we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
‘I changed my mind a million times. I tortured myself with the losses that each decision would force upon me.’
A note of the kind the writer received as a child with every present from her mother; among the objects left behind in the north. Photo by the author
How can I reassure the children I work with in Gaza, when I myself am terrified? This is just one of the many questions I am asking myself. Can you, reader, offer an answer?
Before you dare to, let me tell you a little more about the art of contradiction inside me and how I try to paint hope from the buckets of blood life has given us. About the “choices” I am forced to choose from. About a heart divided. About the parts of me that I sacrifice daily. Let me ask you a few more questions.
Throughout the genocide, I have made it my mission to contribute to documenting Palestinian oral history including testimonies of this genocide. How I watch grandchildren fight to hold onto ancestral lands, fight as though they are possessed by the land itself: foot and root, arm and olive tree limb, torso and trunk—one and the same, despite the fact that the humiliation and devastation people suffer in the fight are 10 million times the size of their home itself.
I write, but I am afraid to write. I want to avoid the terrifying flashbacks that find me, but how can I tell a story about hell without facing the demons themselves?
While surviving endless, unstoppable traumas, I question if healing is even possible. For the moment, I have only learned how to live with trauma, not recover from it.
I also work as a facilitator at Save the Children, serving with all my time, energy, and love. I provide children and their caregivers sessions and activities around the topic of child protection, via various methods including art therapy, in order to try to help the children thrive—more accurately survive—these unbearable times, and to raise awareness about measures and procedures that protect and prevent any violence and abuse against children in crisis.
In these sessions, we love to imagine being together in the future, in our Palestine. Like a painter fills a canvas, we draw inside our collective imagination the shape and form of our longed-for society. We tell stories full of solidarity and sumud. We feel the depths of each loss. We connect and externalize the inner voices and emotions inside us that do not stop weeping, wailing, singing, praising. We visualize better times, achieving our dreams, and sharing happy moments. Together we created a space to flee the agony, destruction, and bloody pain together.
There are two activities that I love: The first is called “the found object.” It triggers emotions and memories by asking people to bring to class random objects in the outer environment that speak to them in some way. We then write about those objects and share with each other.
A “found object” response produced during an exercise facilitated by the writer. Photo by the writer
The second activity is “my circle of people.” This activity shows the person how loved and supported he or she is by classifying their circle of people according to their roles via three symbols: the sun (which represents the people who support us and love us unconditionally), the disco ball (which represents the people who praise and cherish us or simply add colors to our hearts), and the lighthouse (which represents the people that we seek help from; they are experts and trusted in resolving problems just like lifeboats).
A drawing by an adolescent girl from the “My Circle of People” exercise. Photo by the writer
This is my work. This was my work.
Then came the “ceasefire.” That tenuous pause in mass murder…but not in murder…killing still arrived without bombs and missiles. Israeli occupation soldiers closed the border, cut the electricity, prevented any vehicles from entering the strip—vehicles which are needed to dig and remove the rubble.
Many people are still buried under these demolished buildings. There are no words for this hell on earth. However, without those bombs and missiles, there was a glimmer of hope. When my friend told me that nothing worse would happen, I wanted to believe her. But there is always something worse than what our imaginations envision.
When the ceasefire entered into force, my family decided to return home to the north. I had dreamed of my room. Of reuniting with my books and clothes. Of touching my memories that already felt distant even before this genocide: photos of my high school graduation, letters from an ex-boyfriend, a gift from my mother whom I have not seen in years.
Before the genocide, I was torn between building my future career, saving some money to fulfill basic needs, and spending time with my family and friends. I had no time to immerse myself in the sweetness of the past. In the midst of this genocide, those sweet memories do not feel like they belong to another time, but to another person.
But my work also means as much to me as my family and my past. Due to the restrictions and inspections imposed by Israeli soldiers on Palestinians who enter the north, as well as the impossibilities of transportation and lack of cash, I could not simply return to the north with my family and continue working with the children.
So this was my choice: Sacrifice being with my family and stay in the south, or leave my work and the children who depend on me, and go home.
Is this a choice? My heart was divided … shattered. I am a fish in a bowl. I want to swim in the ocean. I want the freedom to go where I please, just like you.
I changed my mind a million times. I tortured myself with the losses that each decision would force upon me. I finally decided to stay in the south with my work where I feel less helpless. Being with the children gave me some sense of empowerment, some sense that I was helping, even if it was only to reduce their stress during the time they were with me.
My sister and I are close friends. She cried and my heart ached even more to leave her. We had agreed to spend every moment we could together as we were each planning to leave Gaza and study abroad. We knew our separation was imminent, and that the genocide might resume at any moment.
Between a sister who needs you, and children who need you, impatiently waiting for the psychological support services that you provide, what would you choose? Especially when your own needs are both, and more. I want to feel protected and have the sense of stability that I have lost—the protection and sense of stability I try to offer others.
Then on March 18, 2025, at approximately 2 a.m., our fears became reality. I was getting up early to get ready for work. All of a sudden, I found myself crawling on the floor. At first I thought it was a nightmare. In fact, it was a nightmare come to life. The genocide had resumed. I curled into a fetal position, tears falling uncontrollably. All I could think of was my family. “Are they OK? Who is the next one to die? Now I’m alone, and no longer able to bear the unbearable. I don’t want to die.”
Thoughts coursed through my mind like a raging river. Among them, this: After months of being unable to cry, I am happy to at least have the tears outside of me instead of drowning me from within.
In the morning, I packed my bag and went back home to my family. I got a ride on a horse cart, as that is the only transportation to be found. After two hours under the burning sun, I arrived in the north. I don’t want to die alone where my body will be named “anonymous.” If this is my last choice, this time I choose to leave my beloved work, and the children I love the most, to be with my family, whom I also love the most.
What else will tomorrow bring? Israel attacks whole families, erases them to achieve their victory: to extend political control over lands and property. That night, when the ceasefire was shattered, almost 400 people were killed including a young girl whose name is Mena. I have known her since she was 6 years old. We were neighbors and took the same bus to school. She was in her last year of high school. She died along with her parents before they could celebrate her graduation.
I have been offered psychological support services to help me “heal.” I am not ready to heal when children are still displaced, starved, uneducated, dismembered, orphaned, shredded. What is the use of getting psychological help when the genocide does not end?
Reader, can you heal?
What are you choosing during this genocide?
