I Want a Room, God. Do You Hear Me?

I Want a Room, God. Do You Hear Me?

By Husam Maarouf

Endings always take us to a place far more dramatic than beginnings. This is not an affectation; it is simply the way a story fashions itself into existence. And this is true not only of fiction, but also of reality.

In Gaza, drama is obligatory. Every moment of life under war forces us on stage. The genocide is approaching our space, leaving us with two choices: stay and die, or flee and hope to survive.

When the Israeli tanks approached the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in the northwest of Gaza City, the end wrote itself into the drama, and we had to flee from its fire, to distance ourselves from the danger.

The house I rented when I returned to northern Gaza was more than a roof. It was a small mirror of my daily routine, of my tender feelings, of unfinished work and exhausting habits turned into rituals. The night I was forced to leave it, I felt the dramatic end of things catching up with me. A chain of little appointments collapsed—appointments that had made me countable as a human being. In a few hours, all the chapters I had written about my new life after the return dissolved. It was as if every time I tried to put one stone on top of another, the structure crumbled and I had to start over.

In an instant, I was displaced without a destination, haunted by new ghosts that I could neither contain nor handle. I became afraid of the future, surrounded by a grief I had never known. Life soured in my eyes as if I had never seen it before.

Rhythm

This kind of displacement has its own rhythm. It’s not just a sound, but wars of varying sizes within the body—conflicts and endless steps. And with every rise of the quadcopter bombs and the roar of the artillery, another voice rose inside me, the voice of loss, whispering without pause: you’ve lost more than you think.

I fled under this cacophony, carrying memories that stabbed me again and again. I carried the papers of my life and its blows to my head. I had to set out again on a road I despised, the road of displacement and homelessness. I walked as if fire was chasing me, burning everything behind me.

I carried pain in my hands more than possessions. My feet felt fear more than they felt the ground. I was running on fear itself, with no destination, no location.

This time, the road of flight tasted bitterer. The feeling grew stronger that I would not return to Gaza. Destruction awaited my city, as it had Rafah and Khan Younis. I rode in the back of a car, among my few belongings, looking at the buildings for the last time, saying goodbye to each one, my breath short after each goodbye.

I arrived in Deir al-Balah with a mouthful of placelessness. I found no house, no room, no mirror to see my face. I walked for hours through streets that seemed nameless, leaning against the doors of shops rented to the displaced at prices that made shelter a kind of fantasy. Days, dozens of kilometers, and layers of confusion piled up in my chest. By the third day of my displacement, I realized I had become homeless, wandering the streets in search of a new self. Crushed, sad, unrecognized by others.

It was a new experience of being lost. A strange feeling through which I understood that the homeless are not only deprived of shelter, but exiled from life itself. The words I used to reject the world became inadequate. I cursed, swore, shouted, blasphemed against all my convictions until my anger subsided a little. In a moment, I was homeless. I was without refuge, O world.

A new form

Walking the streets became an exercise in many things, like carrying pictures you fear will slip from your hands, or carrying your father on your back to save him from death. I began to remember small details: the smell of morning tea, the creak of a door still hanging, a brief laugh triggered by my childhood photo, when passion was clay that I shaped with my fingers like a child kneading slime.

I arrived in Deir al-Balah exhausted. I left my belongings with relatives. They welcomed me briefly, but I had to look for a house or a room in the overcrowded square of the city, swelling with the displaced.

For months, hunger had worn down my body until it was like a dry leaf that swayed, dodging footsteps to avoid being crushed. People here can’t see the world ahead of them; inside them are scenes too horrific to allow attention to anything else. This focus on catastrophe gives each person in Gaza his or her own private cinema.

I am drowning in my weakness as I wander the streets looking for a place to rest. I have not known rest, O world, since the war began. I have known no home. It is strange to have my life torn from me, my dignity violated, as if nothing had happened.

On the street, I concentrate on people’s faces, their movements, their rhythms of their walks. I study their eyes. They are all heartless—robots moving towards an unknown fate, as if two years of genocide had robbed them of the next step in life.

Homelessness is a new experience for my body and mind. The homeless move with a slow, muted motion that signals the betrayal within them, like someone walking down a dark path, afraid of stumbling over something that will bring them down.

The homeless have no destination, no country, no home. Their bodies become filthy because they know they won’t find water to wash. Misery piles up on their skin and they don’t know how to get rid of it.

During my journey, I felt for every homeless person in the world. Sometimes I pitied them; sometimes I didn’t care; sometimes I blamed them for not building a life to protect themselves from the constant heat of the streets. I used to think that the homeless were paying for their own carelessness and ignorance. But in Gaza during the war, the displaced include educated people—academics, doctors, teachers, writers, poets, programmers—who were driven from their homes and expelled without mercy. They have the money to live decently, but there are no homes to receive them. Every space in front of our eyes has been filled. Everything has gone deaf. We are forced into homelessness as the Occupation wants us to be: without a house, without a land, without a life.

The wall of my house

At some point, I wanted to stop the search, tear up my personal image of security, and return to northern Gaza. Phrases like “don’t try,” “it’s hard,” “you’re too late” are not answers—they are stabs in my chest, a new image of the reality I live without refuge. But this return would mean a different kind of homelessness. I cannot touch the wall of my house surrounded by tanks.

I walk under a sun that burns my face like everything else around me. It feels like a stage of skinning every past pleasure, breaking every word that once meant something in my life. I am no longer the person of details, the admirer of beauty. Even humanity has become so repulsive that I can’t stand the sound of a shoe.

Burden

Displacement teaches you a bitter lesson: that small things are all you really own. A small toy, an old hat, a letter you’ve kept, a childhood photograph—they all deserve to be torn up or burned. You also feel their betrayal, that you have kept them all your life only to have them become a heavy burden.

With a pale face, I asked a landlord, “Do you have an apartment or a room?” He replied, “It’s rented.” “For how much?” He said, “Four thousand shekels. Thirteen hundred dollars.” I fell silent. In my head: [Expletive] to your entire being. But I insulted him with my eyes only, because he was ready to kill me in an instant if I said it out loud.

This tells you how a person’s value erodes in war. Anything can hit you like a missile—not just something from the air. Everything around you is looking for a way to trigger a blood clot inside you.

I want a room, God. I can’t stand the tent. I have never built a fantasy with it. I became homeless after living a comfortable life. I want a room made of stone that promises it won’t fall on my children’s heads. For years, I tried to keep what I’d been given. But in the war, I discovered that everything we own is tied to puppet strings that can be yanked out of our hands in an instant. In the blink of an eye, we become homeless.

Sometimes I realize that the ordeal isn’t just in losing things, but in losing the rituals that bind us to the world: making coffee, making the bed, a quiet hum that no one hears. When these rituals disappear, time becomes opaque, and there’s no distinction between day and night.

Repeated displacement has not only robbed me of a roof or property; it has changed the way I see the world. Everything has become fragile, subject to erasure. And the awareness of this fragility is not an invitation to despair, but a call to listen to others like me.

I write this to say that I was here, that I have a story. And that whoever looks at my face now may find in it traces of a catastrophe that is invisible until the familiar disappears. Even writing, even a warm home—I am afraid of losing them at any moment, of becoming homeless again, of searching for a language that resembles me.

-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:

How Do I Leave the Prison of Gaza?

Husam Maarouf on Launching New ‘Gaza Publications’

Hunger That Defeats Language

How War Transformed My Literary Taste

What Do Gazans Read During War?

Laughter Without Joy: Between Gaza’s Reality and Beckett’s Stage