we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
Dreamwork has offered a little relief, but the dreams of the conscious mind are loaded with debris and uncertainty.
Khalid’s nephew and niece, at one of the multiple places they have been displaced to in the north. Photo provided by Khalid Dader
To write of a year-long onslaught of horror and atrocities unfolding before us is a never-ending process. I have constantly asked myself and others how one writes, knowing that writing won’t bring anything back, and how does one express what is actually gone and irretrievable? Can writing hold the power of resurrection? Or is it all just a line of thought that passes by someone who craves to write?
I am not posing rhetorical questions. I am genuinely sharing a series of reflections I have held in my mind for a stretch of time that are somehow meaningless, unfathomable. I want to dare and attempt to give them meaning; better yet, answers.
As the one-year threshold approaches and is crossed, every single day from beginning to end is a process of dealing with such questions, as well as scenarios about those who are still quarreling with the unleashing, unstoppable monster.
Forced to do so, we put those whom we have lost aside, on a mind-shelf created with blood, waiting hopefully for a day of solace to come in which we can grieve for them and reminisce with feelings we have extorted ourselves to discard. It has felt like our emotional apparatus was eradicated, once and for all.
And amid all of this that is beyond documentation, lamenting, and eulogizing, I am flung into dreams as my only solace.
For a year, dreamwork has offered a little relief in various forms. Last November, I lost connection with my father in the occupied territories, and my family in Gaza City — for different reasons. My father was abducted while on his way to Ramallah, and we had to leave it for fate to decide what would become of him. Talks with my mother then took the shape of trusting to Allah’s will to return my father to us, only then to lose connection with her and the family in Gaza City due to the complete blackout Israel had engineered, along with the forced dispossession of the population.
It was then that I was left with no clue as to what had become of my father and my family. For over a month and a half I did not hear anything of them, but I visited them in my dreams. It was then that I screamed my lungs out, silently, feeling forever-alone, imagining scenarios about my family that I will never forgive myself for, and I wrote:
The last time I could speak to my family was in a dream.
The last time I heard my dad’s voice was in a dream.
The time before last that I spoke to my family was in a dream.
I miss their faces.
I sure miss their real voices.
I miss the assurance that they are alive.
I lost faith in humanity.
For now, they are a memory.
Not a day, not a single second, passes that I am not stung with guilt — limitless jabbings, as if a cluster bomb of nails were planted within my heart, detonating throughout my whole body from within. What is it that dwells in this world that I have to rely on my subconscious to check on my family? I reiterate, I am not putting forward rhetorical questions.
Dreams, however, did not cease to be a form of relief.
Later on, fortunately, I regained connection with my family; and my father was released and sent back to Gaza, although still separated from my family and stuck in the north. We all felt grateful we could reconnect the far-away dots and have a word together, after-words — or mid-words?!
The internet links have, for sure, become scant, so I have been relying on phone calls to connect. It would be a day-maker for me if I secured a picture of any of my family members every two to three months, only then to be shocked to my very core, witnessing the decay of their bodies, that they themselves are too busy surviving hell to notice.
In addition, there is the unwordable burden of their ongoing forced dispossession and displacement, at max every 10 days, from one street to another, and running away from one bomb only to face another. That being the reality it is, my mom during one of the calls has, with all seriousness and as genuine as one can be, asked me a question that has stayed with me, and now, reflecting on it, I think will stick forever. “Please, come visit me in a dream, Yama, I miss you.”
I giggled in response, to lighten the vibe, but it had felt like a cascade of volcano-hot gravel had filled my throat, reaching my lungs to fill them. I had no other reaction but to write that in my notes — the mind-shelf ones that I hope one day to visit with clarity of mind and the emotional apparatus to be able to cry intensely. Only to cry.
My dreams did not stop there. I am not sure if they ever will. Last week, I had my daily call with my father, but with a new concern that winter has visited Gaza again. Him being a tent-dweller, I wanted to check with him about the rain and if he was managing to protect himself from any flooding similar to that which came last winter.
I have not enquired of my family in the north, at all, to see if they have spotted any change in my dad when they call him, but I am certain that they have noticed what I have. Something was broken within him, as has happened with every Palestinian abducted by Israel since last October, each having been subjected to unimaginable torture. I could not know what it is, nor could I ever put it into words if I did know what it is.
Since he was sent back to Gaza from jail, I counted, noted down, and inscribed in my heart the many times that by the end of the call he had cried, especially in moments where the conversation unintentionally led to reminiscences about our home, the old days, and the fact that he is far from the rest of the family. He is 15 minutes away from them by car, but light years away, in the topographical horrors that are Gaza.
My dad ended a call last week by sharing his dream with me for the absolutely very first time in my whole life. At the end of each call, he always prays that soon things will be better, and this time he added, “I had a dream about the kids [my brother’s kids] that your brother brought them to me and we played, so I am sure things will be better soon,” to which I quickly responded with a light-hearted soft chuckle, to avoid the tears for each of us, saying, “You will soon reunite with the kids, Yaba. I am sure, all of us will, hopefully soon.”
What I know for sure, however, is I have no idea when we will ever reunite, given an increasingly deteriorating situation, and that a political solution is not yet on the distant horizon.
But I am prompted to add that dreams have been utterly wrecked for us since long before the current circumstances. Our dreams have, in the last two decades, not been a dreamwork, but contaminated by endless flashbacks and an interminable reliving of past events, counting the thousands of shards of deplorable memories held in each slow-motion second that passes. And yet, I have no idea, nor the mental capacity to imagine, what my family and friends and the people in Gaza have seen this time around, for over a year now.
And even the dreams of the conscious mind, the ones intended for the future, are loaded with debris and uncertainty. For now, finding and reaching an end to the horrors of the past year has become the only real dream; seeing my dad and my family, friends, and loved ones, and places, safe and sound.
But those Gazans of the future will need years to recover from the collapsed pasts, shattered and strewn amongst the debris of our fallen house, home, that once upon a time held on tight and warmly to our memories for so many years. But, for now, I can(not) only dream.
