I Did Not Expect to Outlive This Genocide
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Refaat Alareer
13 min read
The author's professor who was killed in a targeted Israeli bombing - understanding his life, literary work, and advocacy provides crucial context for the educational and cultural landscape the author describes
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Deir al-Balah
13 min read
The specific city where the author is displaced and living in a tent camp - understanding its geography, history, and significance in the Gaza Strip adds important context to the narrative
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Maqama
13 min read
The author mentions reading Al-Hamadhani's Maqamat - this classical Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose represents the rich literary tradition the author is studying despite wartime conditions
A camp housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, on November 30 (Jehad Alshrafi / AP Photo)
This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca
January 10, 2025
I, the creature who once loved mornings the most, can no longer tolerate them.
I wake up trembling. Something in my heart feels wrong, like everything else around me. I wrap my head in three blankets, making sure my ears are covered, but before I can even hear myself breathe, the epic morning noise begins. From beyond the blankets: the sound of my younger siblings quarrelling over half a piece of pita bread.
My mother begins to rebuke them, “You want to embarrass us in the eyes of the neighbours? Everyone’s flour is running out; you’re the only ones shouting about it.”
My head is filled with the desire to leave: to escape this cosmic hell by any means necessary, even if leaving means death. My body is tied down, my joints knotted by fear. I remember my grandmother, who used to relieve my fear after every Israeli aggression with a little olive oil and many prayers. Today, my joints are bound tighter than ever, and my grandmother is not here to comfort me.
The funniest thing of all, and I don’t know if it’s really funny, is that the fear I’m experiencing isn’t a fear of death or annihilation, but rather a fear of life. It’s a fear of the phonetics exam I’m taking in the coming days, of my haphazard Italian learning, of my inability to complete anything, of missing opportunities, of falling behind my classmates at university, of the possibility of gaining or losing weight.
Death has never frightened me; it has only restricted me, casting black, petrified sadness on my heart. But this morning, my fear of life grows and grows, and, with it, a great anger at my inability to overcome fear. I cry under the covers and wish for the return of my grandmother with her tin of olive oil.
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We are displaced: my mother, myself, and my four younger siblings (Hadi, Taqwa, Raghad, and Maryam), living in a tent in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the Gaza Strip. This four-by-four-metre room serves as our
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