Open your eyes, Open your heart
JVL Introduction
“Why is the world so quiet? Why is the world silent? We should keep quiet and silent when children sleep, not when children are killed! Every child is an entire universe for someone.”
On Saturday I had the privilege of hearing a group of actors in Folkestone on the south Kent coast, Palestinians and others, reading a series of messages like this one from Gaza. Some came directly from people experiencing the genocide, others were conveyed via Palestinians living elsewhere, desperately clinging to contact with their families at the heart of the inferno. A selection appears below.
There are many, many more, in several languages, on the website of AZ Theatre which is part of the White Kite Collective. The collective works with Jenin Freedom Theatre and with Theatre for Everybody in Gaza, whose co-director Hossam Madhoun has written more than 100 such stories since October 2023.
The texts alone cannot quite convey the emotional intensity of the performances. If you have the opportunity to attend a live event, don’t miss it. There is one coming up on Thursday July 18 at the P21 gallery in London.
Aztheatre (@aztheatreuk) • Instagram photos and videos
White Kite Collective (@whitekitecollective) • Instagram photos and videos
(Another significant cultural project is this from Unbound Books, fund-raising for “Life and Death in Gaza: Stories of Hope and Resilience” by Ahmed Alnaouq.)
NWI
Messages from Gaza Now – October 2023 – June 2024
AZ Theatre
Open Your Eyes, Open Your Heart
Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity. Yes, we all need, from time to time, to question our humanitarian principles.
The 120 Israelis kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by Hamas must go back home, must be with their families. Yes, they must! I really want to see them among their families and their beloved ones as much as I want the same for the more than 13,000 Palestinians kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by the Israelis. I want to see these thousands at home with their families, with their beloved ones.
Before 7th October, Israel had kidnapped and imprisoned more than 4000 Palestinians. Since 7th October, Israel has kidnapped more than 9000 Palestinians. Thousands are exposed to severe torture; many have died from torture. Yet, no one questions Israel about them, as they are not considered human beings! Open your eyes, open your heart.
In Gaza, street dogs are dying of hunger. They used to live by the leftovers from people; now people have no leftovers, people are starving. Some dogs survive on the Palestinian bodies left in the streets, killed by the Israelis and left in the streets for days and weeks. Some dogs find them a meal. This is not fiction, this is happening in Gaza! Open your eyes, open your heart.
A man who lost a leg stumbles along, leaning on his daughter’s shoulder, and says to her, “I am exhausting you my dear.”
A mother carries the dead bodies of her 2 children, weeping, “Why have you left me? I can’t bury you. I can’t, it was you who should bury me when you grew up!”
Open your eyes, open your heart.
A young man wearing a jacket in the hot weather, trying to hide his amputated arm.
A man from Gaza sent a message to those who are not in Gaza, a message of envy:
- I envy you for not being forced to lose weight!
- I envy you for not sleeping and waking up with drones, bombing and shelling sounds 24 hours for 8 months and more!
- I envy you for not hearing the screams of help from people under the rubble, dying and you are unable to help them!
- I envy you that your children do not live day and night in fear and panic!
- I envy you that you can afford a piece of chocolate for your children when they ask for it!
- I envy you for having washing machines and not being obliged to clean your clothes with a quantity of 1, or maximum 2, litres of water!
- I envy you for not being obliged to eat canned food and drink unsafe water for months and months until you become emaciated!
- I envy you that you do not have to build a fire every day for 9 months with bits of wood, papers, plastic and whatever flammables you can find to heat some food for your family, burning your hands and your chest with toxic smoke!
- I envy you that you that you don’t have this feeling of being a burden on others when some relatives or friends take you into their home or their tent!
- I envy you for not worrying about the privacy of your wife and daughter in a non-protective tent or a public latrine!
- I envy you but I don’t want you to be in my place, not for a single day, not for a single minute.
Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity!
There is no shame, we all need to question our humanitarian principles from time to time.
Just open up…
Here and There, Between Cairo and Gaza
And here I am, sitting in a fancy cafeteria, in a fancy mall in Cairo, with a big delicious molten cake, a very good cup of coffee, and a full pack of cigarettes. Teasing my friend, Basel who is still in Gaza, with his last post on his FB page, which says: “I don’t remember when I smoked my last cigarette, I don’t know when I will smoke my next cigarette, but for sure I will not buy a one cigarette for 35 $US, simply because I can’t afford it!”
“Here I am smoking cigarette after cigarette, one for me and one for you my friend. I can’t stop smoking. I consider one for you and one for me!” I said this to Basel, and he replied, “Death is around us at all times, yet I feel it is not my turn yet. I feel there is a long line before me. So, hopefully we will meet before it is my turn to die.”
My brother Sofian, who is still in Gaza City with his family, refused to leave. He is in real starvation with his wife and 5 children. Finally, I had indirect contact with him; a colleague of mine who is still in Gaza succeeded in reaching him. I asked my colleague to give him some money. My brother recorded a voice massage for me, which I received via my colleague’s WhatsApp. He said, “My beloved brother, we are still alive. My children and my wife send you their greetings and love, me too. I hope you are doing well with Abeer and Salma. Take care of yourself and your wife and daughter. Don’t worry for us. We love you. We are ok. Thank you for the money.”
My God, my brother, who is starving with his children, and who is under bombardment is ok!! And he is worried for me and wants me to take care of myself and my family!!
Another friend sent me a photo of the road his tent is on. On one side there is a row of tents and on the other side a row of palm trees in a remote area in Deir Al Balah, in middle Gaza. He said, “This is the road to my tent. It is beautiful. There are no destroyed homes as there are in all other areas of the Gaza Strip.”
A journalist wrote on his FB page, “For whomever has lost a child: there is a dead body of a 6-year-old child at Al Aqsa hospital. He is wearing blue pajamas. Paramedics brought him to the hospital along with 60 other dead people.”
Another friend said, “One of the most beautiful images is when you look out of your window in the early morning and see children with school uniforms and their school bags on their backs walking toward their schools. The girls with their hair braids and the boys racing to see who is faster. An image that gives you hope. Today, there is no window to look out from. You look out from the cave that is your cold tent, and what do you see? Boys and girls, not well-dressed, carrying jerry cans full of water or empty going to search for some water. Boys and girls of all ages, standing in a row at the last bakery operating in the town, hoping to get some bread after 2, 3 or even 5 hours of waiting. Or a line of people of all ages at the only toilet serving 5000 people, to take a leak or to do what nature asks them to do.”
I am writing while it is very hot here in Cairo. Although there is an air conditioner, I don’t know why I don’t put it on! I am absolutely masochistic.
I am away from war. I am in Cairo, not in Gaza. I will keep writing.
Missing Hope
“No, we don’t believe in it, in fact we don’t want to believe in it. Holding no hope is easier than holding fake hope.” This is what a friend from Gaza told me about his reaction to the announcement of the possible ceasefire deal.
He continues, “Look what happened last time! When Hamas agreed on the deal, we all went out celebrating, dancing in the streets. And what happened? The Israelis invaded Rafah, forced a million people to be displaced again, and bombed everywhere. People were burned alive in their tents. It is better to have no hope, my friend. No hope, no thinking of tomorrow, just try to survive the now, the moment, and what will come will come. We are helpless, we are objects, in fact we are nothing!”
Another friend said to me, “My dear Hossam, don’t worry so much, we are in Gaza, and Gaza is the highway to heaven. This should not be a bad thing.”
My dearest friend, Basel, the artist, keeps saying: “They will not prevent us from living. Don’t get used to the image. Keep fighting! They will not de-humanise us! I must keep myself a sensitive and an awake human being. The war will not steal my humanity!”
Another friend said: “We don’t have the luxury of being defeated. There is no choice between slavery, occupation, and freedom. This is human instinct.”
My sister, my beloved sister, who is caring for her 82-year-old mother-in-law, and her kidney-failure patient husband, and 4 children, and my bedridden mother, told me that she has no more space in her heart for more pain.
A colleague told me, “It is not easy to work with children here, when every day you realise that one or more of them are not there anymore, when you realise that the smiling child from yesterday is dead, and he will not smile any more.
Why is the world so quiet? Why is the world silent? We should keep quiet and silent when children sleep, not when children are killed! Every child is an entire universe for someone.”
Gaza in and out
Almost two weeks since the last time I wrote about Gaza. But what to write and how to write while I am out of Gaza? It would be a kind of hypocrisy.
While I was in Gaza, I was not following the news; first there was no TV, and second, I was part of the news! Today, I lay on a sofa watching TV, something that did not happen for 6 months in Gaza. I try to avoid the news, but how can I?
I did not change that much, but too much has changed me. I forgot how to live. My smile is missing, and I seek feelings of joy but can’t find them. And how can I find them when my mother is somewhere in a tent in Deir Al Balah, and I know what it is to be in a tent installed on the sandy ground away from any means of life, surrounded by thousands of tents, with no toilets, no water, only heat, insects, reptiles and other visitors?
How can I live while my brothers and sisters with their families are stuck in Gaza City and have no access to food but have access to all types of fear, panic and agony?
A friend of mine wrote from Gaza: ‘Time in Gaza passes very slowly, like an annoying nightmare, with hopes of waking up so this nightmare will end, hearing shouts of appeals, but no one is answering. Women complain with tears, children cry from fear, and men swallow their helplessness with sadness and despair. Night in Gaza is like a dark cave full of horror and torture, expecting the worst with no horizon of any hope.’
I am afraid to call my family in Gaza. I am afraid of the news, but mostly I feel embarrassed. I feel that I deceived them by leaving Gaza and leaving them alone to face the daily terror of bombardment and displacement, and the daily suffering from the search for food and water. And I feel embarrassed to call anyone from outside as well, and when friends from outside call, I avoid answering them. I feel it would be another betrayal of my people in Gaza. What logic! It is nonsense, but this is what I feel here in Cairo!
Do I have the right to write about the people in Gaza anymore? I feel I don’t have this right anymore and this is killing me.
Bad son
Yes, my mother is angry at me, and she is right, she should be, I am a bad son.
I came back from work today and she was crying. Yes, my 83 year old, bed-ridden mother was crying. At first she refused to say why, she kept saying: ‘I want to go back home. Bring me back to my home.’
I explained to her many times that this had become impossible since we left our home in Gaza City on October 12th and came here to Nuseirat. I told her many times that the Israeli army isolated Gaza City and the north by cutting off the road at Netzarim Junction, the junction between North Gaza and the middle area of Gaza Strip.
She doesn’t believe me. She says Netzarim is in Jabaliya, it has nothing to do with Gaza City. Whatever I say makes her more angry and she does not believe me. She doesn’t know that maybe reaching the moon is easier than reaching Gaza City without being shot by a sniper or killed by shelling or a bomb strike.
I gave up trying to convince her. I sat on my mattress in front of her bed and listened to her complaints.
“You are not the same son I used to have, since we came here you prevented me from seeing my daughters, sons and grandsons. At home they would pass by every day, I was able to see them every day. Now I see no one, I call no one. You deprived me of everything, you don’t bring me coffee or sweets, candies or even fruit, not any kind of fruit. You used to bring me bananas, peaches, dates, apples, strawberries, many fruits, now you bring me nothing. You claim it it the Israelis preventing it from reaching Gaza. How come? How do you want me to believe you?
When Aroki comes I will tell him how you have changed. He used to bring me namoura (eastern sweets). How long has it been since you got me some? You know I like it. It’s your friend, Aroki, who remembers and when he visits, he always brings me 2kg not 1. Wait until he comes back. I will tell him how you changed. How you became bad. This can’t be. You are not the son you used to be.”
How can I blame my mother? I don’t. I understand that this can’t be easy to believe. How could any sane person believe that we can’t reach our home which is only 9km from here? How?
How could it be that I can’t find coffee in the market? How?
How could it be that there are no candies, sweets, fruits in the market? How?
I don’t blame my mother, I blame myself for being unable to fly and cross all the borders and get to a place where I can find fruit, chocolates, candies, coffee and all that my mother wishes for.
I blame myself for not having the ability to reach Khan Younis or Deir El Balah or Rafah to bring my brothers and sisters so my mother can see them.
I blame myself for not having a magic wand so I can fix the communication network with a magic touch.
Sorry, mother. Please forgive me for being a bad son.
When Russia bombed a cancer hospital in Ukraine, the world reacted with outrage. When Israel destroys or puts out of action 31 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza, not a single Western head of state or government utters a single word of criticism. We have lost our moral compass.