On 22 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmed Alnaouq’s dwelling in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing 21 members of his household, together with his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters and all of their kids.
On the time, Alnaouq was dwelling in London, the place he works as a journalist and human rights activist. “It crushed me,” he says of the assault. Unable to return dwelling, he might solely watch helplessly from afar and grieve alone. Later, he tells me that it’s not anger or hate that consumes him now, however survivor’s guilt. “On a regular basis I feel: ‘Why? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed with my household?’”
The one motive he can consider, he says, is in order that he might inform their story to the world.
Eight years earlier, Alnaouq had co-founded a platform to assist younger Palestinians in Gaza write about their lives for a world viewers. It started within the aftermath of one other airstrike that had claimed the lives of his older brother Ayman and 4 of his buddies in the course of the seven-week Gaza conflict in the summertime of 2014.
“That incident struck me very, very exhausting,” he tells me quietly from his workplace in London. “I sank right into a deep melancholy. I needed to die. I actually, genuinely was ready for the second that I die so I can be a part of my brother and simply do away with this life.” Numbly, he watched extra deaths being reported within the media – six, eight, 10 extra Palestinians killed – with little or no sense of the flesh-and-blood individuals behind the numbers.
Then somebody he’d met in Gaza just a few years earlier, an American journalist and activist named Pam Bailey, messaged Alnaouq on Fb asking how he was. “I informed her: ‘I’m superb’. She stated: ‘No, inform me one thing actual. Inform me how you are feeling after shedding your brother.’ So I informed her the reality. I informed her I’m very, very depressed. I’m spending all my time at my brother’s grave. After I’m on their lonesome, I burst out crying.”
In an effort to assist him work by his melancholy and grief, Bailey instructed that Alnaouq write a narrative about his brother in English. “At first, I stated no. My English wasn’t superb.” However finally he agreed. It took them three months – Alnaouq writing drafts, Bailey sending again detailed edits – to get the story into form. When it was prepared, Bailey revealed it on-line.
“That modified my life,” says Alnaouq. “For the primary time, I acquired messages of sympathy and assist from individuals outdoors Gaza. In my thoughts, I assumed that every one westerners don’t just like the Palestinians. They don’t need to learn our tales. However that proved me flawed. It boosted my confidence and made me really feel I used to be flawed once I stated there isn’t any hope on this life.”
Impressed by the influence of their endeavour, Alnaouq and Bailey had one other thought: “Why don’t we replicate this expertise for different Palestinians who misplaced family members in Gaza? Why don’t we create a platform the place younger individuals can inform their tales in English and share them with the world?”, says Alnaouq. They referred to as the platform We Are Not Numbers (WANN).
It began in 2015 with 20 budding writers – a lot of them English literature college students akin to Alnaouq – aided by volunteer mentors from world wide. They wrote of hardship and loss, of emotions of anger and despair and dread within the face of recurring Israeli assaults. Additionally they wrote in regards to the issues they beloved about their homeland, regardless of the blockade on Gaza, the shortage of jobs, the worsening poverty. “We inspired our younger writers to put in writing about the great thing about the place,” says Alnaouq. “About how individuals in Gaza are pleasant and hospitable, in regards to the tradition, the mosques, church buildings and cemeteries – about all elements of life.” The purpose, in addition to offering a type of remedy for traumatised younger individuals together with very important connections to the surface world, was to “break the stereotypes” about Gaza for a world viewers accustomed to seeing “this dusty, horrible place” on the information.
The mission took off. “We had been amazed by how gifted younger writers in Gaza had been,” says Alnaouq. “Each six months, we might recruit one other 20 or 30. We might prepare them to put in writing and assist with their English. Over the previous 10 years, we’ve revealed greater than 1,500 tales and poems.” Amongst their alumni are the award-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha and the Al Jazeera journalist Hind Khoudary.
Now, Alnaouq and Bailey have collected 74 standout items from the previous decade in a transferring guide entitled We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth (Naomi Klein described it as “a jailbreak and a miracle”; Riz Ahmed discovered it “unattainable to place down or overlook”). Every chapter covers a yr, with massive occasions refracted by extremely private lenses. In 2015, after the devastation of the earlier summer season’s conflict, one author, Nada Hammad, observes the “canvas of gray” throughout Gaza slowly giving strategy to “small splashes of color” – a wall painted white, graffiti sprouting throughout non permanent housing. “It was a declaration of survival,” Hammad writes, “not a battle to overlook.”
Subsequent years convey additional violence and disruption, but additionally efforts to reside usually amid the chaos. One author describes his buddy’s makes an attempt to pursue his love of astronomy in a land with out available telescopes. We hear in regards to the byzantine complexity of on-line procuring amid the blockade and the dismay of a younger girl who relocates from Abu Dhabi together with her household solely to search out sand within the bathe water and energy cuts lasting 18 hours. Her preliminary dislike of her dad and mom’ homeland steadily softens into respect for its individuals who excel in determining “tips on how to thrive with little or no”.
By the point of the Hamas assaults on Israel on 7 October 2023, Alnaouq was dwelling within the UK. He had moved over in 2019 on a prestigious Chevening scholarship to do a journalism grasp’s diploma in Leeds. After graduating, he labored on the Palestinian embassy in London. Then he took over from Bailey as WANN’s worldwide director, overseeing the every day working of the organisation. (He additionally hosts a podcast referred to as Palestine Deep Dive and travels broadly to provide talks.)
On 22 October 2023, got here the Israeli bombardment that killed 21 members of his household.
This time, in contrast to 2014, Alnaouq had a manner of speaking his loss with a world viewers. “When this bombing occurred, I went to social media instantly and began voicing about what occurred to my household and I acquired a number of media consideration.” The response spurred him on to broaden WANN’s attain past the web. “We thought: ‘Now’s our probability. Not solely will we’ve got our tales on-line however we’ll put them in a guide, in order that extra individuals will perceive what’s taking place.’” 4 contributors, together with Alnaouq’s brother Mahmoud, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. “It’s our obligation that we make their tales immortal, on paper.”
The conflict hasn’t stopped younger individuals in Gaza from writing about their experiences; if something, it’s intensified their want to speak. “Now we publish perhaps 3 times extra tales than earlier than,” says Alnaouq. “Most of our writers misplaced their properties. They misplaced their laptops. They don’t have electrical energy or web connection. However they write their tales on their telephones, wait just a few days for web connection after which submit them to us. Each month we publish 35 to 40 tales.”
“We’re chronicling historical past in Gaza, not by info and statistics and information tales, however by the lived experiences of the individuals. It’s not a political mission: it’s a human mission.”
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We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey is revealed by Hutchinson Heinemann (£14.99). To assist the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply expenses might apply
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