“We must not live only in the shadow”
May 20, 2025—First in a series of essays and poems Ali Altawil, M.D. Altawil is a general practitioner and writer bearing witness to and shedding light on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, capturing lived realities with a poetic voice. He works at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the heart of Gaza, where he and his family endure the same struggles as the people he serves. Through his profession and his words, he resists oppression and holds on to the hope of a better tomorrow. If you’d like to support his work, visit his GoFundMe page.
“They carry dreams as small as the sun”
April 15, 2025: In Gaza, Children walk barefoot on their wounds, Carrying bags of clouds, Filled with verses of survival, And dreams as small as the sun.
“We must not live only in the shadow”
April 16, 2025: It seems the killer has yet to be satisfied with all this bloodshed… As if tragedy refuses to leave, As if it has found a home within us. This grief that devours the soul Cannot be measured by time, nor healed by words.
Here, death does not ask for permission, It doesn’t knock on doors, Nor does it choose a gentle path. It comes without warning, Or perhaps while we stare at it daily, Wondering about its shape, its moment, its cruelty.
But despite it all, We must not live only in its shadow. Life wasn’t created for us to dwell on how we might be killed, But on how we might live… Even if we know the end is inevitable, Still, nothing stops us from gifting our souls a life, Even if temporary, Even if soaked in tears, What matters… is that We Live.
The Gaza Sunset
April 16, 2025: In Gaza, The sunset holds no taste of an ending, It is but a brief rest for the light, Before it rises again From the eyes of the steadfast.
“And yet, we still smile at tomorrow”
April 17, 2025: Remember that life was never fair, especially when death becomes a companion of the moment, not just absence. When memories pull us from our chests into empty places that seem to weep, and when longing becomes a burden heavier than the loss itself.
How can we ask life for justice, when we carry within us those we lost without a final goodbye? And yet, we still smile at tomorrow, as if the heart doesn’t know that the ones we love will no longer be in it.”
“The Smile of Life”
April 18, 2025: The dust still hung in the air, thick, suffocating, as if it refused to leave before confirming that everything was truly over. But from beneath the rubble, a small shadow stirred, like the remnants of an unfinished dream. A child, barely two years old, stood up with a small cut across his forehead and trembling hands, not from fear, but from sheer surprise.
He stood there, in the middle of all that destruction, looking around like someone who had just awakened from a strange sleep, unsure of where it began or how it ended. Silence. And then… he smiled.
His smile wasn’t naive, nor innocent in the usual sense, it was something else. A smile that didn’t belong to the moment, but to life itself. As if his body didn’t yet realize what had happened, but his mind, or something deeper was recording it all: the sound, the flash, the sudden chill that slipped into his bones.
Maybe he would survive. Maybe, days or months or even years later, he would remember every detail of this moment, or maybe he wouldn’t remember anything at all. But his smile now says everything that needs to be said.
This is how our children survive. Not because they are stronger than death,but because they love life despite its constant shadow. They smile, not out of irony, but because there’s something in their hearts still worth holding on to, even when the world tries to tear it away.
“Dare to speak for us”
April 20, 2025: When the whole world watches you die in the most brutal ways for over 565 days, don’t expect it to act. Not because it’s powerless, but perhaps because it simply no longer cares. Indifference has become its language, and silence its only response to all this pain.
It is too late. And yet, if there’s even a flicker of hope left for me in this world, a thread I can still hold on to, it would be this: that someone, somewhere, still sees, still feels, still dares to speak before it becomes too late for us.
“We go on”
April 21, 2025: A new morning, and a new day, from which we hope for nothing, but to survive physically, at the very least. As for the days, they no longer offer us anything, but their heaviness. We go on, not out of desire, but because we have no other choice.
“Born to endure”
April 22, 2025: We’ve become a cheap commodity in the marketplace of a hypocritical world, our pain bought and sold as if it means nothing. The world feeds on our suffering, turning our blood into scenes, our wounds into headlines. And as for us… hunger devours us piece by piece, eating our flesh, crushing our bones, stealing our present, and erasing our memory, as if we never existed… and as if we were born only to endure.
“Morning comes, unrecognizable”
April 23, 2025: Nothing resembles the morning in Gaza, because morning here is not a new beginning, but a continuation of the battle for survival.
“Aaron Bushnell, you screamed through silence.”
April 24, 2025: You set your body on fire because your soul could no longer bear the flames of what we witness every day. You screamed through your silence in the face of a world numbed by indifference, leaving behind the blaze to awaken what’s left of our humanity. More than 560 days have passed since the most horrific massacre of this era, and still the world stands by watching, helpless, silent. A silence that amounts to complicity. You left us alone to face death, to die every day, to be buried again and again, erased from maps and memory. But we do not forget. We will never forget those who stood with us and who refused silence May your soul rest in peace.
“Even nature here is harsh and unforgiving”
April 30, 2025: Even nature here is harsh and unforgiving. Cold that bites to the bone, heat that suffocates the soul, all above the rubble and the echoes of bombs. Don’t forget Gaza in your prayers.
“When Pain Lingers”
May 4, 2025: When pain lingers, it seeps into the soul as if it were an inescapable fate, as if we were born only to carry it, without rest, without a clear end, and without ever seeing the face of joy again. What a painful feeling it is… as if sorrow has become part of our very features, silence the language of the heart, and joy.. a memory so distant that it frightens us to even recall it. As if smiling would somehow betray the weight of all we’ve endured.
“Our Only Weapon is Hunger”
May 6, 2025: We bleed our lives in a battle in which the only weapon is hunger. We fight every day not to live with dignity, but only to gain a crumb that will spare us death until tomorrow.
“Can You Hear Me”
May 18, 2025: Can you hear me?! The situation here is horrible.
