310 pages. Published October 3, 2024 by Saqi Books. Non-fiction.
It’s taken me a while to process everything I’ve read in this beautifully conceived, very emotional volume. Daybreak in Gaza collects stories, memories, diary entries, photographs and more from Gazans past and present. It’s a counter-narrative, and presents a fuller picture of the Gaza in today’s headlines, answering questions about who the people are; their history, and the history of the place; their joy and pain; life under occupation; life before the genocide, and life under it.
For insight, somewhere in the middle of the book are these stark calculable examples of life during the genocide, from child protection officer Hossam al-Madhoun:
Item Before 7 Oct ’23 / Today
Firewood, 1kg $0.30 / $1.00
Aubergines, 1kg $0.50 / $2.00
Green peppers, 1kg $1.00 / $2.00
Lemons, 1kg $0.25 / $2.50
Tomatoes, 1kg $0.50 / $3.00
Cucumbers, 1kg $0.25 / $3.50
Potatoes, 1kg $0.25 / $4.00
Sugar, 1kg $0.80 / $4.50
Salt, 1kg $0.15 / $7.00
Other marketplace items are those distributed by UNRWA, which people sell in whole or in part to buy other essentials. Some examples (in US dollars):
Item Before 7 Oct ’23 / Today
Hand soap $0.20 / $1.00
Meat, tin $1.50 / $6.00
Cooking oil, 1 litre $2.00 / $7.00
Beans, tin $5.00 / $30.00
Bread flour, 25kg $10.00 / $150.00 (if available)
Toilet paper, roll $2.00 / No longer available
Tissues, box $2.50 / No longer available
So much cruelty. What’s happening in Gaza right now demonstrates how the monstrous is always just under all of our surfaces—even when we should know better because we’ve been treated monstrously ourselves. (You’d think those who’ve lived through a human-inflicted apocalypse would have learnt empathy, how to recognise the humanity of others; this genocide, the ongoing atrocities prove otherwise.) Dishearteningly, the answer to what’s rotten at the core of Langston Hughes’s apple would seem to be…people. Humans. Us.
In Daybreak, there’s death. Dear God, so much death. I wept as I read the last diary entries of Hiba Abu Nada (killed with her family in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis on October 20, 2023) and, again, Refaat Alareer’s If I Must Die (Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City on December 6, 2023). I was gutted by Noor Swiki’s account of a woman’s experience of displacement. I prayed—pointlessly—as I read about Salim al-Rayyes’s shop, that it might have survived the bombardment.
Imagine, please, that you’re a Palestinian receiving a call from an Israeli soldier commanding you to leave your home immediately—as Ibrahim Yaghi’s brother did, on December 11, 2023. What must it be like, to live under that level of surveillance, where “[they] know where we are at all times”?
There is really only one question left to ask about Gaza, about Palestine: Why? Daybreak in Gaza has no answers, only the stories of ordinary lives, people, families harmed, shattered, obliterated. To those who want or need it to be, perhaps it is proof of Palestinian humanity. But perhaps such people don’t need this proof as they will never accept the premise.
Read this. It is brutal with human pain and still, beauty, and life. Defiant life. Resistance. And, bitterly, the injustice of it all. You cannot walk away from Daybreak in Gaza unchanged. It will break your heart; but our hearts need to be broken.
To end: Abu Nada’s final words, on 20 October 2023, at 4.52pm:
Before God, we in Gaza are either martyrs or witnesses to liberation and we all wait to learn where we will fall. We are all waiting, O God. Your vow is true.
May the people of Gaza—those alive today, those who have suffered, those who died in pain—find peace.
Thank you to Saqi Books for the review copy.
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