"Gaza does not vanish in a single strike that history can date and seal. It diminishes gradually, faltering and splintering under daily attrition, yet it persists with the stubborn rhythm of those who remain. To walk here is to step into a geography of vanishing, a terrain where disappearance is not an event that ends but a condition that settles into every gesture and every breath, making survival itself feel like a form of unfinished writing,"
"Displacement is the force that shapes this geography. It presses against every door and every silence, reshaping the city even as its ruins remain. From the beginning of the war, waves of evacuation swept through Gaza, driving families from the north toward the south. At first many believed that the ordeal might be temporary, that days or weeks would pass and they would walk back to homes left waiting for them."
Gaza resists static definition, receding and insisting as streets are redrawn, renamed, and sometimes obliterated while survivors remember them in whispers. Paths to the sea end in rubble or are swallowed by dunes; fragrant courtyards become memories spoken only in the past tense. The city erodes not in a single dateable strike but through daily attrition that splinters life while those who remain persist with a stubborn rhythm. Displacement reshapes every threshold as waves of evacuation push families southward, turning temporary departures into prolonged exile. Repeated departures and new horrors perpetuate a cycle of loss, memory, and survival.
Read at The Nation
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