Gaza Diaries in Air/Light: Voices from Gaza with We are Not Numbers
Roaa Aladdin MissmehAir/Light is honored to feature a selection of work by participants in We Are We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project in the Gaza Strip. WANN tells the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news and advocates for their human rights, pairing young aspiring writers with experienced writers for mentorship and editorial support. WANN provides the world with direct access to Palestinian narratives without restrictions or foreign intermediaries speaking on behalf of Palestinians.
We worked with Sarah Jacobus, a Southern California-based WANN mentor, to help us curate a selection of work by nine writers, created both before and after October 7. We’ll publish new pieces from this project every week for the next 5 weeks.
This week, we feature 2 pieces:
“Entangled” by Roaa Aladdin Missmeh
The first rays of dawn filtered through the Palestinian flag hung at the window of Qadar’s room in her home in Acre. Posters of constellations and galaxies adorned the walls, intermingling with equations scribbled in haste on scraps of paper carefully pinned up as if to capture the fleeting thoughts of a curious mind.
Qadar lay curled up beneath a cozy quilt, her face half-buried in a book titled Quantum Mysteries: Exploring the Depths of Reality. The soft glow of a desk lamp cast a warm light on its pages. Her raven hair cascaded over the pillow, her peaceful slumber a canvas for the dreams that often whisked her away to the far reaches of the universe.
The voice of her mother Leila gently penetrated her dreams, calling her back to reality. Leila stood by the door with a serene smile on her face. Her eyes held the wisdom of a woman who had seen both hardships and victories. Her love for her daughter was as deep as the roots that held their home together.
“Qadar, habibti,” Leila said, “it’s time to wake up. Breakfast is ready, and your father is waiting. I don’t want what happened when we visited Safed to happen again.”
“Messages of Concern: An Introduction” by Sarah Jacobus
When Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began on October 7, I sent messages of concern via WhatsApp to the writers I had mentored over the past three years. Our connections had been forged through We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a Gaza-based project that seeks to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers. Israel had not cut internet access yet; we could share messages with relative ease.
Nour was first to text back. “It’s like an end of the world film,” she wrote. She lived in Gaza’s north, the first area to be bombed. I’d worked with her on an essay about the stresses of making the transition from university to the work world after graduation. “Was it too much for me to be ambitious in Gaza? Too much to have a dream?” she’d asked there. She’d gotten a job as a translator for an international agency and contacted me from time to time for consultation on some nuance or another of English vocabulary.