Atef Abu Seif

A City in Short Fiction

Book of Gaza

Sabrina D. 

She swam further out. Water seeped beneath her clothes until they ballooned around her. She felt an excited tingle that was almost too much to bear. Arousal grew inside her as she continued onwards, oblivious to the seashells cutting the bottom of her feet, making the moment complete with a few drops of female blood. Pain and desire gripped her. Sea foam surrounded her like a bracelet of honey, entwined with froths of whipped candyfloss, its edges gleaming with golden light as it absorbed its nectar from the sun above.  

Dawn drew breath; the waves broke on the sands, the tide swelled in a whisper, cradling the low-lying houses, the souls within enveloped in a delicious numbness. The voice of the muezzin rent the skies as heaven's velvet light caresed downcast eyelids. The camp's alleyways welcomed the daylight’s newborn as openly as it did the shadows of masked spectres. Slogans, victories and martyrs’ memorials decorated the walls and the mass of humanity reckoned up the labour of coming days. No sooner had the buses arived at the gates of the camp than the market square was packed.The labourers’ footsteps dispersed- humble, individual steps heading off, with something new for the hungry mouths that littered the alleyways to taste. 

Days of confrontation in-between one strike and another. We sold our souls seeking a day's work, scraping a living from the belly of the unknown. Martyrs fell. Popular unrest grew and the camp's nerves dangled on a thread. These people made things happen; they didn't just carp about their situation. Optimism brought everyone together. 

Why did loving you not make me see the world in pinkish hues?After I wore your heart and borrowed your eyes, I could see nothing but the cemetery and worms crawling out of children's heads... I write and I feel happy, my pain freeing itself from me, leaving me floating like a lily buoyed on the surface of my hopes. How can you fall from a towering height and not be smashed to pieces? That's what I was looking for when I offered my heart to you, exposed like a fish that had left its sea to live in your water. What were you thinking when you took off your theatre costume and dressed yourself in these little dreams? Did you say, 'She's just a kid. The sea will force her to retreat one day!' Or were you already planning your first kiss, promised to me since the beginning of the catastrophe that is my existence - an existence that has been besieged as much by life as by death.

Gaza, thorn and balm of the soul, whose head I had cut off for me a generation ago and whom I still mourn. If it had grown a new head I would have cut it off again. When my heart became rational I discovered that a true love was always only two poems away from my soul; a soul that stood in wait for its sacrificial offering: Gaza's head. Here it seems as if everything is tainted with the smell of blood and misery - passion in a rational heart is a mythical idea. But I won't let a single kiss escape me, I'll sow and tend it in the palm of my hand like a talisman to give me hope. Who'll tell Salwa she needs an ocean of honesty to bind her love when there's no sacred oath? How will she place her trust on the shoulder of a man who gives his roses to so many women?

How long must we wait? What unpredictable occurrence is it that stands to ruin everything? The state of expectation begins at birth. Within the very first moments of life, we fall into the expectation trap. From birth onward we're caught up in the fantasy of expectations. We wait for our mother's milk-swollen breasts. We wait to see her nipple. Wait to lie cradled in her embrace. We wait for the warmth and security of the curve of her belly and thighs. And when we get older, we expect success or failure. Life or death. Sadness or bliss. Wealth or poverty. Good or evil. We await every pair of opposites. We don't know which of them will reach us first, and then we simply surrender to a gust of happiness or the cleaver of despair. And we carry on. We bare our teeth or bleed from our wounds, but we carry on. We never have the chance to pause or to think. Constant expectation, and propulsion that cannot cease. Eventually there is no getting away from the continuous expectation of more and more. This is our fate. The fate of all man.

Book of Gaza quotes

Join the club