On Light in Gaza

This is a fascinating collection of essays and short poems by a number of writers from Gaza. After a riveting opening chapter from Refaat Alareer (may he rest in peace), the first third gathers personal stories and reflections—on cellphones, on agriculture, on temporality. The middle third leans into infrastructure: experimental residential design, electrification, AI as a tool against the occupation. The last third turns to the social and cultural side of Gazan life, and I found it the most compelling: one author’s attempt to build a public library in Gaza, with detours through film, journalism, and theater; a woman’s account of the crushing weight of being left behind when her whole family moved to Egypt for a better life; a man’s experience of the 2014 war. The final chapter lays out three possibilities for Gaza, and for Palestine more broadly—the no-state, two-state, and one-state solutions—and makes a riveting case for a multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, secular, democratic Palestine. Poems and photographs run between the chapters.

The middle third, on infrastructure, gave me a far more human and detailed angle on something I hear about constantly—the collapse of material life in Gaza—even if it felt slower-going than the rest. If there’s one standout chapter, it’s Israa Mohammed Jamal’s “Let Me Dream,” a touching, emotionally driven piece of writing.