‘My Death Should Not Be Passing News’: Palestinian Novelist Weeks Before Israeli Bomb Killed Him

“Like a small obituary in a newspaper that was torn to dust on a rusty shelf in an old grocery store, then eaten up by the windshield of a passing car.”

—The ‘intro’ of his Facebook profile

Good evening, world. Internet and phone connections were cut off last night, and what I once considered impossible suddenly became reality, but under different conditions. The postman can’t make his rounds amid the bombing and destruction, and in any case the newspapers he carries bear the same headline each day: “Gaza is being exterminated. Life sets each evening and does not rise again the next day.” Maybe tomorrow’s edition will contain the news of my death.

This is what was on my mind at the moment communications were disconnected and we found ourselves cut off from the world, and the world cut off from us and what was happening to us. The bombing became more intense and we placed our hands on our hearts because this was what we feared and here it was, getting closer — we were going to die in silence without the world knowing anything, to the point we couldn’t even record our last moments or shout out our last words.

I live in a small neighbourhood called al-Shuja’iyya, which is on the eastern edge of Gaza City. Every night, the sound of the explosions is constant—explosions of different kinds, coming from different directions— and with every explosion that rocks our house and our hearts, we hold on tight to one another, knowing that at some point there’ll be an explosion we won’t hear because it will have already blown us up.

This is why I’m writing now; it might be my last message that makes it out to the free world, flying with the doves of peace to tell them that we love life, or at least what life we have managed to live; in Gaza, all paths before us are blocked, and instead, we’re just one tweet or breaking news story away from death. Anyway, I’ll begin.

My name is Noor Aldeen Hajjaj, I am a Palestinian writer, I am 27-years-old and I have many dreams.

I am not a number and I do not consent to my death being passing news. Say, too, that I love life, happiness, freedom, children’s laughter, the sea, coffee, writing, Fairouz, everything that is joyful — though these things will all disappear in the space of a moment.

One of my dreams is for my books and my writings to travel the world, for my pen to have wings that no unstamped passport or visa rejection can hold back.

Another dream of mine is to have a small family, to have a little son who looks like me and tell him a bedtime story as I rock him in my arms.

My greatest dream is that my country will have peace; that children will smile more brightly than the sun; that we will plant flowers in every place a bomb once fell; and, that we will trace out our freedom on every wall that has been destroyed. That war will finally leave us alone, so we can for once again live our lives.

(This translation of the author’s original social media post in Arabic has been done by the volunteers at Gaza Passages)