Omar Hamad: ‘They stole our safety, love and peace. We were left sleeping on the sidewalks of doubt’
Omar Hamad is a Palestinian writer and pharmacist bearing witness to genocide in his home of Gaza. He writes about stolen love, safety and peace, and the reality of life on the ground.
I never chose my homeland, just as I never chose my mother or father. Love for the homeland seeped into me the way trees sprout along the equator. I knelt down to offer it a ring of loyalty—promising to remain and struggle for it. I carried my family in my right hand and my pen in my left—the pen that no army in the world can break. And while I played with my pen, one family member slipped away. But their slipping was an ascent. Then the second slipped away too. Both of their departures passed through the heart, the axis of their fall.
Treacherous bullets from hyenas who stole our town, our home, and our dreams—like a rose plucked from a garden. They stole our safety, our love, and our peace, and we were left sleeping on the sidewalks of doubt—sometimes lifted by winds of longing, and other times devoured by the sulfurous yellow light.
I carried my family into nothingness, where void ravenously tore through our path. We walked for days without shelter—food, at the time, was a luxury too grand to speak of. I wandered in agony, helpless, while before my eyes, everyone I loved withered under the foolish sun, which never once cared for our sweat. But we, too, ignored it. I kept walking, and walking, seeking a refuge to protect us from the weariness of the empty days.
Upon a bare patch of sand, barely eight square meters—if even that—we claimed a space. Twenty meters of nylon, some overpriced wood, and a few ropes: this is how a scar is carved into the land and named a “tent.” A structure tasked with sheltering an entire family and containing all their needs within its thin, flapping sheets.
Inside, there is no bathroom, no kitchen, no floor, no supports, no covers, no warmth—nothing but a heavy heart, a wandering mind, an empty stomach, thick fog, and an unbearably long night whose only companions are sorrow, the loss of loved ones, the wind, the rain, and a cold that pierces the bones. And so, we wait for death.
Then, I pick up my pen and write on the outside of the tent:
“Everything was deadly, but we did not die.”
A crowdfunding campaign has been set up for Omar and his family. You can donate here.
Also Read
