Many moons ago, a powerful man was sentenced to eternal struggle. The gods were furious by how he had outsmarted them and decided to punish him with the pain of meaningless repetition. Sisyphus, the jinxed man, tried to reach the top of the mountain with an enormous rock he had to push with his all, but his efforts would go in vain as the rock fell back to its initial place.
My rock is the war. I stare into its eyes, even when I’m asleep.

Sisyphus and I hold similar sentiments. He’s tired of the rock’s stubbornness, and so am I. My rock has left me burnt out, with burning tears. My rock is the reason for my philosophical swings between nihilism and absurdism. It’s what Palestinians in diaspora glorify and what turns every Gazan into a black-market merchant. It’s what caused the market’s unrealistic inflation and 40,000+ martyrs underground.
My rock is war. Its gaze challenges me. Every time its eyes meet mine, it confidently reminds me how it could tumble down the hill again, rougher than before, and crush me.
I’m then reminded of how last time’s challenge went: A textured collection of my last eight months’ memories appeared at war’s fingersnap, forcing me to re-experience the loss of my grandparents and the scent of corpses attended by the noises of crow I was bound to hear at night. The air filled with tension as my eye contact with the rock locked tighter.
War sensed my weakness. It knew how I mourned my losses, and it ordered my paranoid fear to always bolt the windows shut at night. Even when I’m asleep, this monster refuses to rest its eyes and leave me alone for just six hours.
My rock is multifaceted. It doesn’t just relish my repetitive struggle, but it also patiently awaits the moment my face brightens near the top. When I fall back to ground zero again, its sense of humor pops up with the most agitating jokes imaginable — ones mocking my rose-tinted hopefulness, and I mourn yet another loss: the loss of my progress.
When I’m accompanied by the unfortunate rock at the bottom of the mountain, I know what’s ahead of me: more displacement, less water, more yearning. All of my forced positive thoughts and pain endurance are now as pointless as a gifted blanket to the sun: The sun is warmth’s mother, and the fate of whatever material that touches it is known.
My rock cracks yet another joke when it sees the state my people and I are in. “Invade their homes and videotape yourselves in women’s underwear,” the rock orders its militias, without irony. The soulless militias comply with pleasure and even add their unique touches. In the building where we rent a place to stay, there is a wall-sized comic drawing of a soulless soldier raping a woman, with a bubble thought that reads: “No worries guys, she’s Gazan.” The marker this comic drew with was utilized by another soulless soldier; in that same apartment, a soulless body’s emptiness echoed loudly when he held that marker and expressed the void in him by writing numbers from 1 to 350,000 on all the walls.
Sisyphus and I now have to work at what we both know is pointless. He has to push his rock back to the top, and I have to endure the constant instability of home, the loss of my loved ones, the infrequent showers, the nonexistent privacy, and the weight of being a teen in war, deprived of everything that’s beyond trying to stay alive.
In Gaza, we all hold Sisyphus’s rock.
In Gaza, none of us deserve the fate of Sisyphus.
In Gaza, we all hold the sentiments Sisyphus holds.