Ragaa Elish vs Society’s Demons
Here, in an essay that originally appeared in Ultrasawt, Moaaz Muhammad explores the literature of legendary Egyptian writer Ragaa Elish, who declared in his short-story collection: Don’t Be Born Ugly.
Nonfiction
Laughter Without Joy: Between Gaza’s Reality and Beckett’s Stage
In this essay by Husam Maarouf, he writes: “Isn’t it strange for someone to laugh in Gaza? Here, laughter is not because destruction is amusing or enjoyable—it is a moment of nakedness before the self, a full exposure. One has no choice but to laugh.”
A Resonant Death: Poems & Reflections by Fatima Hassouna
Batool Abu Akleen writes: “Heartsick, I am sharing with you my translations of some of her prose and poetry, as it was her wish to have a RESONANT death.”
‘The Voice I Left Behind’: Sondos Sabra
Sondos Sabra is one of four Gaza-based Palestinian authors who have contributed to the forthcoming collection Voices of Resistance, expected this June. Here, she writes, “The air has grown heavier, as though an invisible hand holds its wings, preventing it from soaring.”
Love and Blindness at the End of the World
In this essay, Julia Choucair Vizoso reflects on erasure, blindness, and abolitionist love while searching for the “one-line poems that shake us out of sleep paralysis.”
‘They Even Assassinated My Library’
However, for me, the most precious of all the manuscripts in my library were the six stories I wrote in Israeli jail. These were the first stories I ever wrote, penned during a few months of incarceration following my participation in the First Intifada in 1992. I wasn’t quite 19 when I wrote those stories. I “published” them by hanging them on the wall of the prison.
‘To the Poet Who Knew the Storm Would Return’
“Dear Mahmoud, I write to you from Gaza, not as it was, nor even as it is, but as something in between—a city trapped in the silence of its own destruction.” – Alaa Alqaisi
From Asmaa Azaizeh’s ‘The Year of Small Museums’
Asmaa Azaizeh’s memoir is an exploration of the universal nature of caretaking, love, and loss. But it is also intensely specific, bringing us into the world of death and its meanings in the farmlands surrounding a Galilee village.
New Writing from Gaza: Dunya al-Amal Ismail’s ‘The Thing’
Dunya al-Amal Ismail writes of nights in a tent on the beach in Gaza, when, “I lay down a front line of socks, mine and the kids’, filled with sea-sand, to defend my world contained within the tent.”