Why have I come back to writing about war? Once again, memory returns, more insistent than ever.

Between doubt and certainty lies the narrative of truth. We must approach language's shadows and ghosts, we must listen to the voices of the victims. Now, precisely, language needs to bend beneath this rope pulled taut over our souls, a rope which overwhelms the mind's capacity to fathom the curses that have settled over our countries. What should we do with these terrifying stories? Can the language of silence provide a way out of these desperate circumstances? Between blood-smeared facts, it is perhaps language's transformation into silence that reveals our periodic failure to approximate atrocities. Yes; humans are capable of brutalizing each other, in ways that challenge language's very capacity of expression.

For years, I have been attempting and thinking of new ways to rewrite and reinforce stories of the people and places we have come from. It is an attempt at reconstruction, extending beyond literature and documentation to reveal a different narrative, one that explores the pain and overwhelming catastrophe in our world. Now more than ever, this devastation writes our world in its own way: in pictures and numbers which erase it from humanity's collective conscience, turning it into a momentary consumer product and causing fundamental meanings to disappear within the fetid decay of the immediate moment.

And so, we find ourselves adrift in the face of the transformations that genocidal wars impose on meaning and language, after the destruction of people. We are the offspring of war and tragedy, discussing horrors and humanity's ability to destroy the world through sheer evil. On the other hand, we also possess the capacity to see the moment of destruction, to face it and work to overcome it, even from within catastrophe itself. There are those who no longer see any meaning to life, of course. And there are those who now concentrate the meaning of their lives on the memory of those who have left them, the loved ones who are so greatly missed. Violence can be neither described nor believed, to the point that we are powerless to narrate it. But these survivors are here; despite everything, they are living, in every sense of the word – with their questions, with their wish to understand what has happened to them, with their inability to understand. They are people who have passed through hell and returned.

How can I enquire into the act of erasing people, of erasing stone? The narration of genocide relies fundamentally on this act, and erasure is in itself one of the forms of its permanence, its power and consummation – in the sense of its dominance, in the sense of our inability to communicate with it. This erasure is apparent in every aspect of genocide: the erasure of dismembered bodies; the erasure of our ability to see clearly; the erasure of the profound act of bearing witness to the agony of others; the erasure of language. Erasure here is absolute, and we can only think of it as a primary material in the reassemblage of these scattered bodies.

Go Project Hope invites you to attend a benefit screening of All That’s Left Of You, Cherien Dabis’ acclaimed 2025 film, at Anthology Film Archives on Tuesday, June 16.

The Oscar-nominated film documents life, love, and displacement under Israeli occupation.

This event will also feature Palestinian olive oil, soap, spices, and more for sale.

All ticket sales and proceeds from this event go to support Go Project Hope’s soup kitchens and educational initiatives in Gaza.

Find out more and get your tickets here.

Come through EDAMI on 18 June for an evening of food, music, poetry and community and to celebrate the Gaza Sunbirds x For Your Viewing Pleasure collection and raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds’ work across para-cycling, aid and advocacy.

Hosted at EDAMI, a new Lebanese bakery in Dalston created as a space for food, culture and community, the launch will gather friends, artists, organisers and supporters to mark the release of the collection and raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds’ ongoing work.

The evening will feature food and drinks from EDAMI, sounds from Baytee Baytak, Al Jetha and Luca Rossini, live music from DIINA, J Habibsan and Khalid the Percussionist, and poetry by Sara Masry.

100% of proceeds support the Gaza Sunbirds' mutual aid efforts in Gaza as well as their road to the 2028 Paralympics.

Find out more and register here.

How can video art, or the moving image, capture grief? How do artists represent loss when what must be depicted is absence itself—the void left behind? How does a durational medium differ from other forms of expression, and what role does time play in narrating disappearance?

This exhibition brings together a group of artists who engage with some of the sorrows that haunt Palestine and the Arab world. While each addresses a specific subject and context, their works may be understood as a search for visual remnants, a collective attempt to resist erasure.

Part of the multifaceted project Elegiac Whispers, the exhibition is organised by the A. M. Qattan Foundation in partnership with the Palestinian Museum, marking the launch of a screening programme that will tour internationally. 

Featuring works by artists: Basma al-Sharif, Dena al Adeeb, Huda Takriti, Hussein Nassereddine, Maha Maamoun, Noor Abuarafeh, Rund Alarabi, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Yaqeen Yamani and Younes Ben Slimane.

Find out more and plan your visit here.

This powerful graphic novel sheds light on the reality of life in both the West Bank and Gaza during this terrifying time. Told from the perspective of the author's brother's experience in prison and that of those in Gaza struggling to survive displacement, starvation, and attack.

In October of 2023, Sabaaneh went on a tour in Europe to promote his book about life under occupation in Palestine. Whether a Palestinian is inside a detention center or in any city or village, they are all in a big prison. The book ends with one message: 'we will not leave.' Upon his return to Palestine, he was trapped within the walls of his home—unable to see his aging parents, or his brother, who was locked away in an Israeli detention center.

Welcome To Hell is movingly written and hauntingly illustrated by Mohammed Sabaaneh. It is out now from Street Noise Books.