Najlaa`s blog

Editor: Eva Burke 

I’m neither for anything nor against anything else. I don’t understand the talks nor the goals of them. For me Gaza is a sheltering embrace that protects our inability to just exist. My ability to think can’t help me to understand what is behind the request for ports, airports and borders. My sight is not able to see farther than the street I live on. I’m blind to all meetings going on around me. All the words spread through a thousand channels, websites and contracts. I don’t even know the history of the war nor how many souls the evil leaders and the heavens have decided were needed to pass through the gates. I admit, I’m sinking in the mud of ignorance and confusion.

I’m neither for anything nor against anything else. Resistance and negotiations, war and peace, evil and goodness- I no longer understand the relations of words. The only thing that occupies my imagination anymore are three letters (W-A-R) and its conversion into another three letters (D-I-E). I wish just for a minute I could have one clear thought that could come and bring an end to these letters. I wish they could be replaced by other letters, forming other words that have never existed in  any dictionary of any language. I wish I could remove myself from the surrounding accusations and get carried away far from this human dilemma, of which there is certainly no solution so long as all the people on the ground don’t live by the same right to live in dignity.

I’m not for or against, but I am also not neutral. Of all the things, I haven’t been thinking of how life might continue. Instead I practice death as if it were only a few minutes away. I don’t wash or wear perfume and I eat what I desire. I don’t betray my country, but still I have transferred it to a temporary shelter that seeks an eternal life in heaven. I am out of practice for living, not out of fear, but because I can no longer do the simple things.  I might know some things, but I surely know less now than what I previously thought I knew of the universe, of creation, of growth.

I live in Gaza, which is death and death only. It will damn everyone who sees life reflected in it. But we are the only ones who are assigned to it. This city was made from our actions and the actions of our predecessors from within this corroded infrastructure. They built a trap for us and drugged us with the dignified offering of eternity. I don’t like nor hate it. I don’t know the secret of the love that makes us come back again even after we have left. It is our curse. She wrote a magical formula for us and put it in the water well. We are committed to her and are now here living war after war, unable to leave it.

I’m neither for nor against. I don’t know anything and can’t even read one word. I don’t know how many of us will stay alive after the city, or how many of us will stay and rebuild. I am like the hundreds and thousands in Gaza, wanting one thing and one thing only: we want to possess what we love.