Excerpts from “On the Zero Line”, Tariq Asrawi et al, published by Slow Factory and Isolarii.

The entries in On the Zero Line were written in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October, 2023. Given how the situation has worsened, from the increasing severity of famine in Gaza to the scores of civilians shot dead while seeking food at distribution points, one might say these entries are “outdated,” and in a sense they are; an anthology of writing from Gaza written in late 2025 would look different to this one. In another sense, however, the entries included here are not altered by a change in Gaza’s situation, because they are concerned with questions and themes that extend far into the past, and far into the future.

This anthology was compiled in the original Arabic by Tariq Asrawi of Tibaq Publishing, based in the Occupied “West Bank” in Palestine. At this current moment, he is unable to account for the whereabouts of all the authors included in the anthology. The very existence of this anthology is an act of cultural persistence and a rejection of cultural hegemony. In the wake of a catastrophe designed not only to destroy lives but also to erase the cultural landscape of a people, to publish these voices is to resist. When libraries are shelled, and literary institutions all over Europe reveal themselves as determined to repress any mention of Palestine, the act of putting ink to paper asserts that Palestinian thought and literature cannot be obliterated. By translating and publishing this collection, we hope to support a fundamental element of Palestinian self-determination: the preservation and continuation of its cultural infrastructure.

On Returning

IBRAHIM MATAR

I wonder, will I survive long enough to return to my beloved Gaza? Will I return to the simple things I love?

To return to walk long in its streets, or to sit by the seaside first thing in the morning, pondering the blue of the wide sea and enormous space of the sky—knowing that sky and sea are our one and only vent out into the wider world.

To return to hear music by the sea, to sit with my friends, speaking, laughing, making fun of the world, singing, telling stories until morning?

Will I return to sit again in that café with the phenomenal coffee and sublime nutella cake? Will I feel again that I’m in the most beautiful city in the world? Will I return to sit with my mother and watch the sun meet the ocean, the two of us celebrating the central moment of recurring beauty in her life? Will we walk again on chilled nights, the breeze tingling on our cheeks, spray grazing our fingers?

Will we slow down in the Rimal neighborhood, relishing the walk through Omar Al-Mukhtar Market? Will we return to our favorite meal, a hot falafel sandwich from Al-Sousi and a lemon ice from Kazem Ice Cream—the most incredible combination in the world?

Will we go to class at the university, then stroll through the battalion park, watching grass turn from bright to darker green, breathing pure oxygen, the air conditioning of the trees and the sea “switched on,” as Uncle Abu Ahmed says when he prepares our tea?

Will men return to the port to buy fresh fish at six in the morning? Will we eat again until our stomachs and souls are full?

Will a gentle family stretching from grandfather to child carry again their wide raft to the beach on Friday morning, then stay til nightfall and let the salt and sand mingle in the children’s breaths as they play and rejoice to total exhaustion?

Will I return to take my morning walk without fear of being snatched away by a missile? Will I dream again of becoming the champion of my gym, then go shopping at the most beautiful mall in the world, Carrefour?

Will the thought ever again occur that Gaza, the most magnificent city in existence, is all I could ever need, is enough to quench my furthest hopes of fulfillment? Will I ever long not to be away from Gaza, if only to be close to my father and mother, to our tree and our house?

Will we ever return to our alleys and walkways, without the fear of meeting dead bodies, broken trees, and buildings collapsed on the ground? Will we ever walk again across our own smooth asphalt? Will we return from this nightmare?

On Writing a Will

AHMAD ISSA

We are terrorists. That is what they call us and, certainly, I have no choice but to believe the Zionist narrative. Surely, the Israeli media machine knows more than I ever could. I should believe that my wife, who expertly prepares the maqluba, is a terrorist, and her maqluba a weapon of mass destruction. My wife, who waits all day for me to return from work, forever ensuring the house is tidy and the food prepared, is a terrorist in denial of Israel’s right to exist. My only son, Fares, who came to us after seventeen years of waiting, and seven rounds of IVF—I must believe that he is a terrorist too, this little boy, not yet two years old, who is still learning to speak; who, when I left him with my wife’s family at the start of the war, had learned only a few words in Arabic and English, those for the numbers, animals, and colors; who, when I visited him yesterday, had learned new words: “plane,” “missile,” “bomb”, all muttered fearfully as he trembled through the reverberations of explosions near and far, searching constantly for his mother’s arms. As I hold him and weep for his stolen childhood, I should accept what members of the Israeli Knesset say—that this child deserves to die, for clearly, if he were to grow up, he’d be yet another terrorist. His killing, of course, is justified as an act of self- defense. Those who expelled me from my home must be able to defend themselves. Those who have possessed this land cannot have “rights”—here, family, childhood and basic humanity do not exist.

I had grown used to coming home from work to find Fares sitting on his little chair in front of the house, waiting for me and the lollipops and chocolates I’d bring him. The moment he saw me, he’d come running into my arms. His attachment to me is natural, like mine to him. I can’t imagine life without him, but that is the possibility I must live with, even if the thought forces tears down my face.

Ok, I tell myself. Alright. Maybe, in the best case, we just lose the house. But maybe I’ll lose my wife and son. Maybe I’ll die. Maybe my child will live as an orphan. Maybe, quite possibly, all three of us will die together.

I think too often about the moment the missile strikes. Is it painful? Will my child suffer? Will he have any notion of what’s happening? Could I possibly shield him? Could my body cradle him from the power of a one-ton bomb? Then, another thought—what if we die, then meet again in heaven? Could our family be reunited? Could we gather again to eat dinner and watch a movie at night, as we always have?

We terrorists practice our distinct terrorist rituals. Every night, we prepare the nuts and popcorn, turn off the lights, and watch an Arabic or American film. Something by the silent Arabs, or by the America that underwrites our extermination, that arms the occupier with bombs, missiles, gear, and soldiers.

The world forms leagues against us as if we were a nuclear superpower, not a helpless people yearning for freedom, ordinary and simple in our needs for food, roofs over our heads, dignity and life on our own land—even on the land that is not our original homeland, but the site of our first displacement, the place where we have watched our hopes of return to our original villages fade into an almost impossible dream.

I left behind hundreds of pages of novels I was drafting. In my writing, I used to traverse great distances, to dream of different lands beyond this occupation. I wrote about the future, about science, fantasy, technology. Sometimes Gaza brought me back to reality, but on some nights my imagination drifted very freely. I wrote constantly. I lived a thousand lives and a thousand possible futures. I traversed dimensions, alighted in spacecraft, pierced wormholes in spacetime, battled monsters from the depths of history. But my son has never known any of this. I hoped to leave behind a large library that he might read in full one day. I wanted to tell him, someday soon, with pride, that his father was a writer. I wanted him to read my work, and, maybe ten or twenty years from now, to hear his opinion of what I wrote. It would be the most valuable feedback I’d ever receive, more meaningful than anything from critics and academics.

Will any of this happen? We don’t know. The bombing makes no distinctions among us, between resistance fighters or civilians. Everything is struck down. Death from every direction. You can’t even see your enemy: death is delivered by a mythical beast above the clouds, spewing down fire that engulfs each and every civilian—if anyone does survive the conflagration, they must face it again the next day.

Survival remains a possibility—a faint, distant one. Maybe I’ll make it, but if so, how then to go on living after the loss of so many friends, and so much of my family?

Since I am likely to die, I think to myself, I should write a will. And yet I cannot leave behind a will—because how am I to know who will survive this massacre? Me? My wife? My child? Who will be left for me to entrust with anything, or to instill with the power to entrust things to others? I don’t know. Perhaps I could simply write, “Forgive me.” But who will remain in my homeland to forgive or withhold forgiveness? Again, I don’t know. Our dreams are pulverised above our heads. The homes we built crumble around us. Our lives hang on the pressing of buttons by pilots who never see the faces below. If they could see the eyes of their victims, would they still do it? Would they press the button?

This question will never be answered. Civilization, I know, is a lie. The world fails to be human. It has revealed its true face. It has revealed the fiction of the claims of the supposedly civilized. The lie is put, ultimately, to any claim of goodness. This world is not suited for our life within it—so then, should we die content, if this world is so base that we cannot live within it?