i wish you knew 🇵🇸

a call to action for the Palestinian people of Gaza

I wish you knew how magnificent Gaza is—that you learned about it through its people and their spirit—instead of in its darkest hour, through the lens of genocide, annihilation, erasure, and murder.

I wish you knew my friend Mahmood, a gentle giant who is comically afraid of cats. When I visited Gaza earlier this year, Mahmood had just gotten engaged and his phone rang incessantly with celebratory calls from aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Even on regular days, Mahmoud lives the life of a charismatic mayor, getting pulled into small talk and pleasantries, handshakes and hugs, everywhere he goes.

Mahmood worked incredibly hard to afford an apartment of his own for his newly married life. That apartment is now destroyed and he has uploaded a goodbye video to his Instagram page in case he does not survive this genocide. 

I wish you knew my friend Ahmed, an only child, a rarity in Palestinian culture. He often maps 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. I always felt like Ahmed was more of a younger brother to me than my friend and co-worker. 

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.

I sent him a message a few days ago; he has yet to respond.

I wish you knew my friend Ghada’s son Kareem, his absurdly cute smile and big brown eyes he inherited from his mom. We had this game where we would pretend to send each other little zaps of magic. I would make a zzzz! sound each time we touched fingertips and Kareem would double over laughing, his smattering of baby teeth on full display.

Kareem is somewhere in the south of Gaza with his three siblings, displaced from his Gaza City home, along with 1.1 million other Palestinians. His home is most likely destroyed. 

my littlest friend Kareem.

I wish you knew that weeks after the ceasefire that halted the May 2021 massacre of Gaza, my friends threw me a surprise birthday party. They invited dozens of children, traumatized from eleven straight days of carpet bombing, to a beautiful seaside venue. They hired circus performers, clowns, and musicians and we played and danced with the kids under the golden hour sun. My friends stayed up late assembling tons of little goodie bags for the kids, and handed me the basket at the end of the party. You’re the birthday girl, Anam. Hand out your party favors to your guests. 

My very Gaza birthday.

I wish you knew Tala and Omar. Ishak and Farah. I wish you knew Mohammed, Haneen, Asmaa, Aya and Noor. Sereen and Abdallah. I wish you knew Iyad and Saed. I wish you knew Hani and Abdelbaset, Amna and Muhannad. I wish you knew all their stories; the times we bickered, the times we laughed. I will tell all these stories one day, but for now—I wish, I wish.

I wish you knew that strawberry fields flourish in Gaza’s winter—heaps of tiny, beating hearts fill the fruit stands. I have always thought it to be a certain kind of mercy to offer the world strawberries in winter, a certain kind of devotion to raise fields of ruby amidst the missiles and drones.

I wish you knew Gaza as more than a body count, more than collateral damage, more than a debate on cable TV. I wish you knew the Gaza, my former and forever home, where I left a piece of my heart. The Gaza that embodies a generosity of spirit—a pure and utter love for life.

If you knew—if they told you the truth—we would never let this happen.

Maybe now you know, even just a little, that Gaza is a place and people worthy of protection. Worthy of your love. Worthy of your action.

As of this writing, Israel has killed over 7000 Palestinians in Gaza, a number verified by the UN that Joe Biden has publicly cast doubt upon—a revolting tactic to minimize the scale of Israel and America’s brutality. Linger on that number — seven thousand human lives. Nearly three thousand of those lives belonged to children.

Put pressure on your reps to call for an immediate ceasefire and end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Attend protests. Educate yourself and call out ignorance. Follow and amplify Palestinian voices. Talk about Gaza to your community; don’t let this calamity fade from public consciousness. Push back against soulless leadership that enables and funds this violent injustice. We the people, with our personal power combined, outnumber the powerful.

One day, when we look back on this genocide, you can’t say you didn’t know. 🍓