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FLY A KITE FOR REFAAT ALAREER  
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Amba Guerguerian
May 16, 2024
Indypendent
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_ During the attack, the more bombs Israel detonated, the more
stories I told, and the more I read. Telling stories was my way of
resisting. It was all I could do. _

A tribute to Refaat Alareer in London on Dec. 9, three days after he
was killed by Israel in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, (Haymarket
Books)

 

On Dec. 6, an Israeli airstrike on a family home in northern Gaza
killed Refaat Alareer
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his brother, sister and her four children. 

In an Oct. 9 video, Alareer said
[[link removed]] to the camera in
tears as bombs made loud explosions in the background, “You don’t
know if _this_ is it. We don’t deserve this. I am an academic.
Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if
the Israelis invade,” he warned, “I’m going to use that marker
to throw it at the Israeli soldiers even if that is the last thing I
will be able to do. And this is the feeling of everybody: We are
helpless. We have nothing to lose.”

Alareer was a beloved Palestinian writer, professor and activist. A
public critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, he worked
with young writers
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foster textured and nuanced literature from Gaza.

According to Geneva-based human rights organization ­Euro-Med Monitor
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the apartment Alareer and his family were in on Dec. 6, which belonged
to his sister, “was surgically bombed out of the entire building
where it’s located.”

Israel has destroyed every university in the Gaza Strip and as of Jan.
20 had killed at least 94 professors. “Many of their ideas served as
cornerstones of academic research in the Gaza Strip’s
universities,” writes Euro-Med [[link removed]]. 

“Nothing happens by accident,” an Israeli intelligence source
told _+972 Magazine
[[link removed]]_ in
November. “When a three-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza,
it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for
her to be killed … We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets.
Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage
there is in every home.” 

On Feb. 26, Alareer’s daughter Shymaa, her husband ­Muhammad Abd
al-Aziz Siyam and their three-month-old son Abd al-Rahman were killed
by Israel in Gaza City. _The Electronic Intifada
[[link removed]]_ reported they were the only
people at the international relief charity Global ­Communities
building when it was airstruck, the other occupants having vacated a
few days prior. 

Shortly after the birth of her son, Shymaa posted a message
­addressed to her father on social media:

_I have beautiful news for you, and I wish I could tell you while you
were in front of me, handing you your first grandchild. Did you know
that you have become a grandfather? … This is your grandson Abd
al-Rahman, who I always imagined you holding. But I never imagined I
would lose you so early, even before you saw him._

A poem Alareer wrote for Shymaa in 2011 when she was a child has been
translated into dozens of languages and seen written on subway
platforms and protest signs around the world lately: 

IF I MUST DIE

If I must die, you must 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.

In the following excerpt from _Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from
Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine_, a compilation edited by Alareer in
2014, he writes that during the time of Israel’s offensive 2008–09
Operation Cast Lead, he discovered that “if ­Israel’s apartheid
has to be fought, Israel’s narratives have to be challenged, and
exposed.” ­Alareer continues:

_“Refaat and I loved strawberries. We used to go to Beit Lahia in
North Gaza, pick strawberries, then sit and eat. He would not forget
to bring a lot of strawberries for his mother and wife and
children,” writes
[[link removed]] poet
Mosab Abu Toha, a dear friend of Refaat Alareer._ “_The last time I
heard Refaat’s voice on the phone was on November 27 … He told me
about his car, that it was damaged. We used to go in that car to the
restaurants and ice cream shops, as well as to the strawberry farms.
… But now there is no car, no restaurants, no ice cream shops, no
strawberry farms, no Refaat.”_

It was then that I realized much of my mother’s wisdom. For years,
she told me and my siblings many stories. I gave my mother a grumpy
how-many-more-times-are-you-going-to-tell-this-same-story face as she
retold the same story, again and again. In response, my Mother, who
gave birth to fourteen of us—eight boys and six girls, me being the
second eldest—started experimenting with the stories, not only by
adding new interesting details, but also by zooming in and out as she
saw fit, to serve her purposes. The stories became more engaging. My
Mom, through this rare act of compromise, must have realized that the
purposes of telling us stories are a lot more important than simply
keeping us quiet or even correcting our bad behaviors, like making us
eat vegetables because the boy in the story who did not eat was easily
carried away by a giant fly …  My usually multitasking mother
dedicated her everything to the story when she was telling one. The
story appeared on her facial expressions, in her tone of voice, and
through her gestures, and added solemnity to her already radiant face.
My mother believed in her stories. And my mother’s stories became
and still are part of our lives. It was only later in life that I
realized my mother’s strong belief in the power of stories, and
understood that there are several ways to tell the very same thing.
Sometimes my mother asked us to tell our own stories or even to repeat
one of hers. The stories gave my mother more authority and power;
single voices, my mother must have believed, are blindly dangerous. As
children living in the first Intifada, for us the stories of my mother
and those of my grandparents were our solace, our escort in a blind
world controlled by soldiers and guns and death. In part, they are
responsible for the person I am today, although very few might have
predicted that the reckless stone-thrower of the first Intifada would
grow up to be an academic at university.

Despite the attacks, or rather more accurately because of them, I
found myself telling my three kids, Shymaa, Omar, and Ahmed, either
the same stories Mom told me, or different stories with similar
themes, featuring my children as the heroes and saviors every now and
then. Nothing broke the concentration except the intermittent “Boom!
Boom!” sounds. That was how I spent most of the time, trying to make
sure I was in the room least likely to take a hit from Israeli
stray(!) missiles. The stories I told my kids and my brother’s kids,
who crowded the place and helped make the cold room warmer with their
breath, were not mere pastime pleasures, nor were they prepared in a
scholarly way. They just came out. Stories in Palestine just come out.
You decide to tell stories and the stories just appear. The characters
start to gather and then everything, to the amazement of the
storyteller, unfolds. If charity begins at home, so too do stories. As
a Palestinian, I have been brought up on stories and storytelling.
It’s both selfish and treacherous to keep a story to
yourself—stories are meant to be told and retold. If I allowed a
story to stop, I would be betraying my legacy, my mother, my
grandmother, and my homeland. To me, storytelling is one of the
ingredients of Palestinian _sumud—_steadfastness. Stories teach
life even if the hero suffers or dies at the end.  For Palestinians,
stories whet the much-needed talent for life.

My stories were both an end and a means. As I told stories to my
children to distract, soothe, and educate them, for the first time I
felt very close to my mother, to what happened to her, and to my
grandparents. The stories were my window to my mother’s past, to my
past, as I started living every minute she had to spend in the panic
room her grandfather had prepared before Israel first invaded Gaza
decades ago. My hair stands on end when she tells me of the many
near-death experiences she or her family had to endure. The mere idea
of my mother coming this close to death, just for being there, still
transfixes me. …  But my mother has outlived Israel’s brutal
invasion, and so have her stories. During the attack, the more bombs
Israel detonated, the more stories I told, and the more I read.
Telling stories was my way of resisting. It was all I could do.

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* Gaza
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