Grief, if not given the space to reflect itself and be lived fully by those who bear it, will turn into a reservoir of profound madness within the human soul.
This is what is happening here…
Here, in this wretched land called Gaza, people are no longer merely grieving, mourning, or kin to martyrs and funerals. They have become nothing more than burdens resembling living beings, trapped in an endless cycle, carrying yokes upon their shoulders. They plow the soil of blood and search through the ruins for a soul that still resembles a human spirit.
Silent madmen wandering through the void, searching for fullness… fullness born of complete deficiencies that envelop the entirety of those present; emptied of the will to question the reasons for sorrow or the ways to express it. Madness that is distilled into a bond with destruction, and the timeless pursuit of whatever nourishes this suspect essence.
And for what? For the sake of continuing this battle. Waiting, advancing, never retreating. Searching for something, perhaps akin to what Diogenes sought when he rebuked Alexander, saying then, “Step aside and let the sun in”.
This dim sun, stained by the absurdity of escaping one survival only to face another; a more objective one; a sun encircled by the gloom of what is witnessed and by the hostility of the witness, destined to grow like a plant that knows light only through cracks and holes.
Those people who have inherited from promises the curse of postponing their tears until death takes a moment to catch its breath, yet they are like someone pouring water onto the sands of Al-Mintar (an area in Gaza) at midday. All that is mirage within a mirage, mirroring the language of the fearful, those certain of the precision of their fear and the correctness of its direction. They have all gone mad, now perceiving in every straight path a face whose features and lines of formation have blurred and intertwined.
The people of Gaza have all perished, and if any remain, they are but bodies… wounded, bleeding bodies persisting in their feud with the death of things, souls, meanings, and promises. Blind bodies shedding blood like tears.
Hashim Abdul Karim Shalouleh
December 8, 2024
