Writing at my desk in happier days. Photo: Yusuf El-Mbayed

Before October 2023, all of my stories had happy endings. I used to write optimistically about humor, love, and hope as a way of collecting life’s bittersweet moments, like pressing flowers between the pages of time. I’ve always been obsessed with documenting everything I love. It’s how I made meaning of my days.

Writing has always been there, a quiet companion. It is now revealing itself as a lifelong friend. I used to write my stories—my “masterpieces”—from the comfort of my fancy desk, with the breeze brushing through the grapevines that draped themselves outside my window. When the desk or walls of my room felt too heavy, I’d escape into my garden and let the fresh air lighten my thoughts.

The desk and garden were my two sacred spaces—now both are gone forever. Those places weren’t just corners of my world, they were the heart of it. There I conjured memories of better days, of laughter shared with my beloved friends and neighbors who are no longer here.

Resistance

Since the war started, I’ve continued to write my  stories. The internet doesn’t reach our homes anymore. And yet, we still try to communicate. Sometimes I write from the dusty pavements of the streets, just to catch a signal. Even in grave danger, we feel the weight of our responsibility to speak for our land, for our people, for the truth. My writing is one such way of resisting the forces that would silence us.

I write my new stories from a place of fear, panic, hunger, and thirst. After Israel unleashed its fury upon the besieged Gaza Strip, they didn’t just destroy our homes, they destroyed our nirvana. They bulldozed our gardens, our parks, and all of our peaceful corners we once escaped to. Now, we have nowhere to rest, nowhere to breathe easily, and no easy way to connect with the world beyond this cage of fire.

My stories are clouded by the war. Something darker and more pressing has replaced what was once my art form and passion. My themes have turned to battle, destruction, loss, and heartache. My pen has become my weapon against devastation—it is a way to resist the atrocities and brutalities unfolding in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

My words reverberate with the sounds of war—with the crackle of Apache gunfire, the roar of tanks, the whistling of bombing planes, and the heartbreaking cries of those who have lost everything. These sounds, mixed with ambulance sirens and the wails of the grieving, have become part of my writing—which has itself evolved into a form of survival, and a way for me to bear witness to a tragedy of unimaginable atrocities.

Writing as a survival strategy

Words, lines, and stories have become a daily ritual, one of the few things that ground me during this ongoing nightmare. Stories, thoughts, and ideas never fail me. Rather, they give me strength, pride, and illumination in the middle of all this darkness.

In truth, it’s all I can do to resist the waves of anxiety crashing inside me. Writing is my only release from the fear, the horror, and the aching questions that never leave me: Will I survive this genocide? Will I, and what’s left of my loved ones, ever live to see peace?

Despite my family being uprooted, my neighborhood being destroyed, and my access to essential resources like electricity and the internet being cut off, I strive to maintain contact and search for solar charging stations to keep my gadgets running so that my message can be heard around the globe.

Writing from the corner of my flimsy tent. Photo: Yusuf El-Mbayed

Before the latest invasion of al-Shuja’iyya, our community in eastern Gaza Strip, I used to write from inside my flimsy tent. It wasn’t much, but it was shelter. And yes, from that corner of my tent, I felt an odd happiness. Not because I had lost my fancy desk in a warm, cosy room, but because I was writing to the world from a corner so harsh and bare, it was barely fit for animals. And yet, that corner became my stage—my voice echoing far beyond the rubble.

Now I write on the streets. I am like a beggar holding words instead of coins.

My words are not mine alone

The never-ending search for interconnection is a Sisyphean task. I walk for miles just to find a spot with an internet signal. The same is true for finding solar charging points. I often have to queue for hours just to get my phone charged, but this represents a victory over distance and poor connections.

It’s a tough life but I persist, navigating my way through whatever comes. My mission is greater than this. It is giving voice to the silenced, and the unheard screams of the injured, the martyred, and the displaced.

I see my writing as a pursuit of justice. Each piece I create is one window into the genocide—not for the world to feel, because no story can ever recreate the terror of living it—but at least to see. To glimpse what horror really looks like. As I do this, my life hangs in the balance. I might be killed mid-sentence.

Bullets hiss past me every day. Drones circle like flies, dropping missiles. F-35 fighter jets scream above us, hurling their destruction without mercy and erasing everything beautiful in their path. Here, in the streets of Gaza, beauty has turned to blood and rubble. Children with missing limbs, elders stumbling through dust and smoke, terrified mothers gripping their babies—everyone waits for their numbers to be drawn in this cruel lottery of death.

For me, writing is a haven where I find a sense of escape, closure, and comfort. It is also a means of ensuring that the tales of my people will endure in spite of this all-consuming cycle of violence.

My words are not mine alone—they are the words of a people who refuse to be forgotten, who refuse to be silenced.

In the face of imminent death and destruction, my pen continues to fight. My stories are my weapons, and through them, I’m determined to ensure that Gaza’s truth is heard around the world, now and for generations to come.

See excerpts from a WANN essay by Yusuf read across Vermont.