a day ago
- General
- New Indian Express
Between Rubble and Resistance
We often dissociate ourselves from the violence and destruction taking place around us by putting up a smokescreen of either willful ignorance or a poor reasoning of distance. That aids in making a distinction of 'us' from 'them'. The recently published Letters From Gaza: By The People, From the Year That Has Been brings the reader closer to the conditions under which Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live since 2023.
Edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Alshaer and published by Penguin, the book is divided into three main chapters under which several letters, poems, and monologues have been categorised. If you go through the book, somewhere in the middle you're likely to come across a poem titled When A Missile Lands by Yahya Ashour (translated by ArabLit Collective). The last lines of this poem are enough to haunt you: 'But death, to my luck, shuns the ones most ready to die.' What exactly do you say about a poet who is waiting for a missile to drop on him so that he can finally die? War manifests different kinds of emotions; they can be excruciating or sometimes can even render you feeling numb. What kind of literature exactly comes out in such a scenario? Photographer Fatima Hassouna pens down her dilemma by focusing on just one word: 'why'. She goes on to question the subjugation that she is going through and the emotional toll that comes with it.
Ahmed Mortaja in Hubb and Harb, translated by Enas El-Torky, writes about survival by pretending that his surroundings are something else altogether: fireworks instead of bombings and gleeful shrieks awaiting Eid rather than cries for help. Rawan Hussein, in Burrow, translated by Wiam El-Tamami, penned down her experience of surviving this onslaught through her poem. It talks about the very real experience of living through a constant fear of whether it will be her last day or not.
