are you ready to be brave? 🇵🇸

a question for you from Gaza

This summer, I began writing a memoir based on my time in Palestine. I developed an opening chapter based on an afternoon spent with friends when I visited Gaza earlier this year. It’s a memory I hold like a kaleidoscope to the sun, each tilt emitting rays of rich truth. 

I wrote this story thinking I’d offer it to the world in the pages of a book at a much later date. Instead, I’ve decided to share an excerpt of it here and now—directly to my readers, while Gaza begs to be heard.

The story holds a question that comes directly from Gaza— are you ready to be brave?—a question that lives in the folds of friendship and the depths of rubble. It’s a question that has guided me to find my own voice as an artist who writes for the liberation of Palestine—as a heartbroken friend who fears for my loved ones.

This story is a call to action to define for yourself what it means to be brave in this grim hour— to move and speak accordingly and immediately—and then inspire others to do the same. ♥️

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The Gaza seaport.

Are you ready to be brave?

Ahmed asked me this question during golden hour in Ramadan —the tender time between the asr and maghrib call to prayer—when the body is most in need of rest. I was visiting Gaza, nearly two years after I left, and my friends wanted to make the most of my two-week visit, forgoing the late afternoon Ramadan nap for togetherness. I too was fasting. As a Pakistani Muslim born and raised in white suburban America, I did not have much community or spiritual connection to Ramadan. That changed when I came to Palestine.

Ahlan wa sahlan, ya ajaneb! Mahmoud greeted us, leaning out of Ahmed’s white Kia Soul, drumming on the car door. His unruly mop of curls were freshly gelled back. I waited with my British and American colleagues and friends, Matt and Ryan, outside our apartment building, an eight-story tower that houses Gaza-based foreigners, or ajaneb. 

My American childhood made English my first language — it is what I was educated in and how I formed my first friendships; it remains my default mode of self-expression. My second language, my parents’ mother tongue, was Urdu—a language rooted in Sanskrit and colored by loanwords from Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish. I was raised in Urdu, comforting me in illness or scolding me when I was out of line. It is in Urdu poetry where I learned the depths and multitudes of love, a force so great we refer to our loved ones as jigar, my liver, or jaan, my whole soul. 

Arabic was the third language I was steeped in as a child. My mother and her mother, my nanima, guided me to memorize the Arabic of Islam’s five daily prayers, and taught me how to read the flowing script of the Quran. Arabic was not a spoken language in my home; it was the medium of prayer, a means to thin the veil with the divine.     

Years later, I formally studied Arabic in university in Washington, DC. Bolstered by a head start from childhood, the letters, sounds, and rules of the script came flooding back to me. My eyes embraced the return of moving from right to left across the page. I bumped into words I recognized, words that through the spread of Islam into the Indian subcontinent, found their way into Urdu—an interlibrary loan system formed through cultural and spiritual mingling catalyzed by conquest.  

I was a stranger in Gaza, a foreigner — they called me ajnabiyya. They also called me khalto, auntie, or ukhti, my sister. These words live in Urdu too. We call our mother’s sister khala and refer to foreigners as ajnabi. I never achieved fluency in Arabic, but I found comfort in its familiarity, even in being called a stranger. 

From the roof of my apartment building in Gaza, I could see the seaport. At night, the yellow and blue fishing boats were anchored randomly, scattered every which way like toys strewn about a playroom. In the corner of my eye, twelve miles up the coast, loomed the chimneys of the Rutenberg Power Station releasing clouds of burnt coal into the sky.

The power station sits on the other side of the wall that imprisons Gaza. This land is known to Palestinians as al-Majdal, an Arab village conquered in 1948 and ethnically cleansed by 1950, displacing many of its residents, al-majdalawi, into Gaza as refugees, where they have remained for generations. From the rooftops of Gaza, darkened by protracted power cuts, Ashkelon, the Israeli renaming of al-Majdal, glimmers with unfettered electricity. For many Palestinian refugees, homeland is an abstract concept, a dream. For the majdalawi in Gaza, homeland is a mirage.

Like toys strewn about a playroom.

As I approached Ahmed’s car, I caught whiffs of Mahmoud’s strong cologne. It was late March and the air was crisp, scents carried effortlessly on the early spring breeze. Ryan slammed the car door shut; Ahmed and Mahmoud turned their bodies towards us for a team huddle.   

We will go to the Old City for a visit, Ahmed said, but first we have to do something small and quick. Khalil has his school photo tomorrow, and he ripped his shirt yesterday. I need to buy him a new one.

We accepted the mission to procure a fresh shirt for Ahmed’s preschool-aged son. I loved the plan—an afternoon spent in the casual intimacy of running errands with my friends.  

Ahmed turned down the radio, demoting the dabka beats to background music for Mahmoud’s incessant phone calls. Mahmoud got engaged just a few days earlier, and the litany of celebratory calls from aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends was in full force. Even on regular days, Mahmoud lived the life of a charismatic mayor, getting pulled into small talk and pleasantries, handshakes and hugs, everywhere he went.

One time, we were stuck in traffic when Mahmoud abruptly called out to a white-haired man on a motorcycle, Salaam ya sheiki!, his voice thundered over honking cars. Dressed piously in a white robe and skullcap, the elderly motorcyclist waved back, his ear-to-ear smile gleamed across the traffic. That’s my childhood Quran teacher, Mahmoud chuckled. Great guy.

My friendship with Ahmed and Mahmoud began at Gaza Sky Geeks, a co-working space and community center where I headed the launch of a coding school. Ahmed enrolled in the second cohort of the Code Academy after graduating from university. I recruited him to be a mentor for the program, his technical aptitude and natural patience made him perfect for the role. Ahmed hesitated at the suggestion, This responsibility—mentoring—is precious! It needs someone more experienced than me.  I repeated to him over several weeks, I know you can do it, coaxing him into the job.

Years later, he eventually went on to lead the program, taking over responsibilities I once held. On my last day in Gaza two years ago, Ahmed gifted me with a baseball hat that he designed — an outline of Palestine filled with embroidered flowers. Stitched onto the side: this land is your land, this land is my land. 

Ahmed is an only child, a rarity in Palestinian culture. He often mapped back his quirks to this fact. I once offered him an orange. He refused, sheepishly admitting he didn’t know how to peel it. I looked at him, wondering if he was joking. My mother had a lot of time for me since it was just me in the home. The fruit always came peeled. I smiled at Ahmed’s admission of being a mama’s boy and dug my thumbnails into the leathery skin, showing him how it’s done. Though I’m the youngest of three, at that moment, I felt like a big sister. 

Ahmed slowed the car, his eyes scanning the densely layered shop signs for one that mentioned school uniforms. Mahmoud rolled down the window and beckoned an idle shopkeeper over for help. Narrating a complex route, the shopkeeper’s hands mimicked a u-turn, then a left turn, then a right turn. The guys nodded along and thanked the man, waiting for the window to be fully sealed to confess that they had no idea what just happened. We cruised around the streets of Gaza, one u-turn after another, peering down alleys and getting nowhere.

Ahmed pulled over. We’ll figure this out later. Let’s do something fun. Still up for the Old City?

The sun dipped lower in the sky. We were in charge of picking up the iftar meal for our friends who would gather to break fast at our go-to hangout Al Baqa, a seafront bring-your-own-picnic spot. The narrow streets of the Old City would quickly get congested when traffic picked up closer to sunset. We would most certainly be late for iftar.  I thought about what else to do with the time we had. 

Let’s go to the sea, I said. 

We drove to Gaza’s seaport, a narrow strip of sandy road that juts out into the Mediterranean, peppered with shuttered coffee kiosks and vacant picnic tables. The scene waited to come alive after sunset: the smell of brewed cardamom and cigarettes commingling with the sea air, playing cards changing hands with quick flicks of the wrist. 

On our left were piled blocks of concrete, shaved down rubble from wars past. Their neat edges and bright pastel murals made it easy to forget their origin story of violence. We drove as far as we could down the port, the murals around us abruptly transitioning to fresher rubble that had not yet been reclaimed into art. Haphazard, gigantic shards of shattered buildings littered the earth. I stood before the sharp edges of concrete, wondering what they held, who they sheltered. 

“Anam?”

Ahmed stood beside me, gazing at the rubble, when he said my name. Said in Urdu, my name is pronounced like a soft lullaby: uh-num. In its original Arabic, my name takes on a different cadence. Containing the letter ayn, a back-of-the-throat sound that gives the Arabic language its character, my name lengthens into in-aam. Anam is a word familiar to an Arabic speaker’s tongue. It lives in al-Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Quran, a verse recited repeatedly in Islam’s daily prayers. Tethering me to my multiple belongings, I live in, and love, all versions of my name. 

I wonder what prompted Ahmed that day on the port to say my name with a gentleness so powerful, the sound still soothes me after all this time. He turned my name into a question —Anam?—as he broke from my side and walked towards the rubble. He hoisted his body up onto the shards of concrete, stepping himself into a stable footing. The rubble felt menacing, towering above me. Suddenly, Ahmed was taller than the cold concrete. Suddenly, I was his sister again, this time younger. Extending his hand towards me, he asked: 

Are you ready to be brave?

My whole body softened, mirroring Ahmed’s mood. I placed my hand into his. He pulled me up onto the rubble, joining our friends who glowed in the sun’s descent. We laughed, heckling each other, snapping pictures of Gaza’s cityscape. We paid no mind to the time. A fishing boat passed by and I turned to watch its return to the coast. Ahmed raised his phone camera and pointed it towards me. I sat upon the rubble with my friends, sun kissing my skin, smiling towards the glimmer of the sea.

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