When War Ends, the Struggle Begins – We Are Not Numbers

The Gaza based group, We Are Not Numbers (WANN), will be regular contributors to the Palestinian Platform, along with others. As their website states: The mission of We Are Not Numbers is to create a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who together can bring about a profound change for Palestinians by getting their voices heard. WANN provides the world with direct access to the Palestinian narrative without restrictions and without foreign intermediaries speaking on behalf of Palestinians.

Ahmed Hosni Dremly is our first We Are Not Numbers contributor. The essay below is published with permission from We Are Not Numbers.

The author with the horse Dana, in a photograph taken by a stranger on the beach who also loves horses.

It is 5:00 a.m. My jostling thoughts have beaten my sleepy eyes. I push the pillow off my face and I move slowly to the open window. Fresh air from the dark street has not been enough to breathe deeply. My mother’s voice breaks the silence. “I couldn’t sleep, either.”

It has been two weeks since the red nights and the rattling thunder of the latest Israeli assault on Gaza. Still, I cannot sleep or stop remembering. What calms my soul is riding horseback along the beach in the dawn before anyone else is there. I ride a friend’s horse, Dana, who allows only me to ride her. Dana and I dance on the wet sand, where the sound of her hooves and the waves block the noise of my thinking. The beach, usually crowded with people, is ours alone. That’s when I am almost able to forget everything, until those thoughts come back to my mind violently, like thunder.

No returning to normal

The most recent Israeli assault on Gaza left 49 Palestinians, including 17 children and 3 women, dead, and at least 386 injured. These are the numbers reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. These are just numbers. But for Gazans, they are friends, neighbors, and members of the family. The shops are reopened. The schools are reopened. Everything is open, and the circle of life returns as it was. But the people are not the same.

Pallid faces and shaken eyes survey the streets. Dust and missile powder waft from the ground. An echo of children’s nervous smiles is heard around. The war is over for everybody but not for the Gazans. How can you tell a woman about the normalcy of life after she lost her only son during the latest war? How can you convince a woman to return to normal, such as Abeer Harb, who was planning for a new life with her fiancé before he was killed in a bombing in Rafah during the latest war? The most painful wounds are the ones that cannot be seen and no amount of talking can heal.

The war is over for everybody but not for the Gazans. How can you tell a woman about the normalcy of life after she lost her only son during the latest war?

After the ceasefire, I yearn to know if the souls of people I always run into — taxi drivers, waiters, grocery salespeople, and street children — are still alive. Or are they alive but fear being bombed in their houses while they are sleeping, eating, or gathering with family and friends? Do they fear an Israeli airstrike could kill them at any second?

The worst part of war is the aftermath: reactions become cold and hopes fade. Living in Gaza for more than five wars has numbed my response to seeing dead bodies in the streets or innocent kids in the hospitals injured for no reason.

When I look at those kids, I think of my five-year-old niece Talia, for whom we kept the TV off during the attacks to prevent her from seeing what was happening outside. Maybe because we tried to protect her from the horrors, she later became very intent and focused when we talked about the war. We would calm the younger children of my family the same way my mum calmed us during previous wars, by keeping us close to her and telling us that the bombing was far away.

One of the many animal casualties from Israeli attacks on Gaza. Photo: Atia Darwish

The return of even more violent war

I thought I would not be surprised by any more wars. But, then, the attacks become more violent. In the latest war, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Ashor building on El-Shabia Street. My friend, Mahmoud, had lived there with 13 members of his family. They live in a small rental flat now. When I pass through El-Shabia Street and I see the rubble of that building, I flash back to the memories of our childhood when we were playing in that wide house. I wonder how Mahmoud and his family could be living in that tiny flat now.

On the afternoon of the third day of the most recent attacks, I was walking near my house to buy some groceries when an Israeli airstrike targeted a cart on Omar Al Mukhtar Street, 100 meters from me. In Gaza, carts are used to deliver food rations, transport materials such as steel and cement, and sell items such as fruits and canned foods. The people who transport goods by cart are not well off, but they are peacefully going about their trade. Three such Palestinians were killed in this attack.

The young men died instantly, but the horse that was pulling the cart was bleeding for a while. I will not forget its unblinking gaze at its wounds.

The young men died instantly, but the horse that was pulling the cart was bleeding for a while. I will not forget its unblinking gaze at its wounds. Then it hit its head on the ground and died. The last thing that the horse had seen was its wound. How will I ever walk to get groceries without thinking of those men? Or ride a horse like Dana as I do in the early dawn without thinking about that horse and that day?

I asked my mum what was the difference between her dreams for me when I was a baby and now. She told me she dreamt of me as becoming an important person with a good job, and a healthy family. But for now, she says, I just want you to be safe. It is like asking a sick person what he is hoping for and he is only interested in having no pain. Before dreams can thrive, Gazans will need to be sure that the attacks will end. Only this will give them the time that is needed for memories of war to fade and dreams to surface.

Ahmed Hosni Dremly, 26 years old, is a Gaza-based journalist and translator. His articles have appeared in the Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Mondoweiss. They have been published in translation by French and Italian websites and newspapers. One of his essays was selected as a 20 Cinta Gaza Malaysia Prize winner, to be included in a forthcoming book.

Gina Crandell serves as a mentor to Ahmed Hosni, Asma Abu Amra, and Noura Selmi. Crandell’s books have focused on the intersection of natural processes and cultural geometries, beginning with Nature Pictorialized: The View in Landscape History, 1993, and Tree Gardens: Architecture and the Forest, 2013. Crandell is formerly a professor of landscape architecture and her work now focuses on planting mini-forests to address climate change.

Where are you from?

The politics of home.

Where are you from? I have been asked this more times than I can remember. And having lived in several places, the idea of home is sometimes elusive.

I barely lived in my Tamil hometown. It’s of some sadness to my family that having lived so far away from there, my Tamil is rather a modern metropolitanasque rendering. It’s a version of what I picked up from my parents and also borrowed from the movies I grew up watching, peppered with English and Hindi. But most times, my word mixup and jumbled pronunciation just makes for an easy laugh and gives my family more reasons to remark fondly on my silliness.

Time in Singapore was a brief stint from which I only have baby memory. In other words, I remember nothing except for memories I have created in retrospect watching videos my parents took on a rather bulky handycam.

The place I spent most of my life in, Allahabad, no longer holds the home I grew up in. The structure remains, but now is a modified, rented space. It no longer resembles the home I knew.

The place I spent most of my life in, Allahabad, no longer holds the home I grew up in. The structure remains, but now is a modified, rented space. It no longer resembles the home I knew.

My parents currently live in a different city I only visit when I go to see them. I have no roots there. The home they’ve built makes for a strange experience. The house has the persons and objects that serve as reminders of familiarity stemming from childhood yet the setup is as strange as a stranger’s house.

My hostel room in Mumbai, where I lived as an undergraduate, is an in-between space. Without the people who housed it with me then, it’s lost its hold on me. And my little room in the university halls at Leeds, where I spent much time earning my Master’s during lockdown, has changed residents twice. No longer mine to call home.

I now live in London, in a place I’m building up to be home, but far away from the home country that shaped me. Home remains accessible, and yet elusive. And so, when people ask me, where are you from, what do I tell them?

~

‘Where are you from’ is really two questions. One comes from innocent curiosity, asked by someone who wants to know you and your history. One who sees the beauty in colour, but does not compare shade. And then there is one of otherisation; that attempts to place you anywhere but here. At worst, it is a racial profiling to remind you of your place. At best, it is to tell you how much space you are allowed to occupy.

Some months ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party. We had all gathered in a park on a sunny day to enjoy some picnicking. Someone asked me where I was from. Since moving to the UK, for the sake of brevity, and to avoid the painful task of explaining where in India, I simply say ‘India’. While India is huge and various, and I have many homes there, if I venture into the complexities, the answer would run pages. So unless I feel we can afford a long conversation, I start simple.

So yes, I was asked where I was from. In this context, it was the coming together of various social groups where a lot of us were strangers [the only person I knew there was my friend whose birthday it was], so this question was thrown around to everyone from a place of simple knowing.

But then this person specifically picked out the only other brown person in the group and said, ‘you are also Indian right!’, motioning us to talk to each other. I did not know this other brown person, but having heard her converse so far, I could see she had a proper British accent. Not the I-came-here-yesterday-and-picked-up-an-accent kind, but the I-have-lived-here-all-my-life-and-so-I-speak-this-way kind. It was pretty obvious to me she would consider herself British having probably grown up here. I was right. She clarified that her parents were of Indian origin, but she was born and raised here. She explained this with a half smile, half smirk that I am quite familiar with. It’s the yes I look different but why do I have to keep confirming my Britishness look. And I could only sympathise.

Reading about this episode, some would ask - what is so wrong about a person being recognised as Indian if they look Indian? The answer lies very much in the motivation and intent behind this act of identification. What was the point of singling her out for me to talk to? The person could have thought, same culture so same interests. But that would also be a dilution of our metropolitan selves that don’t fit into one culture.

Whenever in the UK I am asked about my origins, I say with much ease and without hesitation that I am Indian. But for my friend’s British-born Indian-origin friend, identity is a more complicated subject. She is expected to be a certain way because she looks a certain way. But she acts like a person from around here, because she is from around here. She is stuck between a camp that wants her to exude Indian-ness (but just enough, not too much) and another camp that is seeing her as betraying her origins due to her Britishness. Yet if she were one to put out her Indianness on colourful display, she would be blamed by some for not trying to assimilate. She could easily be criticised for being not Indian enough, not British enough, too Indian, too British, all at the same time.

Whenever in the UK I am asked about my origins, I say with much ease and without hesitation that I am Indian. But for my friend’s British-born Indian-origin friend, identity is a more complicated subject.

After the awkward introduction, the both of us did converse a fair bit that evening. And the interesting common ground we found was not our Indian roots, but rather our love for Leeds! Turns out we both went to Leeds for university. That is what broke the ice, not our brownness.

Later on in a pub, she opened up about living in a really white town growing up. She talked about how she would be given looks, and had things yelled at her. I told her I have had the looks, but luckily not the crude comments. Even between the two of us, two seemingly similar looking brown skinned people, where do you come from holds different connotations. And therein lies the complexity of identity that many fail to grasp in their blanket opinions on how to feel about race.

~

The last time I was asked where I was from, the question came from a few homeless people I was interviewing. I was asking them how it was for them this winter. They looked at me a bit bewildered to begin with - why is this odd girl going around in the darkness of the evening, prodding us with questions? I wasn’t sure at first if they meant where I was from, as in where I lived currently and set out from that day, or where I was from, as my ethnic/national origin. I replied, “You mean where I come from originally?” Yes, he said. “India”, I responded.

While this exchange was happening, a fellow homeless person gave out a snort and laughed. He said, “You cannot ask these questions anymore!” He was snarkily referring to this controversy involving a British black charity worker Ngozi Fulani who recently was pestered with questions about her origins by a member of the royal household. Despite being born in Britain and clarifying that, the late queen’s lady in waiting (also Prince William’s godmother) kept pressing her to disclose where her people came from.

And I think the incident is really useful in bringing out the subtleties of racial profiling. While where do you come from can indeed be an innocent question posed to anyone, people of colour have scores to say about their unique experiences with that question. A lot of the time it’s used to make you feel like ‘the other’. And yet when challenged, people can hide behind a claim of innocence behind that question. Therein lies the reality of today’s racial politics. In an environment where overt racial slurs and comments are socially unacceptable in many places, people resort to masked commentary. Maybe some do it without conscious understanding. But pointing it out is important for the process of unlearning.

In an environment where overt racial slurs and comments are socially unacceptable in many places, people resort to masked commentary.

My own recent encounter with this question left me confused. On that same day, I was asked that question by three different homeless people. Two of them, who were Polish, reacted positively. They were happy I had come from somewhere else and possibly made it. Despite their own situation, they made this known and made me feel comfortable. And then there were a few British people who took this as an opportunity to react defensively against the incident involving Ngozi Fulani.

But, either way, I came out thinking there is something truly poetic about being asked about home by people who unfortunately are struggling with the concept of home themselves. Their home is transient. And it forced me to think of home without a sense of attachment to a physical space. It made me think of home in the form of all the warmth and love I have had, whichever place I have lived in, whatever place I come from. So the next time someone asks me where I come from, I will be tempted to just say everywhere.

Chronicles of an Elder: Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe, August, 2022

Zimbabwe is a beautiful, distressed, struggling country of 15 million. Its government is corrupt, its social services practically non-existent, its unemployment rate at 80 percent, its currency worthless. Goods are priced in US dollars, and one US dollar is 750 Zimbabwean dollars. Our dear friend Sophie, a university professor, makes $130/month. Electricity is erratic in many places, including the house where I stayed. There's no hot water, infrequent wifi, lots of flies. But the warmth I feel towards the Chirongoma family, and their reciprocal affection, makes it alright. On the other hand, it's a hard life in terms of the daily slog for 98 percent of the population. As ever, there's a layer of rich Zimbabweans whose housing and other amenities are on a different planet from most.

A huge Chinese influence operates, and they are purchasing all manner of valuable resources. It's the new colonialism. Very, very few white people in evidence anywhere. Many, many people selling vegetables, soft drinks, baskets, trinkets, oranges, etc. by the side of the road. One of the most distressing things for me is knowing that giving someone two dollars can make the difference between their eating for a couple of days or going without. I feel a continual need to buy stuff I don't need or want, and to tip anyone who does me a service. I experience how hugely privileged I am compared to almost everyone I meet, and it's discomfiting. It's not charming to see seven year old children driving a donkey cart or an old woman hawking apples.

I experience how hugely privileged I am compared to almost everyone I meet, and it's discomfiting. It's not charming to see seven year old children driving a donkey cart or an old woman hawking apples.

On the positive side, the skies and the sunsets and the wildlife are magnificent. Today I stood two feet from a giraffe, and fed a four ton elephant at Antelope Park, an animal sanctuary/resort. The Zimbabwean culture I've encountered is warm and intensely welcoming. I'm conscious of my western liberal values and my colour. I'm concerned about being insensitive and matronizing, but my outsider feelings are minimal. The acceptance level I experience is huge. I don't understand how people can endure such privation and be both accepting and often cheerful. Being an elder, I feel fairly comfortable not understanding lots of things, but I wish things were better here and were on the upswing. They're not.

I was in the Peace Corps in Kenya over fifty years ago, and this brings me back to considering how the world has changed and how I, now an elder, am different. I despair at the way things are moving in alarming and unhappy directions. Today at the animal park I realized with horror what climate catastrophe will keep doing to this gorgeous land--and to ours. This concern was nothing but a whisper when I was young.

Today at the animal park I realized with horror what climate catastrophe will keep doing to this gorgeous land--and to ours. This concern was nothing but a whisper when I was young.

November, 2022.

The following update comes from Dr. Sophie Chirongoma, currently living in Zimbabwe. Sophie is a professor at Midlands State University.

Living conditions remain difficult in all arenas with socio-economic circumstances continually deteriorating. Zimbabwe's forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in 2023 do not offer much optimism. There's ongoing polarization and animosity between the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). The ruling party continues to use government resources such as food aid and farm inputs as campaign tools to influence voting patterns.

We Zimbabweans persevere, but there is little light on the horizon just now.

……………………………………

Rose Levinson, Ph.D.

Founder and Managing Editor

Emerging Voices: A Webzine for Shifting Times