Weekly Roundup

May 30th

First, good news - thanks to paid subscribers, so far we have raised $385.45 for The Sameer Project:

And the money has been transferred (including my own contribution, I prefer even numbers):

THANK YOU all for subscribing. If you haven’t yet, you can do so here:

Like many of you, my week was preoccupied by the image of a young child walking through the flames that engulfed the Al-Gergawi School in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, after Israeli forces bombed the school where she and her family were finding shelter.

First, the child was mis-identified as Ward Al Sheikh Khalil. Then she was identified as, Hanin al-Wadiya. Henin is the sole survivor in her family - her parents and sisters were murdered. Right now she is in a hospital, receiving care for the second- and third-degree burns covering 25% of her face, hands, and legs.

Ward was also at the school and also survived the bombing. And like Hanin, most of her family were murdered - her mother and six siblings were killed. Fortunately, her father, though badly injured, did survive. I’ve seen differing numbers, but at least 36 people (at least half being children) were murdered by this particular attack. People sheltering in a school. Stories like this are playing out everyday. How do we live in this world of horror?

Jehad Abusalim (a brilliant writer and scholar - you should follow on social media and subscribe to his Substack) posted this and I cannot stop thinking about it:

That post became this article, which I highly recommend.

I have been trying to find out how to support Ward and Hanin - so far, no luck. But I’ll keep digging. In the meantime, my new friend and comrade, Lida, has been supporting several campaigns, which I’ll highlight here:

Feras is 21 and responsible for 2 families (a total of 28 people) including multiple children. It is exorbitantly expensive for Feras to feed his family for just one day, and even harder to keep up with other survival expenses like medicine and shelter. Just two weeks ago, Feras needed emergency surgery because of infected shrapnel in his knee, and he is now trying to recover while struggling every day to feed his family.

Umm Sadeem is outside of Gaza fundraising for her two young daughters, Sadeem (9) and Nema (6), who urgently need funds for food and shelter. She has been forcibly separated from them for over a year. Both girls are currently suffering from compromised immunity and malnutrition, and it is more urgent than ever to provide them with sufficient food and medicine.

Islam is 18 and was gravely injured in the genocide. He is recovering outside of Gaza but fundraising for his father and little sister, who remain in Gaza after his mother and little brother were martyred. Islam is grieving, separated from his family, and suffering after he broke his foot due to complications from his original injuries. Despite his pain, he feels immense pressure every day to provide for his family, and we can help ease his burden.

Mona is 18 and has lived her entire life under siege. She is a university student and gifted poet, and she has endured 600 days of genocide along with her family, which includes her young orphaned niece and nephew. This month, they received new evacuation orders, but they have nowhere else to go, and no money for the food and medicine they desperately need.

Reminder: if you are sponsoring/supporting any mutual aid campaigns and would like me to highlight them, please send me a message with details. This feels (to me) like a critical thing we can do right now - Israel is actively starving Palestinians in Gaza (for an in-depth look at what this means, please read Azad Essa’s new article in Middle East Eye - an absolutely devastating look into starvation as a weapon of war) - how do we meet a moment that feels so disempowering?

On Wednesday of this week, day 600 of genocide (I still cannot figure out how to understand that sentence), another brilliant writer and scholar of Arabic Literature, Huda Fakhreddine, published “Notes from the Field of Arabic Literature in the Time of Genocide.” Throughout the essay, Huda writes about being an Arab scholar of Arabic literature, boycotting the MLA, and her relationship with (as a reader and a translator) the martyred Palestinian poet from Gaza, Hiba Abu Nada, who was murdered by the Zionist State when she was only 30 years old. If you only read one thing today, let it be Huda’s conclusion:

“Gaza is not the subject of the next paper. Its writers and artists are not bait for a new grant or fellowship. Its murdered children are not the subject of the next ethnographic study, or the next anthology or the next art installation or digital humanities project. Gaza is a counterpoint in history. The end of the world as we know it. Nothing should ever be the same after this, in Arabic studies, the larger Middle Eastern studies, and the humanities at large. Nothing should ever be the same after Gaza, especially for those of us who study language and live in it, those of us who read history and claim to learn from it.

In the moment of genocide, there is no room for the stuffy scholarly approach and its pretenses. There is no luxury of feigned objectivity, the arrangement and rearrangement of knowledge, the flaunting of expertise, and the subscription to the tidy and constructed historical approach and its artificial periodization. This is history, unfolding now, and we are all implicated and complicit.”

Some housekeeping - there seems to be interest in a book club so I’m proposing our first meeting be in late July/early August (time/date forthcoming) - I propose we read Hala Alyan’s I’ll tell Your When I’m Home (out next week! Order it here!) If you are a paid subscriber, you are automatically invited. If you aren’t a paid subscriber but still want to participate, donate to The Sameer Project (or another mutual aid campaign of your choice) and send me a screen shot of your receipt. And if this is financially impossible, just reach out and we’ll figure something out.

I’m traveling next week so there won’t be a weekly roundup BUT there will be a post (probably mid-week) AND I’ll have my first subscribers-only perk (including a playlist that you absolutely will want to have on repeat, from a super-special guest). If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can help support The Sameer Project by signing up here: