Lujayn's Dispatches from Gaza
The story of a friend for whom storytelling is resistance to genocide
A few hours before dawn broke on 18 March 2025, Israel shattered the fragile ceasefire that had given the Palestinians of Gaza a brief respite from genocide. When the bombs began to fall, many were eating suhoor, the pre-dawn meal during which Muslims prepare for a day-long fast during Ramadan.
By the time that the attacks were over, over 404 people had been martyred and 562 had been wounded. These numbers are likely to increase in the upcoming days, as limbs are amputated without anaesthetic and the longstanding blockade, along with malnourishment, increase the number of avoidable deaths.
In a war that has witnessed many massacres, the suhoor massacre of March 2025 is the bloodiest yet. Unfortunately, the Israeli Foreign Minister has promised that it will not be the last.
Introducing Lujayn
Among those who have survived (so far) the genocide is my friend Lujayn. (This is my second post about her; the first is here.) Since February 2024, I have watched Lujayn grow into a brilliant writer and chronicler of genocide from her shelter, amid more than thirteen displacements. The first of these was the destruction of her home.
Aged fourteen, Lujayn is a survivor of many wars. She has seen more of the dark side of humanity than most of us will ever see, or care to know.
Miraculously, in spite of all the atrocities she has witnessed, Lujayn’s mind has grown. Her spirit stands strong after more than a year of war. While residing in a tent after her home was destroyed, Lujayn learned the Palestinian art of embroidery (tatreez) from an elderly woman who was sheltering with her, and who had just lost her son.
Lujayn has shared her creations with me, including this meticulously crafted bookmark, featuring a lighthouse. For her as for many Arabs, the lighthouse is a beacon of hope; it illuminates everyone who looks to it for guidance in the middle of a dark night.
Lujayn lost her best friend Malak just before the ceasefire that came into effect on 19 January 2025. Even in a time of such intense grief, Lujayn had the presence of mind to compose a tribute to her beloved friend, who is briefly mentioned in the first story below. (A longer narrative is soon to come.)
I have worked with Lujayn on seven of her essays so far. Four of these have been published in The Nation (two of those are reproduced below). One is currently being edited for publication by Al Jazeera. Another will be published later this year in the collection Palestine, Everywhere, which is part of a multimedia exhibit hosted by the art gallery TBA21.
Her impressive accomplishments as a writer, embroiderer, and even as a pianist and musical composer (she discusses her passion for music below) give us a taste of the brilliant future that Lujayn has, if she survives the genocide. This is not to even mention her passion for physics, math, and riding horses.
If you connect with what you read here, please share Lujayn’s words with your friends and loved ones. And stay tuned for more to come.
For now, as the brief pause in the war comes to an end — the war which should have ended all wars in Palestine and yet which perhaps has only just begun — it seems like a good moment to introduce two recent stories by Lujayn, which were written at other turning points in the recent history of her people. The first concerns the ceasefire and the second concerns the one-year anniversary of this war.
Lujayn as poet
Before moving on to Lujayn’s prose, however, I want to dwell briefly on her poetry. Her family has a custom of expressing their love for each other in verse. In October 2024, I was honored to have been mentioned in this poem by Lujayn, included below.
Like the verse of Langston Hughes or Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lujayn’s voice as a poet is simple and straightforward. She says exactly what she means and she means what she says. More remarkable than the metrics of her verse and its symbolism is the fact that this is the medium through which Lujayn expresses herself, through the rigorous metrics of Arabic prosody.
Needless to say, such a cultural affinity for metrical verse, just like the words themselves, confounds any attempt at translation. With the help of Lujayn’s uncle, I have tried to render the core message of her Arabic verses without being able to convey all of their nuances.
Even in translation, a few details stand out. First, the fact that this young girl, so full of promise and brilliance, imagines her own death while she dreams of her homeland’s rebirth. Her imagination is beautiful yet it is by no means naive or idealistic. Even at this young age, Lujayn knows exactly what is happening to her and her people. Perhaps thinking of her newly acquired skills in embroidery, Lujayn imagines herself weaving the map of her world once more, after the war ends. She knows that instead of weaving this world with words, she may be weaving it with her own blood.
Second, it is worth clarifying the identities of the people whom Lujayn mentions here, and whose names also occur in the first of the two prose stories below: her uncle, who brought Lujayn’s writings to my attention and helped with rendering them into English, myself, and Jack, her editor at The Nation, who has commissioned and edited many of her essays.
Finally, we should not forget that Lujayn’s poem is addressed to Palestine, her homeland. Her faith in this homeland and her commitment to its flourishing is unwavering. When connecting this English translation to the Arabic original, it is important to remember that the word “Islam [الإسلام]” is formed from the Arabic word for “peace [سلام],” which occurs four times in this poem.
Here is Lujayn’s poem, published in English for the first time and translated by me from Arabic into English, in consultation with her uncle.
My Homeland
You’ll flourish one day, O my land,
so long as my flower blooms in the wrecked sand,
so long as my olive tree stretches on your land.
so long as they can’t halt the roar of my waves,
so long as my word reaches across continents.
My uncle translated my words with heart and soul.
Rebecca breathed soul into my phrases with feeling and tongue.
Jack shared my stories in his journal with emotions and love.
Thousands stood by me, shared my tale.
Amid war and ruin, I’ll weave my map once more,
With threads of my words, or perhaps with my blood.
I’ll send it to you with seagulls from my shore.
On the sea’s rocks, I’ll inscribe my poem and more.
I won’t leave you, O land of peace, for exile’s door.
To the defenders of rights and justice, friends of my cause,
to you, love and gratitude from the hearts of all my people.
Let my candles glow for peace for eternity.
Let the bells of my church ring for peace and love.
Let the call to prayer proclaim love from my mosque.
For peace and love, let my music soar
Lujayn as storyteller
Having experienced Lujayn’s poem, let’s now move onto the Lujayn’s prose. I share two of her stories here. The first was written soon after the ceasefire began on 19 January 2025. It was a time of hope, when thoughts of rebuilding Gaza began to seem plausible. The second was written on the first anniversary of the war.
1. The pulse of life after the ceasefire (5 February 2025)
“I also know that this war is neither the first nor the last, so long as occupation persists and we continue to yearn for life.”
As the ceasefire approached on January 19, the machinery of war continued to unleash its fire and target the innocent until the very last second before the agreement came into effect. Indeed, Israeli troops have still not fully withdrawn from Gaza. Yet, despite the darkness of these hours, my hopes soar. My thoughts are consumed with my city, my friends, and my little home.
Destruction has touched everything. Many of my friends have either been killed or forced to leave Gaza. Yet I feel the pulse of life beneath my feet. Perhaps it is the heartbeat longing for those who are gone. Like everyone here in Rafah, I know well that devastation has engulfed our small city. No home, school, neighborhood, hospital, or even street remains intact.
Still, I know that we are a people who love life.
Immediately after the ceasefire was agreed, I went to visit the graves of five of my friends who were killed while they were in their shelters in Al Mawasi, Deir Al Balah, and Khan Younis. With the war over, now they can rest in peace. I prayed at their graves and promised them that they would remain forever in my heart.
Since the Israeli army has not completed its withdrawal from Gaza City, I have not yet been able to return home. When I am finally able to return to the ruins of what was my house, I will do so, not to weep, but to make a promise to rebuild it.
In the past few days, I have managed to meet with two of my friends who are still alive: one in Khan Younis and another in Al Bureij. I learned that eight of my friends from school were martyred during the war and I am trying to find out about what happened to my other friends, whose fates I have not been able to track.
We will rebuild our schools, cultivate our fields, restore our hospitals, repair our streets, and reconstruct our mosques and churches. I understand how difficult and long this journey will be, but life is longer still.
I will continue my education and return to school again next year. My mother and I, along with some friends, have decided to establish a center to help children catch up on their studies. I will name it “Malak — Angel,” in memory of my friend Malak, whose name means “angel.”
On January 8, Malak was martyred by an Israeli bullet while she was sleeping inside her tent. She was my age, and my closest friend from my now-destroyed school, the Hamama school for girls in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, where we grew up together.
If only the ceasefire had come sooner, Malak would be alive today.
If the ceasefire holds, I will be able to complete my nearly finished robotics project and master the embroidery I learned during the war. I will compose and play a melody entitled “True Hero” for my wonderful friend Brenda Gould, and I will play “A Hero’s Song” by Antonin Dvorak for my friend Jack on a new piano my uncle will give me to replace the one that was destroyed. I will compose and play a melody called “Beautiful Angel” for my sister Rebecca. My family, friends, and everyone I love will hear my music. I will write, play, and craft from my heart.
We know that every beginning has an end, and the endings in this war have been difficult. But I also know that this war is neither the first nor the last, so long as occupation persists and we continue to yearn for life. These small dreams are inherited in my homeland, and passed down from generation to generation. We build, and war destroys everything we’ve built. But from beneath the rubble, we rise again and rebuild.
My greatest dream — the dream of every member of my people — is to live in a state recognized by the free people of the world, a place where peace reigns, free from siege, destruction, and occupation. When that dream is realized, my message to you will be an invitation to visit my land, the land of peace.
Until then I send you my love, gratitude, and prayers.
I love you all.
— LUJAYN
Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine
First published in The Nation.
2. Lujayn’s message to her friends around the world (7 October 2024)
“This war is a war against the very essence of humanity, one that every person with a conscience is enduring and fighting in every corner of the earth.”
Lujayn’s second story was written on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the war. In this story, Lujayn makes clear just how important the protests of those of us outside Gaza are for her and her people inside Gaza. Read closely, her words should motivate us those of us on the outside protesting and prevent us from succumbing to despair. May we heed the call of Lujayn’s words and ensure that there will never be a second anniversary to a war that has needlessly destroyed and erased so many lives.
I write to you from my wounded yet beautiful home, Gaza. After months and months of destruction and extermination in a war where many battles have intertwined — the war of weapons, the war of starvation, the war of disease, and the war of siege and displacement — there have been moments when I thought we were enduring this pain alone.
Where, I wondered, were the preachers for freedom, democracy, and human rights, especially the rights of children?
Sometimes, disappointment crept into my soul. But after seeing people from all corners of the world demonstrating for the children of Gaza; after reading the messages from so many, young and old, for the people of Gaza; after hearing their chants calling for an end to the war and freedom for Palestine, I felt that their words were painting a new picture for me, one with bright colors, despite the darkness of the devastating war being waged against us. Their actions have become our only bastion of hope, sheltering, protecting, and strengthening us at a time when death hovers above our heads.
To every good-hearted seeker of freedom, justice, and equality, I say this: You reassure us that the fight for Palestinian children in particular, and the rights of my Palestinian people in general, is alive. It is thriving and flourishing in your heart.
Over the past year, I came to realize that this war is not just a war against Gaza. It is a war against the very essence of humanity, one that every person with a conscience is enduring and fighting in every corner of the earth. When we hurt, you hurt. When we grieve, you grieve.
So thank you for standing by us — for feeling the death, torture, and dreadful living conditions alongside us. We need your support for our cause so that peace can prevail, and so that children like me can live without the pain of loss, hunger, and disease.
We want to live in a free homeland with peace and security. We want to look up at the sky without fear of death from planes loaded with missiles — to hear the sounds of birds, not bombs. We want to hold our pens and books and go back to school. Your words and voices will always be a support for a child who has lost a dream and is searching for a new reality.
From me and from all the children of Gaza and Palestine, we send you our love and gratitude, and I say on behalf of an entire generation: Your hands wipe away the pain of every child in my land, your voices are a melody of peace, and your heartbeats reach ours despite the siege we live under and the vast oceans between us.
For all this, and for being the benevolent beautiful people that you are, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Perhaps one day I will be able to invite you to my small city, which will for sure rise from its ruins, where the red anemones will bloom again in soil watered by our blood, to thank you for keeping us in your hearts and thoughts. Until then, the waves of our sea will always remind us that beyond its horizons, there are those who see us, hear us, feel with us, and stand in solidarity with us.
I love you all.
— LUJAYN
Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine
First published in The Nation.
Note to readers: the post breaks with the schedule I proposed proposed of weekly posts. Perhaps that was too optimistic and I will be scaling back a bit. But I had to break the pause given Israel’s recent atrocity and the need to share Lujayn’s words.