we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
I return to the shore again and again, searching for freedom in the only horizon still open to me.
Hassan Abo Qamar by the sea in Al-Nuseirat, central Gaza, in early 2023. Photo: Esraa Abo Qamar
When you live in a land where nearly everywhere feels dangerous — where colored lines on maps mark military zones, where soldiers can take any life, and where so-called “safe areas” bring back only painful memories — you begin to ask yourself a simple question: Where can you go to escape your reality and the repeated failures to change it?
In Gaza, there has always been one place we know to go: the Sea.
But now, the Sea feels less like an escape. It stretches endlessly before me, open and indifferent, as if it belongs to another world entirely. I stand there knowing that everything I feel when I look at its horizon — freedom, distance, elsewhere — is precisely what is denied to me. And yet, I keep returning with a question raised daily inside me: What does the Sea mean to someone who cannot leave it?
My relationship with the Sea started a long time ago. After a long week of work and school, my family, like many families in Gaza, used to make our weekend reward a trip to the beach during the summer. When we were children, my sister, Esraa, my older brother, Hussein, and I ran across the sand, dug wide holes in it, and buried each other. We chased the waves as they rolled toward the shore.
Ironically, my mother had one rule: not to enter the water. She was afraid of the Sea’s unpredictability. She would tell us, “I’m afraid for you, my children. What if something happens to you? I cannot bear being away from you.” That was when my curiosity about the Sea began to grow. Why couldn’t we go into it? And why couldn’t we go even farther, beyond it?
Later, when we became teenagers, the Sea turned into our meeting place. For Gazans, the beach was always where we gathered. We came there after school, or whenever we needed to talk. We went there to swim, to sit on the sand, or to spend long evenings in the cafés lining the coast. Those seaside cafés were full of young people drinking coffee, smoking, and playing board games like chess or cards.
That was where we celebrated birthdays, or where you could call a girlfriend. I remember sitting beside my friend Youssef, who had come from Egypt. He could not find a better place than at a table facing the Sea to call his girlfriend. Perhaps they talked for an hour and a half, while I sat beside him scrolling through Twitter, reading people’s posts, and arguing about politics. I enjoyed politics more than he did. It probed the questions I carried about borders, restrictions, and the limits imposed on my life.
But much of the time, we sat staring at the horizon, listening to songs by Mohamed Mounir, one of the Arab world’s most beloved singers, repeating his words: “I’m in love with the sea — tender like you, my love, sometimes wild like you; wandering, forever traveling, and, at times, as lost and uncertain as you.”
The young men who gathered around those tables dreamed. Yet the feelings were different for each of us. Youssef, whose family lived in Egypt, spoke freely about returning there after high school and starting a business that would one day become global. I shared my dreams too, though I can no longer fully remember what those dreams were. What I do remember is how shy I was while speaking about them — almost afraid of dreaming at all, because my desire to go far beyond the Sea was never truly accepted by my family, who valued staying together more than watching us drift apart across countries.
We kept listening to the song, our eyes fixed on the Sea. I added my own silent line to Mounir’s lyrics: “and as unreachable as you.” We laughed at Youssef for being in love with a girl from a distant country, while “the unreachable” carried a different kind of meaning for me.
When the genocide began, Gaza suddenly felt too narrow, not in size but in possibilities. Dreams of prosperity were replaced by the struggle for bare survival. Most importantly, Israel succeeded in drawing limits around one’s psychological geography, and that is perhaps its biggest victory since the beginning of the genocide.
If you looked at the limitless sky, you would begin searching for its end. You might spot a kite, often made of plastic bags, the kind that could collapse at any moment. If you took a deep breath, you could count the aircraft and surveillance drones overhead. These are the limits of the sky.
The Sea was no different, only being there was worse. Two boats define the horizon: One, a worn Palestinian fishing boat, allowed to venture only a short distance into the water at great risk, carrying a man trying to feed his children. The second, a fast Israeli naval vessel patrolling the coastline with the authority of life. Neither the kite nor the fisherman could do anything. Both existed inside the same cage.
I kept going to the Sea anyway, despite how dangerous it had become. Not out of a wish to die, but without much fear of it either. I went to see whether I was meant to die there or whether God had another chapter waiting for me.
Looking out at the wide horizon and unlimited sea from Hassan’s usual place. Photo: Hassan Abo Qamar
One late afternoon, I sat on Rashid Street looking down at the Sea from above. The water below was filled with Israeli naval vessels that could open fire at any moment. Then, behind me, the tanks that had been stationed along the street began moving in our direction. Everyone around me started running. But some people stayed. They stood and waited, just to see the tanks with their own eyes.
I did neither. I walked. Not fast, not slow, just forward. After that day, I understood something clearly: My direction was survival. And each time I left the water alive, something in my mind repeated the same quiet instruction — as long as you’re still alive, get back to work.
That was when I returned to the Sea — but I had changed. No longer drawn by indifference to death, I was pulled toward life. I wished I had the staff of Moses, to part the Sea and clear a path to my dreams.
My friend Ahmad was always there with me. We would sit beside each other and simply watch the waves. We stayed until the sun met the water at sunset, then walked home in silence. Yet we understood each other. Our dreams were similar, and even our attempts to reach them followed the same quiet path.
My imagination still travels beyond Gaza. I imagine breaking the siege and seeing life abroad. I imagine climbing mountains, attending conferences, standing before an audience and speaking openly about the truths that have been hidden — as if I were the hero of a novel who might change something, even if slightly. Sometimes I imagine something less dramatic: studying engineering at a university in Europe on a full scholarship, building a future that feels impossible from inside Gaza.
All these thoughts come to me whenever I look at the Sea now. One scares me the most: the possibility of accepting the life I am now living; of growing older and watching my dreams ebb away, until they exist only as something I once believed. I fear looking into the mirror one day and seeing someone who accepts limits instead of trying to break them. Even more, I fear losing that feeling of freedom and possibility when I look at the Sea. For what does the Sea mean to someone who cannot leave it?
I am left standing here, sometimes an hour before sunset until nightfall, sometimes alone, other times with friends. I stare at the farthest point of the horizon and long for a life I have not yet lived, for experiences I have not tried, and for people I have not yet met.
