To my teacher, Omar, his loving wife Sanaa, and his daughter Eliena,
To Omar’s parents whose hearts are now torn
To every poet and writer still fighting with their words,
To every student whose life Omar touched,
To the Palestinian youth, striving to survive 

I owe so much to my teacher, Omar, who entered my home as a gentle soul, kind and light-hearted. He spent hours, countless hours, teaching me. He taught me so much — compassion, noble manners, humanity. This is why I mourn him, and I mourn our homeland, for we’ve lost a cultured and kind young man. He taught me how to write, how to truly write. He taught me the language of the body. He taught me patience, how to wait. I remember him saying once, “Count to three before you say or do anything.” He taught me lessons I’ll carry for a lifetime.

It’s an honor to write his story — for Omar is an idea, and ideas never die.

Omar once said:

In war, there are exceptional circumstances. Living as if dead, and dying while still alive,
Waking up, thanking God that the walls didn’t fall,
On a body that only wished to sleep in peace.

He was the first to quench this sacred land with his blood.

Omar was always keen to be among the firsts, and fulfilling this, he led the martyrs’ caravan that launched on October 7.

Omar, 36, was an obedient, beloved son, a loyal friend, and a safe haven for his siblings. He was the ideal husband to Sanaa and the tender father to his daughter Eliena. He was an inspiration to his students, a writer and a poet, who graduated from the College of Media at Al-Azhar University. He was a lover of sports, faith, homeland, art, and music, as well as a youth ambassador for the Arab world, volunteering to teach students creative writing. He was active in organizations such as the General Union for Palestinian Nuseirat Writers and the People’s Committee for Refugees, and he co-founded the Palestine Youth Cultural Network. He received numerous local and international awards, including “Best National Song of the Year 2007” award at an international festival in Jordan.

He also held an administrative position in the Nuseirat Service Council and was a member of the Palestinian Sports Culture Union. He was a man of grace, with a radiant smile, elegant in appearance, noble in character; he gave so much to our homeland, and our memory is filled with him.

Omar met his fate when a missile fired by the Israeli Occupation Forces on the morning of Oct. 7 struck him while he was jogging along the beach of Nuseirat. He called this beach “The Capital.” That missile — he once poetically described a missile as “elegant” — took his life. It ended his journey for knowledge, work and poetry as well as his journey as a father to a beautiful little girl named Eliena, a child of just three. Indeed, it was an elegant missile — how could it not be? It touched the bodies of martyrs and was bathed in their blood.

In 2016, Omar published his first novel, On the Edge of Death, in which he wrote about the Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2008.  How today mirrors yesterday! He described war as living between life and death, finding life in whispers of love, in mountains of resilience and patience, under the hail of rockets and bullets. But death did not stall, it snatched life away, scattering destruction like an unyielding, tireless volcano. Since that October day, endlessly, ceaselessly, death has raged on.

Omar would say, “You live only to die moments or hours later, beneath a crumbling wall or a missile tearing through your flesh.”

Omar was accustomed to death in Gaza, accustomed to humanity, to volunteering, to creativity, hope, and dreams. He carved his path, became what he was meant to be, crowned with international awards in culture, media, poetry — a model of the ideal Palestinian youth. Our martyrs are not mere numbers. They are full of dreams, of light, of stories cut short. Our martyrs are ideas, and ideas never die.

Omar once described the martyred children: “Death doesn’t hate you, my little ones, God loves you and took you on a long journey with no return.”

And now Omar has gone on a long journey with no return, leaving behind his innocent little girl, Eliena, who waits for him every day to come home with sweets, to steal a kiss on his forehead and cheeks.

Eliena bade her martyred father farewell with a gaze that breaks the heart. She will grow up and she won’t forget, won’t forgive those who stole her father. She will ask the world, “For what crime was my father killed?”

Is jogging on a Gaza beach a deadly act when war strikes at any time?

The sea still asks, “Where is he who used to greet me every morning? Where is he who used to talk to me, he who serenaded me in his stories?” He is the Palestinian seagull, the martyr of sports.

Omar Fares Abu Shawish. Even if Omar is no longer with us, he lives in our hearts and minds.

In Gaza, we live on the edge of death, as Omar understood, and the difference between all of us is merely a difference in the timing of death.

I wrote this to the sound of falling bombs, shattering glass, and crumbling homes, to the smell of ruined houses, to the musk of martyrs’ blood. I wrote this with the hope that one day, Palestine will be free. And we don’t know if we will witness its liberation or be counted among the martyrs. Though they killed Omar, they cannot kill the pen.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.