Tag: #westbank

Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture

đź“Ť Gaza 🇵🇸 

Gaza, a city having history spanning thousands of years, that once celebrated life and laughter has now become synonymous with death and destruction since the Israeli occupation began. It’s become a graveyard of lost lives, homes and hopes. The book, Daybreak in Gaza, is an anthology of essays and short stories by Palestinians from Gaza, West Bank and the diaspora who recount an erstwhile Gaza, a Gaza of their dreams, a Gaza of their grandparents and great grandparents and a present day Gaza that is witnessing a relentless genocide from the 7th October, 2023. Many of the writers give first hand accounts of the bombing and devastation that has happened mercilessly in front of their eyes. Some of the stories are diary entries as bombs go off in the background, buildings collapse and cries of despair echo constantly. Some of these writers have been killed in the ongoing war. 

Gaza has been reduced to a rubble, Gazans as a statistic. This book, has allowed a different version of Gaza to be seen, albeit the grave circumstances currently. We see Gaza as a thriving center of trade, culture, education and living prior to the Nakba of 1948. Through the various stories we are introduced to the rich history of the city and Palestine even after the Nakba and all that followed with the Egyptian occupation to the First and Second Intifada and the Oslo Accords which turned out to be criminally counterproductive to the Palestinians. And then there are the horrifying, heart wrenching, soul shattering stories of the ongoing genocide replete with unimaginable sorrow that makes this book such a necessity.

Daybreak in Gaza is a difficult read. But to think about it, can this difficulty even come close to the horrendous atrocities being meted out to Gazans since forever and especially now since October 7th, 2023? After every chapter I had to pause. Because every chapter, every page, every word is imbued with the hurt and anger that the Gazans are facing. This book is drenched in their tears and wails that the world has turned a deaf ear to. This book is a testament to their rightful hatred towards all of us for our cowardice and consent for the genocide. 

Daybreak in Gaza has been edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia. Mahmoud is a writer, publisher and bookseller from Jerusalem. Matthew is a UK-based writer and broadcaster. Juliette works for the UNRWA and Jayyab is a London-based journalist from Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza.

As of 5th November, 2024, 200,000+ Palestinians are projected to have been killed by Israel and the USA in Gaza since 7th October, 2023. Two thirds of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces. The $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, which is part of a $38 billion, 10 year deal signed by the Obama administration (2018-2028), has supported the occupation and the ethnic cleansing. Since October 2023, at least another $17.9 billion have been funnelled into Israel’s military. 

How have we let this happen? Is this the world we are a part of wherein a certain population can be ethnically cleansed while no one bats an eyelid? Is this the world where we still call America the greatest country and completely ignore its acts of terrorism? I think we certainly are. 

I shall end my review with these quotes from the book;

From the chapter, My heart is broken, by Saba Timraz:

“Has our life become a game, controlled by America and the occupier? They kill, destroy and do whatever they can to harm us, and then tell the world that they are the victims, and we are the monsters. We are an occupied people and have been since 1917. Our lands were stolen, our honour was violated, and the building blocks of our lives were destroyed. We want to be liberated and to live in freedom and dignity. We will not surrender our rights, no matter how long it takes.”

From the chapter, History will not lie, by Susan Abulhawa:

“But history will not lie. It will record that Israel perpetrated a holocaust in the twenty-first century.”

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🍉

Minor Detail

📍 Palestine 🇵🇸

This novel has two parts. The first one is set in the year 1949, just after the Nakba of 1948. An Israeli officer is scouring the Negev desert for any remaining Arabs or Arab settlements. The blistering heat, a festering infection, dust, sweat do not deter him from going about his day in a regimented way. His single handed determination to find Arabs does lead him to a Palestinian girl, who is forcibly brought back to the Israeli military camp, where she is gangraped by the soldiers, later killed and buried in the sand. The second part, begins in the city of Ramallah, where a young Palestinian woman sets out to investigate this crime that happened 25 years ago. As she juggles her way through the innumerable military checkpoints in the West Bank and on her journey to the desert, she is also juggling anxiety and panic that have become ubiquitous in her life due to the Israeli occupation. Her single handed determination to find details about the gruesome incident despite the unforgiving heat through the lonesome desert unfortunately leads to a tragic penultimate moment.

The book is an uncomfortably simple yet unflinchingly honest prose on Palestine and Palestinian people living under the occupation and an apartheid regime. The first half focusses on the daily mundane activities of the officer over and over again, so much so that the brutality that occurs becomes a part of the same mundane. In the second half, the author literally places us in the passenger seat of the woman as she takes on the perilous journey, and we get to experience first-hand her anxiety, fear and trauma muddled in her determination and longing to unearth the truth. The author deftly shifts the narrative perspective from the Israeli officer whose intention and purpose is annihilation of Palestinians, to the Palestinian woman whose reality is obscured and dependent on the military occupation. Freedom is villainous in one while it’s the prisoner in another. Life is precious in one while for the other, death is a close ally.

Adania Shibli is a Palestinian author and essayist, born in Palestine, who has written three novels and lives between Jerusalem and Berlin. Minor Detail, translated from Arabic to English, by Elisabeth Jaquette, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021 and was also nominated for National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020.

As of December 11th, 2023, over 17997 civilians which include 7729 children have been massacred in Gaza since the genocide began on October 7th, 2023. The dehumanisation of the Palestinian people by the entire world has never been more stark and atrocious. The global silence on the oppressed and the selective empathy towards the oppressors is a new abysmal low for our collective humanity. The total disregard towards the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, the absolute subservience towards the Israeli propaganda of self defence, the failure to distinguish between antisemitism and zionism is a telling of the dark times we are in. The next time when the world’s so called superpowers call for peace and human rights, you can gawk at the irony of it.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🇵🇸

Black Foam

📍 Eritrea 🇪🇷

This is a book like no other. The novel, written by Doha based Eritrean novelist Haji Jabir, was originally published in Arabic in 2018 and, is the first Eritrean novel to be longlisted for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It has been translated into English by Sawad Hussain and Marcia Lynx Qualey. The story is about an Eritrean soldier’s relentless pursuit in finding stability, hope and freedom as he traverses from Eritrea to Ethiopia to Israel. Adal fights as a soldier in The Eritrean war of Independence against Ethiopia and sees his country achieve it. While Asmara celebrates the new freedom, Adal changes his name to Dawoud, because he doesn’t want to be associated with it. During his time at the Revolution school there, his infractions lead him being sent to the torture prison at the Blue Valley. He escapes the prison to land in Endabaguna refugee camp in North Ethiopia where he becomes David. From there, he manages to enter the Gondar camp in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, posing as a Falasha Mura (Ethiopian Jew) named Dawit. This helps him in getting to Israel, finally to Jerusalem. This arduous journey which converts him from a soldier to a refugee, whilst he assumes various identities and religions, shakes him to his core; challenges all his beliefs and notions about the world and humanity. Ultimately, he finds a glimmer of solace when he visits the Al-Aqsa mosque in the West Bank region of Jerusalem, Palestine; it appears to him, as if life has come a full circle and there he starts questioning his identity and whether he may now be a part of a community of African Palestinians.

Black Foam is a composite story that, at the outset, through the protagonist’s character highlights the struggles and atrocities faced by a refugee. However, as we delve deep into the narrative, it holds your attention towards a plethora of unspoken issues and peoples. A nation’s independence needn’t necessarily attribute independence to all its citizens. As a soldier, Adal was left stifled living that life, though now Eritrea was free. However, his mindset was such that, he could never accept freedom, which led him from one refugee camp to another. The book also talks about the plight of Ethiopian Jews, who remain at the mercy of the Israeli Jews and live like second class citizens in the country. The story also talks about Palestine and lives of Palestinians living under the apartheid regime of Israel. Whilst weaving a sombre and at times discordant narrative through these complex geographies, the author simultaneously constructs the romantic and sexual life of the protagonist. This juxtaposition in the storytelling is distracting, deliberately pervasive and at times tedious.

Haji Jabir has masterfully sketched this story of a man in search of a home, security, a sense of belonging only to be met by hostility and uncertainty every step of the way. This quest is sadly the tale of millions of refugees in various parts of the world. Kudos to the author for writing it, keeping the despair and depravity alive in every page; for breathing life into the forgotten lives of the refugees; for portraying doom as a running subtext to the entire narrative. The descriptions of Jerusalem, West Bank, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is so detailed, nuanced; it’s almost as if we are there with Dawoud/ David/ Dawit as he roams these streets searching and questioning his life’s meaning and purpose.

Black Foam is a bittersweet melancholy that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥺