Salam Anas. You’ve been on my mind since yesterday. Like others, I was waiting for you to be alive, waiting for your voice to announce the ceasefire. I am sorry you are not.

Anas, your friend Saleh woke up the rest just to tell them the ceasefire agreement was signed. He was near Al-Shifa’a hospital and started screaming so the people sleeping in the tents around it would know. You must have seen him 🙂

Hind, are you watching your family now from heaven with that genuine smile of yours?

Grandpa Khalid, were you pushing “the soul of your soul” on a swing hanging from the clouds when you heard the news?
Did you lighten the sky with your charming smile 🙂
Did you cry? We did. We all did.

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We are cautiously happy.

We are cautiously hopeful.

Because we know the war might be over,

But the genocide is not.

The occupation is not.

The oppression is not.

My cousin in Gaza wrote me yesterday: “Ranaaaa, the war is over…I woke up to the sound of people crying in the streets of happiness.”

And all I could think was: I hope it will last this time.

But even as joy tried to sneak in, fear rushed faster.

We are cautiously happy.

We are cautiously hopeful.

But our feelings are not the ones that count now. It’s the people of Gaza.

If they are happy, we’ll echo their joy,

Even if it’s fragile, even if it’s momentary.

Because joy is a form of resistance.

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My best friend sent me a screenshot of the announcement. She said she cried and cried.
I answered: “I am scared of being happy. I am scared of what comes next, when they finally start to realize what happened to them.”

In the evening, she texted me again: “Hey, we need to go out soon, we need to cry.”
I said: yes.

So today, at 7:00 a.m., we drove to the Dead Sea. The Shore of Salt. One of our favorite spots. We sat there in silence, listening to the waves. Looking across at Palestine’s mountains, clear, sharp, close. Not foggy. Not hidden. So close.
We couldn’t cry, we just sat in silence, while the waves cleansed something in us we didn’t know how to release.

We remembered another sea, another time. Lebanon, Jbeil, December of 2018. We stood there as the storm crashed against the shore. We always called it one of our favorite memories. Today we finally named it: anger. That storm felt like nature expressing its anger. Mirroring the kind of anger we wish we could show but can’t.
The kind of storm we carry inside us still.

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We are cautiously happy.
We are cautiously hopeful.
But the war being over does not mean the struggle is over.

And in this pause, in this fragile breath, we return to you, Gaza.
Rejoice Gaza, breathe through sadness and joy.