we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
War changed the meaning of sound for this Lebanese Palestinian: I have left my home and city, but fear does not leave me.
Bombs exploding as we left Tyre. Photo: Jana Al Hanafi
On September 23, 2025, I was 23 days into what I used to call my dream job. I had finally found a place where I could write about Palestine — not as a distant topic, but as something alive.
Palestine has never been abstract to me. It is something I carry, something I live with, something I’ve always wanted to honor, even through my work.
My team welcomed me warmly. They joked, called me “the Lebanese,” and I would smile and reply, “I’m Palestinian.” It became our ritual. I was the only Palestinian refugee in Lebanon among them; the rest were Palestinians living in Palestine itself. That difference stayed with me — not as shame, and not because I don’t love Lebanon, but because I have always felt like a fragment of something larger. A small, living memory of a homeland I have never fully touched. One of the Palestinians of the diaspora — the kind people fear might one day be forgotten.
That morning, I had an online meeting with my team. I was sitting on the balcony, looking out at the orchards in front of our home. I love that view. Palestinians have a complicated relationship with place — we attach ourselves deeply, even to places we are not allowed to own. In Lebanon, you can spend your life somewhere and never have the right to claim it. Still, it becomes yours in ways no law can define.
I was speaking, sharing ideas, feeling genuinely happy. It was our first real meeting together, and I felt included.
Then the sound came.
It was sudden, violent, impossibly loud. My body reacted before my mind could. I flinched, instinctively trying to make myself smaller, as if I could hide from it. My heart raced. This wasn’t just sound — it carried threat, memory, something heavier than noise.
I had watched reports from Gaza before, journalists speaking live while the constant hum of drones filled the air behind them. I used to wonder how people live like that — how they exist when even silence is taken away.
It invades your most private moments. It follows you into sleep, only to wake you again. It interrupts joy, cuts through memory, reshapes your sense of safety. You can close your eyes, but you cannot close your ears.
The sound came again. And again. I wanted to go deaf just to survive.
Soon it wasn’t just sound. There was smoke. A smell. Something burning. I could no longer hear my teammates. Their voices faded into the background. I left everything and ran.
My mother said, “Wipe the kohl from your eyes.” It sounded strange, but I knew what she meant: It was a warning, not about my appearance, but to resist tears, to think clearly, and to urgently face the moment and everything that mattered.
I grabbed nothing except my laptop. We got into the car and drove, searching for somewhere — anywhere — safer. The sound followed us, repeating as if distance meant nothing.
In that moment, I wished for something I had never wished for before: to go deaf, even for a little while. Just enough to escape it.
The coastal highway between Tyre and Sidon was full. Cars stretched endlessly. People like us — leaving, not knowing where they were really going. Some cars broke down. Children cried. Everything felt suspended between movement and stillness.
And then, suddenly, I started laughing.
It made no sense. Nothing was funny. But I couldn’t stop. Later, my therapist would tell me it was a defense mechanism — my mind trying to protect itself from breaking.
Time passed slowly. The car crawled forward. My father tried to distract us with music — old songs, then newer ones. For a moment, it almost felt normal.
Then another strike. The blast shattered the window beside me. Glass broke sharply, and cold air rushed in.
That moment stayed with me. Since then, I feel warmth where there should be cold. I resist winter without meaning to. As if my body decided that cold is something violent, something forced.
Five hours passed.
We were hungry. We had brought nothing. No food, no water — only our lives and urgency.
By chance, we stopped near an orchard. On the ground, I saw a pomegranate, cracked open. I picked it up, and everything shifted. We gathered around it as if it were something sacred. Survival, in that moment, looked like a pomegranate.
We ate it slowly. It wasn’t just food. It was relief, coincidence, a small mercy.
That day, a pomegranate saved us. Photo: Jana Al Hanafi
Seven hours in, my back tightened. Nine hours — there was no patience left. Only hunger, exhaustion, fear.
Eventually, we reached Sidon. After that, time blurred. Days passed. I stopped counting. After two months, we went back home to Tyre.
Even now, I am afraid of that road. And yet, on March 2, 2026, I found myself on it again. Again because of Israel. Again because there was no real choice.
This time, we faced a different decision: should we endure one day of danger and sound by staying right where we were, or risk being trapped for hours again on the road to Sidon?
We chose the latter. I prepared differently. I packed things I didn’t need — my skincare, a keffiyeh, dried flowers, a new novel, even Greek yogurt. I don’t know why. Maybe I just wanted to feel like I was leaving on my own terms. Like I owned something that couldn’t be taken from me.
It was Ramadan. Hunger felt sharper. I thought about the pomegranate — how something so small had once felt like everything.
And then the laughter came back. That same strange laughter. That’s when I realized I hadn’t healed from the first displacement. Maybe I never would. Because we are always in a state of displacement until we return to Palestine.
Even our label says it: Palestinians of the diaspora. For a moment, I felt like I belonged nowhere — except in my love for Lebanon and my longing for Palestine. But in the end, I am what history has made me: a Palestinian in exile.
The scenario repeated itself, but this time it hurt less, and that frightened me. Why didn’t it hurt the same way? Had I become used to it? Was this what adaptation looks like? I didn’t know. With each new wave of violence, something inside me grew quieter, more numb. And yet, one thing still moved me every time: the sound of warplanes passing overhead on their way to Beirut, while I stood just outside it, somewhere between safety and threat.
I asked my therapist about it. She told me that when we hear something painful, our senses can become sharper afterward. Our senses remember. I believe that, because once, standing near the border, I caught the faint scent of Palestine in the air. Since then, every breeze has carried that memory.
As if even the wind refuses to let me forget.
