In the room, by the window with a view of wide green fields, I try to convince myself that I am safe. There is no rubble here, there are no debris, no sound of explosions, no dust of death hanging in the air.
The field is bathed in soft sunlight, quiet, orderly. As if it doesn’t know that the world is on fire. But I look at it with eyes that have seen destruction. The green reminds me of the country that was scorched, the streets that turned into cemeteries and the houses that crashed on their residents without saying goodbye.
In every silence I hear shouting, in every open space I see the suffocation in the overcrowded tents.
611 days of genocide.
570 I lived in Gaza, while bombed, between the rubble, hunger and death.
And now I am in Marseille for 40 days. I survived. But I didn’t really leave.
The sea, everything shines in Marseille. As if the sun has chosen a permanent residence here. The markets are overloaded with fresh vegetables, hot bread, faces that have never known the meaning of shelters or food rows. The windows of cafés reflect laughter, music, raised glasses, conversations without the burden of fear.
Everything lives here … except me. I walk among people like an actress in a piece that is written in a language that she does not speak.
My body pretends it is part of it. I dress to the weather, use the right words at the right moments. I say ‘Bonjour’ when I meet someone, and ‘merci’ if someone gives me something. I nod and smile when I don’t understand something – and pretend I did.
I attend meetings, write articles, answer e-mails, send reports … everything seems normal, orderly, reassuring.
But the truth? I live between two worlds. My body is here. My soul stayed there.
When I enter a large supermarket, I get nauseous. The abundance overwhelms me. I want to shout: “In Gaza people share a single piece of bread!”
But nobody listens. Or maybe: nobody wants to listen.
When I get home I collapse. I stop pretending. I take the mask. I am becoming silence – a stone that doesn’t speak. I stare at the ceiling, to the white walls of the room, to the void.
Silence
Marseille is beautiful, yes. But it doesn’t look like me. It does not know what it is like to be born at war, to grow under bombing, to love fear, to write from a tent, to survive and regret it.
Gaza presses my shoulders every second of the day. The sounds of the shelling chase me even if it is quiet here. And the smell of death – no matter how the wind is winding – cannot be chased away by the perfume of this city.
Feeling guilty whispers in my ear: “You are here … and they are still there”
Debt is my silent companion. She wakes up with me, even before I open my eyes. She whispers in my ear: “You are here … and they are still there.”
She follows me to the market, to the cafe, to the post office. She walks next to me, like a heavy shade. If I buy something simple – a piece of chocolate, a book, a shirt – it meets me. I hear her voice inside: “Do they not need this? Would you have bought this if you were still there?”
I can’t feel joy. Even joy has become a form of betrayal.
Photos Bashar Taleb/AFP, photo Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
But I try. Not to silence the guilt, but to be able to live with it. I try to remind myself that I did not choose to survive – it happened to me.
I write, I speak, I record, I tell stories … because that is all I can do here for them.
I can’t send them bread, but I can send words. I can’t stop the rockets, but I can scream with their voice. Every time the thought creeps me that I have abandoned them, I tell myself: the real betrayal only starts when we are silent. So I lift my head and write a new sentence. I open a microphone, send a photo, take a new piece …
I try not to be chains by guilt, but make fuel out of it. Debt does not disappear. But she changes. From pure pain to something that pushes me. From the stabbing question: “Why am I here?” To a silent promise: “As long as I am here, I will not forget them.”
Go out, laugh, run
Sometimes I really want to live. Going out with new friends, laughing from my heart, running over the beach without choking.
I want to give myself a little rest, forget a bit. But every time I almost touch life here, it feels like I’m betraying something in me.
In Marseille, the invitations are endless – for parties, exhibitions, meals at home, conversations about culture. Sometimes I go. I am sitting with them, I eat, I listen, I smile … but something in me does not participate. As if I am sitting there in a borrowed body.
I look at their beautiful faces, their regular hands, their eyes that have never seen blood, and I feel: there are oceans between us. I am afraid to forget – not because I don’t earn life, but because life here doesn’t know where I come from.
I am afraid that my voice will be too soft to be able to scream. That I will get used to safety and forget what the tents look like. That I will replace my accent, my grief will dampen not to disturb them. I want to live, but I don’t want to let go of my memory. I want to love, but I am afraid that nobody will understand that my heart is filled with digging.
Yes, I survived – but I’m not doing well.
Yes, I survived – but I’m not doing well. I am somewhere in between: between those who left, and those who stayed. Between two languages, two home countries, two lives. And I don’t know what life is mine anymore, and which I have already lost. My friends are there. Those with whom I once laughed on a quiet evening, with whom I shared one bite and long, wordless looks. The rest of my family is there too – during the bombing, the hunger, the long wait for what never comes.
I look here at the faces and know: they will never understand – even if I explained it a thousand times. What could I say at all? Do I have to describe how people are buried alive? How do children turn into numbers? How do you first learn the language of mourning before you learn to write?
Eating … I can’t touch it. I sit in front of signs and see a battlefield. I see blood, torn limbs, the cries of mothers. I smell bread and hear people scream, running behind a bag of flour. I remember the plate of lentils that we shared as a treasure. Every bite here feels like betrayal.
I am still there, even though I walk through the streets of Marseille. I follow the news from moment to moment, I don’t allow myself to miss even one bombing, one slaughter, one new announcement of death.
My hair has turned gray in just forty days. I looked in the mirror this morning and didn’t recognize myself. Who is this? When did I get older so quickly?
I see sadness in my face when I try to smile. The feeling of powerlessness eats up my life. Knowing everything, doing everything, writing, screaming, capturing … and nothing changes. People see dying, knowing their names, hearing their voices – and they cannot reach them.
Cruelty
The people there … they have changed. A kind of cruelty that does not suit them has taken possession of them. I hear it in daily telephone conversations, in their speech messages, in the silence between the words. The walls breathe depression, and apathy has taken the place of fear. They no longer feel, no longer get angry, no longer respond.
Those who have not died live on the edge of collapse. And the living – they don’t really live. They just don’t try to die today. And I – in my bed in Marseille – I can’t sleep. Everything around me is quiet, but in me I hear their screams. I feel that I betray them when I go to sleep. That I have to stay awake as long as they are awake with fear.
Marseille is not cruel – it is sometimes even friendly. It tries to embrace me, convincing me that the world may still have room for me. But it doesn’t wear my keys. It does not mean my accent, does not know the stories of my grandmother, does not recognize the taste of our bread and does not fear for my family as I do.
Sometimes I write with fire, sometimes crying. And sometimes I collapse, stare at the paper and say to myself: what is the point of? Does writing feed the hungry? Stost stories do stories? Do words pull a child out of the rubble? And yet, in the midst of that powerlessness, I write again – because that is the only thing I still have. I write so that Gaza does not die in me. So that my pain does not become a habit. I write because no one can write there anymore, and no one can imagine it here.
