We just grabbed the bag-the famous bag in Gaza that families have near the door in every war with important documents, money, cash, women’s gold, et cetera. There was no prior warning and we had to flee, some of us barefoot. When our building was bombed, we were at home. But he turned it down, declined politely, at the end. It was beautiful-the man insisting he’s not going to take it, and me insisting to give it to him. Please take it.” You must be familiar with how Arabs always fight at the cashier at restaurants, beating each other up to pay. I told him, “No, you take it.” And he said, “There’s no way I can.” And I said, “I have one at home. Another person said, “Can I have one of these?” And the shopkeeper said, “Sorry, it’s the last one.” And we almost fought. I remember during the first days of the Israeli genocide, I went to a shop and bought powdered milk. We could end up being displaced a second Nakba, a more horrible Nakba than the first Nakba because this is being televised, streamed online, and on social media.Īs Palestinians, no matter what comes of this, we haven’t failed. Israelis promised to send Gaza back 150 years, to turn it into a city of tents. This could end up with the destruction of Gaza. We could die anytime.īut we’re clinging to our humanity, and this is what I keep saying. I’m talking to you and the tanks are probably 300 or 400 meters away from where we are in Gaza City. This sense of doom, the sense of death coming and the gunpowder and the non-stop bombardment. The sense of community, the sense of coming together, that we all can be killed at any moment-this sense is bringing us closer and closer. They can fight, they can be naughty sometimes. I’m not sure if you hear them in the background, but I’ve never seen the kids in such harmony-playing together, sharing whatever dolls and games. “For Refaat, English was a tool of liberation, a way to break free from Gaza’s prolonged siege, a teleportation device that defied Israel’s fences and the intellectual, academic, and cultural blockade of Gaza.”Įven on the level of children and kids. “His passion was the English language, but he didn’t teach it as a means of disassociating from society,” Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian writer, wrote in a tribute to his former teacher. He co-founded “We Are Not Numbers,” a non-profit established to develop a new generation of Palestinian writers by pairing them with mentors abroad to help them write stories in English. To many Palestinians, Alareer was both a role model and a mentor. In addition to his own writing, which he had published in outlets such as The New York Times, he also edited “ Gaza Writes Back,” an anthology of short stories by young Palestinian writers that was published in 2014, and co-edited “Gaza Unsilenced,” a collection of essays, reportage, images, and poetry that was published the following year. Last week, the 44-year-old was killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza alongside six members of his family.īeyond his role teaching English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, Alareer was perhaps best known for his work chronicling the Gazan experience. “I think it’s necessary for people to understand what’s going on beyond the genocide, the bombs, and the massacres.”īut Alareer never got the chance. “This is something I really like to highlight,” he said in a WhatsApp voice note, noting that he’d been collecting anecdotes and encounters in order to write an essay on the very subject. When TIME reached out to the renowned Palestinian poet, academic, and activist Refaat Alareer last month to discuss how Palestinian society in Gaza was responding to the deadliest and most destructive war to hit the enclave in living memory, he had a lot to say.
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