Gaza. "Writing in the midst of an exceptional war" Writers and poets reveal feelings and diaries

GAZA CITY – War is an exceptional situation in human life, during which one cannot go about one's life in the usual way, and all the daily details go outside the usual routine.

People with war experience may adopt different behaviors, as their minds are constantly preoccupied with how to survive and secure a safe place, even though there is nowhere safe in the area where the war is taking place. Humans try to seize any chance of survival.

In the Gaza Strip, residents have been living in continuous wars for more than 15 years, as if their lives were a war punctuated by times of calm interspersed.

During war, man experiences different emotions, which are out of the ordinary, as he has to know fear at the extreme, and listen to the sound of his inner screams, with every moment when the bombardment intensifies around him.

Other emotions, including existential anxiety, fear of death, horror, and astonishment at seeing the dead, body parts, collapsed buildings on their heads, wandering, displacement, pain and dispersion, are great feelings experienced by the people of Gaza with an occupation that does not respect the safety of human beings or stone.

Despite the difficulty of life at the time of the bombing, Al Jazeera Net conducted interviews with poets and writers in Gaza, about deep humanitarian details whose voice hardly resonates among the voices of war, and they answered questions from under the hum of the continuous bombing in Gaza since the seventh of October 2023.

The controversy of writing and war

During the writing process, the writer or poet can experience new ideas within his consciousness, which were not in his mind, nor during the war as well, as the situation seems qualitative in both cases, and unprecedented scenes are manifested in the conflict between war and writing.

Writer Nairouz Karmout describes war as an attempt to experience all circumstances at the same time, and all emotions at the same time, and continues, "To get out of your body and return to it. To cross into an imagined safety zone that you hope for a real-time reality. To be all of you, and all of them. To live as one individual who suffers and tries to smile at the basil of his pain, smells gunpowder, feels heart palpitations in bare breasts begging for freedom after suffering an endless siege, this is how I test myself in war, in writing."

As for the poet Rawan Hussein, she says that "writing may be the salvation after we were subjected to successive shocks in wars, we resort to writing to console ourselves, which we see from sorrow and horror. To live the moments of war with constant amazement and panic necessarily, accumulates within us the need to empty in any form, whether by dancing, singing, drawing, sculpture, shouting, writing, etc., but I write. For me, writing is a cure for survival."

The writer Amer al-Masri believes that writing is "small wars" but on paper, because they are originally the result of a collision between ideas and reality, between logic and illogic, and between reality and fiction. Both are experimental and the results are not guaranteed.

"In writing, the result is either a tribute to 'survival' or a vilification of 'death'. In war, the result is either death or survival."

Sentimental bleeding

Poet Maryam Gosh believes that "writing is an emotional hemorrhage, a summary of our experience of life and death, and our visionary window to philosophy and the universe."

"When we write, we truly express our desire to exist, we practice the rituals of life as we like, we achieve a utopia that accommodates everything our souls hope for."

"Writing somehow rebelled against what is being to achieve what should be. Writing is a cosmic energy that rebels against reality to create a more beautiful reality, and to achieve that happiness that depends on the realization of a utopia that accommodates creation wherever and wherever they are."

War and writing may intersect in that both are a real desire to achieve a life and create a different atmosphere, although the method is different.

"Writing, in its philosophical transcendence, may seem like a war in one way or another, between writer and writing, between idea and writing, between writing and reality, is a journey of constant anxiety fueled by the self oscillating between logic and philosophy," she says.

As for war, Gosh says, "There is no philosophy or logic! War is a bleeding fueled by peoples and the blood of nations that is consumed by the killing plow. It could be a desire to live or a desire to die, and it could be an escape from both! Such is war, a sickle that does not stop harvesting spikes, and molars that do not tire of crushing sand. War and writing may intersect in that both are a real desire to achieve a life and create a different atmosphere, even if the method is different."

"There is no comparison between the cruelty of writing and the ferocity of war, even if both have a desire to rebel against reality and formulate another reality." The poet concludes by saying, "There is something constant between the idea of writing and war, they rebelled against reality to create a different reality."

A different war

Although the residents of the Gaza Strip had previously fought several war confrontations with the Israeli occupation, this war was different, as it was taken by surprise from the resistance factions of the enemy, followed by brutal attacks by the occupation on civilians in Gaza.

According to Nayrouz Qarmout, this war differs from previous ones in "suddenness, acceleration, and expansion of confrontation, which made people feel fear after a tangible joy like lost herds."

There is no time to think, but people see a change in the reality of confrontation, and they get a sense that the map of the city will draw new lines. That the international community treats you as if you are not the victim for the first time

"There is no time to think, but people see a change in the reality of the confrontation, and they get a sense that the map of the city will draw new lines. That the international community treats you as if you are not the victim for the first time."

"But the truth is that the reservoir was hammered after its waters were wasted for years on end of distress, siege and aggression, we are not human animals, but we proved that we are human beings who faced the depth of suffering," Qarmout added.

"We are not happy with pictures of female prisoners from the other side. But do we cancel the feeling of an individual who cannot take revenge after decades and years of beating and abuse with the most basic principles of dignity and what it means to stand as an oak for life?"

Unexpected imagination

As for Rawan Hussein, she said, "I feel proud and proud of everything that is happening in this war, the Gaza Strip was not forced this time to keep pace with the brutal entity on the war, just to defend ourselves for fear of killing, this time we are the ones who led the war and we are the ones who direct it and we are the ones who will end it with results that satisfy us."

What is different about this war, or in the feelings of this war from all previous wars, is that it was an unexpected fantasy, and I think that no matter what I write, I will not be able to dare to write the scene of the resistance jeep, wandering around a settlement on the Gaza periphery.

Amer al-Masri tells us that "what is different in this war, or in the feelings of this war from all previous wars, is that it was an unexpected fantasy, and I think if no matter what I write, I will not be able to dare to write the scene of the resistance enclave, wandering in a settlement on the Gaza envelope."

While Maryam Gosh said, "What is different about this war is that it began by surprising the Palestinian side in the way, quality and place, so the choice of Saturday dawn on the last day of the Throne Day in that Hollywood way was also shocking to the Palestinians, as we are not used to such before."

"In every war on Gaza, political analysts and even some Palestinian citizens could extrapolate and predict events because of the many wars that this country went through, but this war came out of calculations, we do not know where it ends, and we cannot extrapolate what will happen next hour, and we do not expect its events."

Regarding what the Palestinian resistance presented, this time as a surprise moment, by penetrating the borders of the cover prepared and fortified by Israel, and about the scene that the Palestinians or Arabs could not have dreamed of, Qarmout says: "They made 40 holes in the wall, stealing even gaps from life. This wall separated them from the normal movement of individuals and families. Waterproof, air and food. To see a tree that grandmother once talked to them about. For a handful of sands they know is no different from the sand they stand on. Like them, they are trying to cross, refusing to obey unjust laws that recognize defeat."

"The scene was amazing, imaginary, if I read it in a book, it would be illogical for me, if I saw it in a realistic movie it would be a comic scene, but we saw it on the ground, and it was not fiction, but it was reality," says Amer al-Masri.

"I felt that we would be liberated today, it seems that this feeling is too great to witness without loss or pain in such a short time, but the hope that lived inside me and grew was too strong to believe that we would finally be free," she said.