The eye of Gaza
Fatma Hassona
Je n’ai pas de CV / Reconnaître deux yeux / Mystérieux / Et je crois / Je n’ai pas d’histoire / Une / Claire / Pour qu’un étranger la croie. / Et il croit. / Je n’ai pas de caractéristique physique définie / Voler / En dehors de cette gravité / Et je crois. / Peut-être que j’annonce ma mort maintenant / Avant que la personne en face de moi ne charge / Son fusil de tireur d’élite / Et termine son travail. / Pour que je finisse. / Silence.
Ce sont les mots de Fatma Hassona (Fatem pour les intimes), le début d’un long poème s’intitulant « L’homme qui portait ses yeux ».
Un poème qui sent le soufre, sent la mort déjà, mais qui est plein de vie aussi, comme l’était Fatem, jusqu’à ce matin du 16 avril, avant qu’une bombe israélienne ne la fauche, elle et toute sa famille, réduisant la maison familiale en poussière.
Preview
She had just turned 25. I had met her through a Palestinian friend in Cairo, when I was desperately trying to find a way to get to Gaza, but all the roads were blocked. I was looking for the answer to a question that was both simple and complex. How are people coping with the siege? How are people living despite the bombs? It was an answer that I couldn’t find in the news or in the media in general. I wanted to go. But because I am a French passport-holder born in Iran, and because of the Egyptian authorities and the Israeli occupation, it was impossible for me to go.
So Fatem became my eyes in Gaza, and I was a window to the world for her, during our exchanges that lasted just one year.
— What’s it like to be a Palestinian?
— I’m proud to be Palestinian… Whatever they do, they’ll never defeat us.
— They’ll never defeat you? Really? Why?
— Yes. Because we have nothing to lose.
That’s what Fatem was like. And that was the kind of conversation we had.
During that year of daily exchanges, I would often send her a message just before I went to bed, and would wake up in the middle of the night to check if she had replied. And when I saw the two “ticks”, I knew that she had at least seen my message.
Every day, I thought about the Palestinians outside Gaza, far from their families, and I wondered how they could continue to live with so much anguish. I, who was often paralyzed with fear at the thought of losing her to a bomb. I didn’t have an answer to that question either. I told myself that I didn’t have the right to be afraid for her, if she wasn’t afraid. I clung to her strength, and her radiant smile.
I was very skeptical when the ceasefire was announced in December, but I didn’t have the right not to believe in it if the Palestinians and Fatem did. I bit my tongue. We continued our exchanges, but the internet connection was much less reliable than before the ceasefire, so video calls became complicated, if not impossible. But the images of our conversations, and her photos, stayed with me. Such powerful photos: moments of life and death in Gaza that she recorded forever with her tender yet uncompromising eye.
Sepideh Farsi
