opens a door to possibilities that reality denies us. It allows us to picture ourselves not only as victims of oppression but as dreamers, inventors, and creators of worlds beyond the walls of blockade and rubble. Through science fiction, we can reclaim the right to imagine futures where Palestinians thrive, where technology and progress serve us rather than destroy us, where our children can look at the sky and dream of stars rather than drones.

I do imagine myself producing speculative fiction, because speculative storytelling is not only about fantasy—it is about survival. When your daily life is marked by destruction, the act of imagining a different tomorrow becomes an act of resistance. Science fiction gives us language to express hope, even in impossible circumstances. It teaches us that the future is not fixed; that even in the darkest moments, there are infinite possible outcomes waiting to be written.

For me, this workshop was not just about filmmaking or technical skills. It was about creating an imaginative refuge, a space where I could breathe freely. It gave me tools to translate my inner visions into stories that might inspire others, both inside and outside Gaza. I want to write stories where Palestinians are not only surviving but also exploring, inventing, and leading—stories where we shape the future instead of being erased from it.

In a way, science fiction is the opposite of the erasure we experience daily. The occupation tries to shrink our lives, to deny us a future. But through speculative writing and art, I can expand life, I can stretch it beyond borders and walls, and I can claim space for my people in the future. That, to me, is the gift of science fiction—it is a reminder that imagination itself is resistance.

In addition to essays and articles, you also write poetry. What does poetry bring you in this moment that other forms of writing don’t? And what sorts of poetry have you been reading?

TAAW: What makes poetry truly different from every other form of writing is its ability to speak to what lies beneath the surface of words. Essays can explain, journalism can report, stories can narrate—but poetry has the unique power to reveal the invisible currents under all of these. Poetry does not just describe events; it uncovers what those events do to the human heart, the way they echo in memory, silence, and imagination. Where prose tells us what happened, poetry asks us what it means—and sometimes it whispers what we cannot say aloud.

For me, poetry is not just about language; it is about what language hides and what it struggles to hold. Poetry allows me to step into the deepest spaces of the self, to explore pain and resilience not as opposites but as companions. It does not demand logic or linearity—it gives me permission to be fragmented, vulnerable, contradictory. In poetry, I can place despair and hope side by side, fear and courage in the same breath. It is the only form of writing where I can speak the unspeakable and give form to what has no form.

Palestinian poetry, in particular, has been my compass. I grew up with the voices of Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Samih al-Qasim, and Mu’in Bseiso, poets who carried the history, pain, and dignity of Palestine into every line. They showed me that poetry can be both a weapon and a shelter, both resistance and tenderness. More recently, I’ve been reading voices like Mosab Abu Toha, whose words rise directly from the ashes of Gaza today. Together, these poets remind me that Palestinian poetry is not just literature—it is testimony, survival, and the rewriting of existence itself.

At the same time, I reach for poetry beyond Palestine, both in Arabic and English, because poetry is a shared human inheritance. Each language offers a new rhythm, a new lens, a new way of holding grief and wonder. Reading across traditions shows me how poetry dissolves borders; it is a place where the human soul speaks a universal tongue.

What poetry gives me that no other form of writing does is this: it allows me to write the depths of my being without limitation. Poetry does not reduce experience into facts or arguments; it expands it into music, image, and silence. It is my way of translating the chaos of Gaza into something the world can feel—not just understand with the mind, but experience with the heart. In the end, poetry is not an escape from reality but a deeper entrance into it. It teaches me that even in the darkest times, there are truths that shine only through metaphor, rhythm, and the courage to imagine.

Poetry, for Palestinians, is not only art but also an archive of memory. When homes are erased, when libraries are bombed, when history is rewritten by those in power, poetry becomes the place where truth survives. It carries the names of villages wiped from maps, the voices of martyrs, the laughter of children who never grew old. It preserves what occupation tries to bury, turning silence into testimony and loss into eternal presence. For us, poetry is not just written for beauty—it is written for survival, for resistance, for the right to be remembered. Every verse is a refusal to disappear, a way of carving our existence into language so deeply that no destruction can erase it.

Narrating Gaza during this period has been horrendously dangerous for Palestinians, with Israeli forces killing more than 200 journalists and writers in Gaza in these last two years. What sorts of stories do you feel are not being told, that you would like to tell or see told?

TAAW: There are countless stories from Gaza that the world has never heard, and what hurts most is not only the silence but also the distortion — when our lives are flattened into numbers or reduced to a single narrative of suffering. We, as Palestinians, have been doing everything we can to write, record, and document — to capture every detail of what is happening around us. We write about the destruction, yes, but also about the fragments of humanity that remain, the fragile yet powerful moments of love, humor, and solidarity that resist erasure.

Still, there are stories that escape even our best attempts. The world does not see the daily labor of survival — a mother spending the whole night awake because her children are terrified of the sound of drones, a father carrying water for kilometers just so his family can drink, a student re-writing her notes three times because each time her home is bombed, she loses everything she owns. These are not stories of “statistics”; they are stories of people trying to live, with dignity, under conditions that strip them of even the simplest rights.

We try to write about all of it — the massacres, the hunger, the hospitals that turn into graveyards — but also about the things that show our humanity: weddings held in tents after families lose their homes, lullabies sung to children in shelters, neighbors sharing their last loaf of bread. These details matter because they prove that even in the heart of genocide, life insists on itself.

What is missing in the global narrative is the full picture: Palestinians are not just “victims” of violence, we are also active storytellers, creators, and witnesses. Our effort to write, to narrate, is itself a form of resistance. We are telling the world: we are not voiceless; we are being silenced by the Israeli occupation. The stories that remain untold are the ones the world chooses not to see — the tenderness, the creativity, the quiet endurance.

For me, what I want to write are not only the stories of destruction but also the stories that remind the world that Gaza is full of human beings with dreams, ambitions, and laughter. I want to write about the future we imagine even as the present is destroyed. And I want to insist that these stories matter — because without them, the occupation’s version will dominate, and the humanity of my people will be erased. Writing, for us, is not optional. It is the only way to ensure that even if our bodies are buried under rubble, our voices continue to live.

Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi, a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza, is a 19-year-old English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through her writing, she seeks to amplify Gaza’s voice and illuminate stories that are too often left untold. In addition to contributing to We Are Not Numbers (WANN), her work has appeared in leading outlets such as The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, The Palestine Chronicle, The Markaz Review, Middle East Monitor, Al Jazeera English, Middle East Eye, The Massachusetts Review, the Institute for Palestine Studies, Prism, the New Arab, The Intercept, Politics Today, and Truthout. Her poetry has also been published by Baladi Magazine and Opol.

Her works can be found at: https://tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app

That’s where you can find her zine, Gaza Calling: Will the World Pick Up? Buying a copy will support the author.