we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
My friendship with an American living near the U.S. wildfires propels my advocacy for humanism over vengeful thinking.
Aseel’s favorite photo of a flower from Sarah’s garden. Photo: Sarah
Disasters are blind, cruel, and indifferent. For years, I have been advocating for equality and human rights. I used to read that all human rights are interconnected, but I hadn’t truly understood that until the wildfires in California began.
As a young person raised in a conflict zone, I didn’t think that anything could be as important or urgent as fighting for peace and security. I imagined that wars were the only source of fires. However, when climate violations caused fires too, I started to truly understand the illusion. Whether it is genocide or a wildfire, and whether it happens in Gaza or California, no one deserves to experience such catastrophes.
As the fires blazed and the death toll rose in Los Angeles, I heard comments in Gazan homes, at the market and from people I work with which deeply saddened me.
“They burned us, now they deserve to be burned.”
“Trump threatened us with hell, and now hell is in his land.”
“They watched us being killed and did nothing. Why should we sympathize with them?”
A friend who was in Egypt with his family when he received news that his home had been bombed posted, “When they destroyed our home, God burned America.”
Another woman whose 2-year-old child had been killed when their apartment was shelled said, “They kill our children, and God takes revenge on them by burning their country.”
I understand their wrath. I am angry, too, because we share the same wounds. I am a volunteer documenting and monitoring such human rights violations as a field researcher.
When the news told of fires consuming part of the U.S., some saw it as God’s punishment for what had happened to us in Gaza. Some, because of their wide sense of betrayal, didn’t differentiate between their enemy and the rest of the world; the entire world had grown into their enemy.
Yet it was impossible for me to listen to their gloating over the fires in America and remain silent.
How on earth can a Gazan feel happy about disasters elsewhere while being the one who knows best what a disaster truly is? I couldn’t understand. Was it revenge? Yet as Muslims, we are not supposed to act out of revenge! Don’t they understand that a victim is a victim, whether American or Gazan, believer or nonbeliever, rich or poor? Don’t they know that God is entirely innocent of our manmade disasters, whether wildfires or wars?
No one can deny that the U.S. is implicated in many crimes in our land. History has already recorded that. But that knowledge and the horrific reality we are living in Gaza are not sufficient for me to accept their bitter words. I feel bewildered at their inability to see how others suffer. I try to reason with them based on human rights for all, and use all my persuasive abilities driven by my religious beliefs.
Yet they don’t soften their view, until I tell them about my friend Sarah.
Sarah is a Jewish-American woman based in Los Angeles. I am her complete opposite, a young Palestinian Muslim. Yet, we make good friends. We talk via WhatsApp, both text and voice, about many things: writing, dreams, superpowers, politicians, Judaism, Zionism, our different Eids, Gaza, human rights, languages, and our cats. Sarah is especially obsessed with flowers. Her house garden is full of them, many types and colors.
Sarah travels frequently and has visited both Palestine and Israel multiple times. She has the daring to criticize anything that contradicts human dignity, even when it pertains to her homeland or the so-called “Jewish homeland” of Israel. She is brave, open-minded, sometimes funny, and kind in a way that makes her kindness palpable. She hates reading the news and yet checking the newspapers is the first thing she does in the morning. Sometimes, she becomes too upset to finish her breakfast, but she still reads them every day.
For a long time, Sarah and another friend were the only light during my dark nights of the genocide. She listened to me, read many of my writings, and kept my hope for a better future alive by filling my phone gallery with the colors of her garden and keeping up her demand for a ceasefire by attending march after march. It seemed to me that all her clothes bore the slogan “Free Gaza” and the Palestinian flag.
I shared all of this and more to those reveling in the inferno of Los Angeles. “Sarah is my Los Angeles, not what you think about it,” I added, and they fell silent.
When I heard about the fires in her land, I was terrified for her. Though she did not live in the path of the fires, her air was filled with smoke. Some of her friends and colleagues had to evacuate and others lost their homes. She wrote to me about how much Gaza was on her mind during the hard days she was witnessing. The fire evacuation alerts reminded her of the evacuation orders we had lived with for over 15 months, as did the dust in the air and the widespread destruction of buildings and souls.
Some of Sarah’s friends from Gaza reached out to show solidarity and she responded by saying, “The comparison with Gaza lives in me all the time. In the last few days, I’ve been particularly touched by the empathy and concern of Palestinian friends in Gaza, whom I know can relate all too painfully to the devastation and suffering here. It takes a big heart to do that.”
While I agree with my Sarah on many things, I didn’t agree with this. It’s not about having a big heart, indeed it’s about having a heart at all.
She used to apologize when telling me about her trips or outings, but I never let her. I would tell her that if my life was upside down, it didn’t mean everyone else’s life should be too. I was happy she was living the normal, satisfying life humans are supposed to live. So, when my dear friend’s life turned upside down too, I had no reason to feel happy about that.
Artists: Billy Ruffian and Danielle Davis, Flyers for Falastin
Hard times are our best teacher. And I can’t imagine in my whole life a harder time than the genocidal war that I have been trying to survive. Its fierce fires and the cruelty of waiting for its end since the first day, have taught me to hope for peace and safety for all humans, regardless of their background, nationality, religion, or anything else.
For us Palestinians, in the most critical hardships of our lives, humanism must triumph over despair and vengeful thinking, and it will. Human beings will continue to wreak havoc on this globe for both silly and important reasons. Fires will cease only briefly before others are lit again.
In the meantime, my dear Sarah and I will continue dreaming and demanding a better and just future for all, everywhere. One day we will meet on the sand of Gaza’s beach, or at that dinner table she promised to prepare for me in her garden in my Los Angeles.
