Q9F

I’m looking at Gaza. Not from a distance. Not with fascination. I’m looking at Gaza like you look at something that cuts through your body, that breaks your bearings, that shifts the very idea of life.

And what strikes me isn’t chaos. It isn’t rage, nor the shouting. What grabs me is the calm. The thickness of calm. The kind of calm you find in people who know no one is coming. The kind of calm in those who carry on without aid, without pause, without illusion.

They hold on. Quietly. Without spectacle. They hold on like you hold a thread you can’t let go of, even if it’s cutting your hands. They organise themselves amid the ruins, among the absent, right in the dust, expecting nothing. Nothing is stable. Nothing guarantees that “later” will exist. And yet they’re there, doing what’s left to do : fetching water, gathering bread, soothing a child, supporting an old body, speaking true words in the middle of disaster.

And when I look at them, I feel I’d do exactly the same. Not because I’m brave. But because there’s no other choice. Because you have to keep going, even without a horizon. Because you have to hold on, even if no one’s watching. Even if the world forgets you just as much as if you were dead. What they’re doing is what must be done. What they’re doing is what anyone would do. And even so, even holding on, even doing all they can, they’re crushed. Broken. Punished. Abandoned.

Hell isn’t chaos. It isn’t fury. It isn’t collapse. It’s a cold machine. Precision. Logic. Management. Hell is a system that runs. Military budgets. Rationalised borders. Imperial alliances. Faraway decisions that cut up bodies nearby. Hell isn’t the glitch, it’s the plan.

A hell that works. A hell that is here. A hell we watch. And let go on.