Painting by Malak Mattar, “When the World Sleeps”

“Why do we write?” is a question I often ask myself.

For the world to know? But hasn’t the world had enough? Don’t people “know” what has been happening to Palestinians for the past 570 days?

Photographer and journalist Fatma Hassouna—who was murdered by Israeli forces on April 16, 2025, along with 10 members of her family, hours after hearing that a documentary she is starring in would be featured at the Cannes Film Festival—once told me, “Don’t stop writing, Dana. The world needs to know everything, not for their sake but for ours.”

We write for ourselves, for our shared agony, for our history.

We write for the Palestinian children who will never know what “normal” used to be like before the genocide happened. For them to grow up and know that living in a tent is not normal, that living with amputated limbs is not normal, that living without one or both parents is not normal, that being denied their fundamental human rights is not normal, and that Palestinians were not born to die but to live with dignity, just like everyone else.

We write for the sake of Palestinian women who create life from nothing, and who, amidst the destruction, violence, displacement, forced starvation, and fear, still feed, wash laundry on their hands and knees, and create homes from nothing. For Palestinian mothers who have been losing their children for the past 75 years.

We write for the sake of our loved ones—family members, friends, colleagues, doctors, and professors —who were martyred by Israel. I write for the sake of Mohammed Hamo, Wael Besaiso, Ahmed Besaiso, Mohammed Besaiso, Yousef Dawas, Dr Refaat Alareer, Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, Lina Abu-Saffiyah, and every other martyr because they all believed in their message, in their right to live, in their belonging to the Palestinian land.

We write for the journalists, artists, and creative Palestinians such as Ismael Al-Ghoul, Hussam Shbat, Mahasen Al-Khateeb, Walaa Sa’ada, and Fatma Hassouna, who were deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli forces so that they would be silenced. And for all those abducted from Gaza; they have been cruelly and inhumanly tortured, stripped, beaten, stripped of their dignity, and raped.

I write for the sake of my father, may he rest in peace; the brave and resilient man who spent his entire life building the best life for us, only for the Israeli tanks to bulldoze his grave, thus denying us the hope of ever visiting it. The Israelis did not even allow the dead a break from the violence and aggression.

For the sake of my best friends Luna, Roaa, and Fatma, whom I have been unable to meet and hug for the past 570 days. Yet no distance, border, or dire circumstance has managed to break our bond. I write for their resilience, compassion, and humanity that has not faded despite living through the worst of times.

I write for the sake of what I believe to be true, for what I have studied, to never fail any other human being again. When I pursued my dream major, law, I was particularly intrigued by international law and human rights. Naive me back then would have never imagined that what she learned would be mere ink on paper, that no law, organization, or any type of humanity would save us from the madness we endure. But I write for the sake that this will be a rebirth for international humanitarian law—just as the Battle of Solferino was a reason for its existence—so it saves what is left of the world’s shredded humanity.

A wise man once told me, “With survival and awareness comes a great responsibility” to be the voice for the voiceless, the beacon of hope everyone else can lean on, to document and speak about the atrocities we and our people continue to face, and to use that voice so the world may never forget.

However, within the journey of being responsible, I have discovered something even more significant: healing. For the words to pour out of me, to help me overcome some deeply buried trauma, to process the unprocessable, to speak my mind, to understand myself, to find solace in those who share my pain, and to feel heard and seen.

We may be writing for ourselves, but in solidarity we find comfort and an ounce of our fragmented peace.

We write for the sake of our delicate memories, which silently choose to let go of the pain and dissolve the horrors, despite knowing that our inheritance lies in what we have borne and the sacrifices we have made, which deserve to be etched in time, forever remembered.

For the sake of validation and documentation, we carve our truth into time, knowing that what was left of the Nakba of 1948 allows us to understand what is happening today.

We write for the sake of hope—which can be noted in the history of those who suffered injustice as well—that injustice never lasts. That peace, prosperity, and happiness are still doable, are still close by, and will one day be reached.

We write for the land, for the sake that it never stays a Palestinian “narrative” but becomes a known fact for the whole world to know, to hear, and never to forget.

So, to simply answer myself, I say, “I write to make sense of the world, to leave a mark, and to forever be remembered and engraved in our land.”