We often dissociate ourselves from the violence and destruction taking place around us by putting up a smokescreen of either willful ignorance or a poor reasoning of distance. That aids in making a distinction of ‘us’ from ‘them’. The recently published Letters From Gaza: By The People, From the Year That Has Been brings the reader closer to the conditions under which Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live since 2023.
Edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Alshaer and published by Penguin, the book is divided into three main chapters under which several letters, poems, and monologues have been categorised. If you go through the book, somewhere in the middle you’re likely to come across a poem titled When A Missile Lands by Yahya Ashour (translated by ArabLit Collective). The last lines of this poem are enough to haunt you: “But death, to my luck, shuns the ones most ready to die.” What exactly do you say about a poet who is waiting for a missile to drop on him so that he can finally die? War manifests different kinds of emotions; they can be excruciating or sometimes can even render you feeling numb. What kind of literature exactly comes out in such a scenario? Photographer Fatima Hassouna pens down her dilemma by focusing on just one word: “why”. She goes on to question the subjugation that she is going through and the emotional toll that comes with it.
Ahmed Mortaja in Hubb and Harb, translated by Enas El-Torky, writes about survival by pretending that his surroundings are something else altogether: fireworks instead of bombings and gleeful shrieks awaiting Eid rather than cries for help. Rawan Hussein, in Burrow, translated by Wiam El-Tamami, penned down her experience of surviving this onslaught through her poem. It talks about the very real experience of living through a constant fear of whether it will be her last day or not.
This anthology isn’t simply just another book but instead directs the attention of the readers towards the rooted realities of Gazans, which helps to form a bridge and dissolve the smokescreen. Mahmoud Jouda, in All of This, Why?, narrates how people experience the normal amidst chaos; it ends with Victor Hugo’s quote, ‘When hope is gone, song remains.’ Translated by Ibrahim Fawzy, Christmas Eve by Batool Abu Akleen, on the other hand, denounces the normal and imagines herself as a lonely wolf who is wailing for a family to pay attention to her while they are busy unpacking gifts coated in corpses’ skin. She passionately underlines the complicity of the world in this mindless violence and extermination of her people. Mahmoud Alshaer, one of the two editors, writes about searching for hope while living through the war.
Translated by Soha El-Sebaie, it revolves around Mahmoud’s quest for survival. While his entire family has been able to travel out of the country, he remembers the lanes, landmarks, and places that used to be, the city that Gaza used to be.
As one finishes reading Letters From Gaza, it pushes you to recollect your thoughts in order to feel every single piece written by these poets and writers. They portray human experiences that can be too painful and even difficult to express, but these are the lives that they’ve lived and are still living. Reading it makes you feel human and helpless at the same time. But simultaneously this anthology is also a testament to their resilience and efforts to not be silenced. Also, to speak their truth so that more and more people can understand what they’ve gone through and are still going through. This is an effort to chronicle what living through a genocide feels like and the kind of art that emerges from it. This kind of art not only questions the acts of the oppressor but goes beyond that. It forces us to rethink how the world is equally complicit in their destruction.
This book also focuses on the importance of translations and translators who are responsible for bringing these voices to us. The pain, misery and voicelessness of the people of Gaza reach us through the efforts of these translators.