If Refaat Were Alive: In Gaza, Amal, 7, Is Already Four Wars Old

On Monday, revered Palestinian poet, teacher and mentor Refaat Alareer - so stubborn that a friend believed "people like him never die" - would have turned 45. Killed in an Israeli air strike, he left behind his wife and six children, and hundreds of Gazans who vow to emulate him - to speak truth, lift up others, "hold their heads high and endure like he did in his lifetime." "If I must die," he wrote, "Let it be a tale." And so it is.

A much-loved professor of comparative literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, with a masters from University College London, Alareer was known for chronicling Gazan experiences and nurturing young Palestinian writers to help them tell their stories. As "a reckless stone-thrower in the first Intifada," he said in an interview years ago, the stories of his mother and grandparents were "our solace, our escort in a blind world controlled by soldiers and guns and death." Those stories, he said, "make us who we are...they are one of the ingredients of Palestinian steadfastness, a creative act of resistance to oppression." A longtime believer that the pen is mightier than the sword, he urged young Palestinians to empower themselves by taking control of their own narratives. "For Palestinians, to tell a story is to remember, and to help others remember," he said. "Telling the story itself becomes an act of life."

After October 7, along with many thousands of Gazans, he and his family struggling with whether to stay in their home in Gaza City and risk death in an air strike, or to flee south with no guarantee of safety. After deciding to stay - they had "nowhere else to go" - he described "an archetypal Palestinian debate: Should we stay in one room, so if we die, we die together, or should we stay in separate rooms, so somebody can live?” (The answer is always to sleep in the living room together: "If we die, we die together.") On December 6, after Israel destroyed their home, he was moving between a school shelter and other people's homes when he was killed by an Israeli strike on a building in Shajaiya, in northern Gaza, where he was staying with his brother, sister and her four children; they were all also killed. His wife Nusayba, and six children aged 7 to 21, were sheltering in another building and survived.

A few hours before his death, he was walking along a road with his friend Asem Alnabih, telling him he was "tired of this war." "If he were alive today, I would not be writing this," notes a grieving Alnabih on Monday. Instead, they would be celebrating his birthday at al-Qalaq, a simple eatery known for having on its menu only crab - or "qalaq," which also translates to "worry" - while Refaat simultaneously worked. "If Refaat were alive right now, he would be taking care of us," writes Alnabih, who says three days before Refaat had came to his house after Alnabih's grandmother died to say, "I am always here for you. I am by your side." "He was (our) guide and mentor, and maybe that’s what frightened them - that he never hesitated to amplify the voices of those who spoke the truth," writes Alnabih. "I am still living and need to try telling his story. Dear Refaat, I miss you so much, my brother."

When he was killed, moving tributes poured in from his students, mentees, colleagues, friends. "Nothing I write could do him justice," one wrote of a scholar and activist so strong he transcends death and "comes back to us as a source of hope, strength, and belief...He was targeted because of his words and his message, and it is our duty (to) amplify it." Alareer's work itself does the same, especially Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of often harrowing short stories by 15 young Palestinian writers that Alareer spent over a year editing. "I started inviting students to write about what they had endured, to bear witness to the anguish," he recalled. "Writing is a testimony, a memory that outlives any human experience, and an obligation to communicate with (the)world. We lived for a reason, to tell the tales of loss, of survival, and of hope. They just came out. Stories in Palestine just come out."

In 2014, Alareer toured the U.S. for a month with some of the book's writers, meeting with writers and activists, both Palestinian and Jewish. The experience confirmed his belief that art is universal, that "literature breaks barriers, and returns us all to our humanity." The same year, he described how he came to the Writes Back project during Israel's 2008/2009 war against Gaza: As the bombs fell, "I had to find a way to distract my kids, by telling them stories from my childhood." He recalled his then-five-year-old daughter Shymaa asking him, "Dad, who created the Jews?", meaning Israelis. "I could not answer her question," he wrote. "But I realized the war mad her think there is a loving and merciful God, and another cruel God who created these Israeli soldiers, these killing machines (who) turn our lives into a living hell...The children pay the heaviest price, a price of fear and non-stop trauma."

In April, Israel murdered Shymaa, her husband Mohammed, and their two-month-old son Abd al-Rahman, Refaat's first grandchild, who he never had a chance to meet. They died in an airstrike on a building in Gaza City where they'd had been sheltering; it housed the international relief charity Global Communities, and was thought to be safe. Shymaa had posted a heartbreaking message to her martyred father shortly after her son's birth. "I have beautiful news for you, and I wish I could tell you while you were in front of me," she wrote. "Did you know that you have become a grandfather?” Amidst so much death, Gazans still mourning the much-loved Refaat were further devastated by the double tragedy. “I am out of words, tears and ways to comprehend this endless loss, this pain, this criminal annihilation of our people,” one wrote. "Shaymaa has joined her father Refaat after less than 5 months."

In August, The Electronic Intifada published some of Alareer's "Genocide Diaries," which OR Books will soon release in If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, an anthology of his work compiled by Yousef Aljamal. In searing entries, Alareer documents the stages of coping with war in Gaza, his and his wife's loss of over 50 family members to Israeli terror - "We are an average Palestinian family" - and their growing numbness to the ongoing carnage. "My grandmother would tell me to put on a heavy sweater because it would rain. And it would rain! She, like all Palestinian elders, had a unique sense, an understanding of the earth, wind, trees and rain. (They) knew when to pick olives for pickling or oil. Sorry, Grandma. We have instead become attuned to the vagaries of war. 'Is it war again?' asks my youngest child, Amal, 7, previous Israeli assaults still fresh in her mind. In Gaza, Amal is already four wars old."

As a parent, he feels "desperate and helpless." Unable to offer protection, he is focused on rationing food and water: "Instead of telling my kids 'I love you,' I have been repeating...'Kids, eat less, drink less'...I imagine this being the last thing I say to them, and it is devastating." When Israel bombs the building where they're hosting four other families, "We ran and ran," carrying the little ones, grabbing the small bags with cash and documents "Gazans keep at the door," and somehow survive. They walk to a UN shelter "in an inhuman condition," cram into classrooms. They lose their water, their food, "our last sense of safety." "In Gaza, no one is safe," he writes. "Israel could kill all 2.3 million of us, and the world would not bat an eye." Before Israel killed him, a hero and symbol of hope to so many, he wrote “If I Must Die,” urging, "You have to live/To tell my story." Heartrendingly, he wrote it to Shymaa.

If I must die
If I must die, you have to live
To tell my story, to sell my things
To buy a piece of cloth and some strings,
(Make it white with a long tail)
So that a child, somewhere in Gaza
While looking heaven in the eye,
Making it blush under his gaze,
Awaiting his Dad who left in a blaze–
And bid no one farewell
Not even to his flesh, not even to himself—
Sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
And thinks for a moment an angel is there
Bringing back love.
If I must die, let it bring hope.
Let it be a tale.