How Do You Take a Little of Your Life?
“We never knew that things could disappear all at once, and that memory alone could become the only place to come home to.”
“We never knew that things could disappear all at once, and that memory alone could become the only place to come home to.”
“So we open our mouths, / not to scream, / but to release the silence.”
These two stories both come from Palestinian writer and psychologist Dr. Hassan Al-Qatrawi. Hunger’s Siege on Gaza By Dr. Hassan Al-Qatrawi Translated by Munira El Najar Two hours of persistent […]
As part of an initiative by Alaan Publishers to publish the works of 12 Gazan writers, Ansam Abu Sitta’s دكة الاحتياط (Bench of the Reserves), published in Arabic in 2026, is a collection of 18 short stories that move between realism and highly condensed symbolism.
Nour Balousha wrote these two poems “after I stopped screaming, not because it ended, but because I grew too exhausted to keep screaming.”
“Gaza does not resemble herself in Ramadan.”
Refaat Al Areer had set the scene, declaring, “If I must die,” and Alaa Al Qatarawi’s sorrow metamorphosed into a butterfly that perseveres. She writes, “If I die, my butterfly does not die.”
The people named in this poem are the writers, painters, and musicians martyred in the genocide. They are only a few of the many artists who were martyred in the past two years of war against Gaza.
“I survived—came out of yesterday / alive, carried out on the shoulders / of the wind.”