The Instagram reel said: “Mango matcha is the drink of the summer.” Aesthetically poured over ice, collagen-infused, wellness-coded. The comment section buzzed – “need this,” “dying to try,” “so real.”
So real.
That’s what struck me. How easily those words roll off our tongues. So real. But when I watched a video of a father putting eideyeh* coins into the cold, martyred hand of his eight-year-old son wrapped in a white shroud, no one said it was real. They said it was complicated. They said it was political. They said nothing.
See how normal that sentence about mango matcha sounds? That’s how normal the visions from Gaza have become.
A Christian hospital in Gaza was bombed on Palm Sunday – a day meant to symbolise peace, mercy, and renewal. The irony writes itself. They say this is a religious conflict, but Palm Sunday proved otherwise, again. Israel targets Muslims, Christians, the religious, the secular… anyone who is Palestinian.
And then, a journalist was burnt alive on camera.
It hits me in flashes… when I’m floating in and out of this liminal, artificial realm where life doesn’t feel real anymore. Because how am I even uttering these words? A journalist. Burnt. Alive. On video. How is that a sentence I can say without the world stopping?
His name was Ahmed Mansour. He was a journalist stationed in Khan Younis. Israel targeted a tent for journalists with an airstrike, setting it ablaze. Ahmad was filmed burning alive – a press vest around his body, a camera not far from his feet. He died doing what he always did: trying to document the truth, even as the truth tried to erase him.
His wife said through sobs:
أحمد إنحرق قدام العالم كلو
Ahmed inharaq ‘uddām el-‘alam kello: “Ahmed was burned alive in front of the whole world.”
And yet the world kept spinning. Like this was just another post. Just another scroll.
I looked at the clock. It was 11:47pm. My criminal law essay was due in twelve minutes.
And still, I was thinking about Gaza.
As I sifted through all the legislations and case law, I reminded myself: I have to keep going. For them. I get to be here. I get to study. I get to be safe. I get to pursue the very thing they’ve been denied. I study law because I still believe justice can exist – because it has to. Because maybe, if I don’t stop, one day, I can help restore it.
I have not felt normal since October 7, 2023. That was 558 days ago. I’m still in the Instagram group chat that posts daily updates. I joined thinking it would last no more than a week. Now I’m numb to the daily 9am notification: Day 558: 50,000+ dead. The number climbs, the world scrolls, and I get ready for uni.
Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one glitching. As if my grief doesn’t belong in this timeline. As if my presence here, on this campus, in this country, is somehow artificial, because everything that matters to me is happening somewhere the world has decided to scroll past.
The Carousel of Solidarity
I watched the wave come and go. The Canva-made posts. The linktrees. The watermelon emojis. Even the influencers said something this time, just enough to seem informed, but not enough to lose a brand deal. “From the river to the sea” got replaced with “we believe in peace for all.”
When visibility becomes a trend, erasure finds a new outfit.
Everyone cared. For three days. Then came the silence. Not an intentional one, but the kind that fills the space when empathy was only ever cosmetic.
I didn’t need everyone to fix it. I needed them not to forget.
Even the AI Can’t Say Our Name
Instagram blurred my story about a bombed school, as if the rubble carried صمت) ṣamt – silence) the algorithm prefers to truth.
TikTok removed my video for “violating community guidelines.” I asked ChatGPT about Palestine and got a warning. The algorithm has decided my identity is controversial. Even artificial intelligence has learned who is allowed to be human.
Isn’t that the most terrifying part?
That the future of truth is being trained on silence?
I sit in class and listen to people debate freedom of speech while our protests get shut down. I learn about justice from people who refuse to say the word “Palestine.” I write essays on international law while Gaza violates everything the textbook claims to protect.
I’m told I should keep my activism “professional.”
But how do you stay neutral when your homeland is being erased in real time?
Law school has taught me that rights are conditional. Speech is protected… unless it’s about us. Violence is condemned, unless it’s against us. Justice is a principle –unless it’s inconvenient.
What is Grief if Not Selective?
While my friends plan our next girls’ brunch, I’m refreshing WhatsApp for updates from my family whose apartment was tear gassed last week. I think twice before replying to my cousins who just told me we lost another family member. My finger hovers over the message I was about to send to the girls:
خالص تمام!! أنا كتير متحمسة
Khalas tamam!! Ana kteer mtahammiseh
(“All good!! I’m so excited.”)
Instead, I backspace.
There is no safe zone. There is no scale to the violence. Gaza is a headline, and yet all of
bleeds too. The occupation does not discriminate. It simply occupies.
Is My Grief Not Marketable Enough?
Sometimes I wonder if people would care more if we cried prettier. If our funerals had better lighting. If we spoke in softer English, and wore Western grief like an accessory. I see it, how mourning becomes digestible when it’s polished. When it’s aesthetic.
I don’t want to be your inspiration porn. I don’t want to be a cause you can opt into like a streaming subscription.
I want to scream. I want to tear the screen open with my وجع (wajaʿ – pain). But I’ve learned that screaming makes people unfollow.
What’s Left When the World Pretends?
Storytelling is how we preserve our wajd (وجد – ache). Our ache. Our pulse. The thing they
cannot fabricate.
But even this ache has become twisted. We’ve reached a point where martyrdom– االستشهاد (al istishhād), feels more dignified than survival. I hear the aunties say, يالهّن وهللا (wallah nīyāloh); “by God, how lucky he is”, as they bury their sons. Mothers who have lost every child now say, “Alhamdulillah, he died a martyr.”
I am a Muslim. I have faith. I believe in the strength of our people and the promise of paradise. But what does it say about the world when death is the most hopeful option we have left?
We hold onto fragments; our هوية) hawiyah – ID), our السفر جواز) jawaz as-safar – passport), names like Ramallah and Al-Quds that map the memory they keep trying to erase. We carry cities in our mouths, even when the maps delete them.
We write so the ink may become witness.
نكت ُب ليصير الحبر شاهداً
Nahnu naktubu liyasir al-hibr shahidan.
We do not need monuments. We have memory.
We do not need permission. We have pen and flame.
And when the world pretends we do not exist… we write anyway.
* eideyeh (عيدية): small gift money traditionally given to children by elders during Eid to mark joy and celebration.
