“‘Watching the Lost City from Exile’

When you live through war and become part of it, your psychological resilience and physical resistance to pain become far stronger than when you watch the war consuming your city, your family, and your memories from afar. This is the unique pain that arises from witnessing Gaza being crushed under the weight of military machinery air, land, and sea forces that destroy stones and extinguish lives.

The pain stems not only from the sheer magnitude of the loss but also from the feeling that the place you once called home has become a distant memory, viewed through layers of distance: geographical, emotional, and temporal.

For me, Gaza is not just a place. It is a labyrinth of memories: school days, the refugee camp, discovering the world in a context filled with contradictions, a first love, a first kiss, the exploration of self, the rebellion against rigid traditional norms, early political engagement, and the daily challenges of living with dignity under a suffocating blockade and dire economic, social, and political conditions. It is a complex and contradictory tableau.

Today, as I watch it from afar, I find myself caught between longing and helplessness, as if gazing through a window that refuses to open.

The Gaza I Knew

Living in Gaza is a deeply personal experience, something that many do not understand. Under the blockade, each of us had our own story about the place, about loneliness, about love and hatred, and about the spectrum of human emotions. Each of us had our own relationship with space, distance, and freedom – and how to express it.

Gaza was a city of laughter amid darkness, where its streets teemed with dense thoughts and stifled wishes. Its markets bustled with voices calling out for fresh produce, and the Mediterranean hugged its horizon, offering fleeting moments of serenity amid chaos.

But it was also a city deeply wounded by war, spiritually and humanly. Successive wars left scars on its delicate, beautiful face. War made hope in Gaza isolated and besieged, just like its people.

I will continue to watch, to remember, and to tell its story, holding onto the hope that one day, I may walk its streets again.

I remember nights when electricity would cut off, and we would gather for evening chats in the darkness. We laughed, we mourned, we shared wishes for a better tomorrow, or simply complained about living in a world with no electricity or light. Sometimes, when the electricity was gone, the city would sink into an almost sacred silence. We lit candles, clung to faith, and sought to hold onto our emotions, fearing that the darkness would steal them and leave us numb.

We refused to adapt to the realities of blockade, death, and war. We resisted this reality in pursuit of a better life, of peace, warmth, and freedom. Our resistance was embodied in our commitment to education, the only path for Gaza’s youth to break free and see the world.

Before October 7th, the literacy rate in Gaza had reached 96%, as education was our hope and our key to freedom from the open-air prison. And when the space felt too confined, and loneliness overwhelmed us, we would look to the open sky. The sky remained unbarred; no occupation could close it off. It was our sole beacon of hope.

The Lens of Exile

Living in exile reshapes your relationship with your homeland. From a distance, Gaza is no longer just the city I knew; it has become the city I fear for, the city I grieve for, and the city I defend in conversations with people who have never walked its streets. Exile is not just a state of being; it is an ongoing negotiation between presence and absence, between belonging and estrangement. The farther I am from Gaza, the deeper it defines me.

Through news reports and social media, I see fragments of a reality that feels both alien and familiar. I see the destruction of neighborhoods where I once played, the faces of children who could be younger siblings of my childhood friends, and the resilience of a people refusing to be erased. Yet, these images are filtered through the screens of exile, stripped of their scents, sounds, and textures. They are ghosts of a reality I can no longer touch.

The Burden of Helplessness

There is a unique sense of guilt that accompanies watching your city suffer while you are safe elsewhere. It is a guilt that no amount of advocacy or storytelling can absolve. I write, I speak, I protest, but nothing can bridge the chasm of distance.

In exile, the inability to act directly becomes a heavy burden. You are a spectator to an ongoing story of a place that shaped you, knowing that your absence is both a choice and a necessity.

The Responsibility of Memory

Exile has taught me that remembrance is an act of resistance. Remembering Gaza is a rejection of its erasure, an affirmation of its humanity in a world that often reduces it to headlines and statistics. My memories are my inheritance, the thread that ties me to a place that refuses to let me go, even as I live beyond its borders.

But memory alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by action: through writing, through speaking, through ensuring that Gaza is seen not only as a site of suffering but as a place of life, culture, and history. It is a city of poets and fishermen, mothers and dreamers, people whose stories deserve to be told.

Aspirations for the Future

Viewing the lost city from exile is an act of both love and sorrow. It is a reminder that distance does not sever ties; it transforms them. Gaza lives within me, not as an idealized memory but as a living, breathing part of me. And so, I will continue to watch, to remember, and to tell its story, holding onto the hope that one day, I may walk its streets again – not as a visitor, but as someone who has finally returned home.

Gaza deserves peace. This is not a political statement; it is a purely human one. To talk politics about a place where over two million people have been besieged and isolated from the world for more than twenty years feels like a luxury. The politics that Gaza needs is the lifting of its blockade and its restoration to the time the rest of the world inhabits.