Essay
I come from Gaza, where tenacity never dies
The testimony of Alia Shamlakh: ‘I am 37, and two of those years I spent in the heart of slaughter: days of genocide and savage famine.’
From the apocalypse of Gaza, in the midst of a slow-motion death, in a place where life has been reduced to a daily act of survival, I offer my bleeding testimony.
I am Alia Shamlakh, an architect who no longer builds anything except memories at risk of erasure, condemned to live among shredded plans and to write among the dust of a home reduced to ash. Still, I keep my footing atop the rubble and try to finish my mission, even as all the world around me averts its gaze. I am setting down this testimony hoping that my words will be a loud enough scream to reach the ears of a world that has gone deaf to crime.
I am 37, and two of those years I spent in the heart of slaughter: days of genocide and savage famine. Two years of ceaseless displacement, of narrow escapes, of dancing on the razor’s edge between life and death. Here survival is a freak occurrence, not even thanks to our survival skill, but because we are dodging death by chance, by minutes, by coincidence. Our house was bombed while we were inside: us, our children and my elderly parents. None of us was hurt, no one died right then, yet death surrounded us and hemmed us in everywhere we thought “safe.” We sought refuge and safety in a hospital, only to discover we had walked into a trap. Bullets rained all around, while hundreds of us – hungry, thirsty, terrified – were corralled together. The walls shook, smoke bled through the ceiling; in our hearts we died over and over, but were never buried.
We fled south, first to a relative’s home in Khan Younis, then farther south to Rafah, then to Deir al-Balah, and finally – we hope for the last time – back to Gaza City. Here, in Hell itself, there is no room to plan. You improvise, because even the so-called “safe” zones are bombed. We start over each time, not because we are “strong,” as some like to say, but because stopping is a luxury we cannot afford. We are simply rescuing our children from the horror of the moment while we wait for the next horror to come.
In 20 months of flight and running from death, we have cobbled together a life inside a tent. A scrap of canvas pitched on a roadside in which we can barely breathe, let alone shelter 13 bodies. No security. No privacy. None of the basics of living. Our children have slept on tiles, on bare earth, out in the open. They have known hunger.
We draw salaries and we have money, but cash is useless when there is nothing to buy anymore. We are still living amid such a fierce famine that we now long for the canned food that was still around a few months ago. Our bodies are wasting: our weight has fallen, memory has become fogged, concentration has withered. All of us have gotten hepatitis, skin diseases, infections; our psyches are frayed, as though we are slowly wearing down to nothing.
Everything in our lives has slipped back to a primitive level. We cook on firewood. We bathe our children with water hauled from afar and warmed over that same fire. We queue for hours for a single liter of water. We travel in battered carts, sometimes pulled by beasts of burden. I keep myself alive so I can keep working. Yes – even in this condition, I am still working, because the mission I chose, or that chose me, cannot be abandoned. I work for an international organization serving people with disabilities. I cling to the job to protect human beings, even as I see them torn apart before our eyes. Each day I ask myself how someone denied shelter, water and dignity can still fight for the rights of others. Each day I answer: I come from Gaza, a place where tenacity never dies – although this can feel like a curse, because we are trying to salvage what remains of our rights while living in a reality that flies in the face of every treaty or convention about them.
The whole world has failed us: not for any complicated reason, but because it chooses not to see. We are not dying in secret. Everything is documented, laid bare before everyone’s eyes. What of conventions, laws, human rights? Scrap paper blown by the wind, fuel for the fire. In its icy silence, the world has declared the death of its own conscience. Now we can only laugh, darkly, when the world talks about “human dignity” and “the safety of civilians.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/sono-di-gaza-dove-la-tenacia-non-muore on 2025-06-06