I am Gaza

Illustration/Uday Mohite

We chase misprinted lies
We face the path of time
And yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call my own
My gift of self is raped
My privacy is raked
And yet I find
Repeating in my head
If I can't be my own
I'd feel better dead
- Nutshell (Alice in Chains)

I am Gaza. A strip of land,
stripped down to the bone.
Till nothing's left, save a carcass.
I am Gaza, stripped of all dignity.
Like a canvas,
blank but bloodied,
my surface like a Jackson Pollock painting…
time cannot erase
rivers of dried, splattered blood
turned maroon and burgundy with time…
What lies beneath me, buried deep, memories of violence,
Six-day war, 60 years of conflict
I am Gaza.
I am history, I am geography,
I am politics, I am geo-politics,
I am genocide.
I am war, in the air, on land
I am British, I am Israeli, I am Jewish,
I am Arab, I am Iranian
I am Palestinian. I am Syrian,
I am Egyptian
I am Hamas, I am landmass,
I am land-locked. I am land-mined. I am rubble.
I am Gaza.
My land has been bombed, bayonetted, bazookaed. Battered.
I lie naked.
No different from my victims, paraded, pillaged.

Also read: Israeli Defence Forces say Palestinian civilians have started to leave Gaza

Raped, ravaged.
I am the Ottoman Empire, I am the Oslo Accord…
How many times do I repair, resurrect, rebuild, reconstruct,
how many will reign over me?
I'm like a bride, given away
multiple times,
only to become a battlefield.
I am Gaza.
I stay clear of debate
Israel-Palestine arguments -
Everyone is wrong, everyone is right
I am Gaza.
my list of characters unending,
Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat,
Golda Meir,
Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan,
Shimon Perez,
Benjamin Netanyahu, Ismail Haniyeh
Hamas… last weekend… feeling unattended to.
Israel courting the Arabs…
Saudi Arabia responding,
The narrative shifting, the conflict softening,
That word, PEACE, ‘anathema' to terrorists, a possibility
‘Let's awaken a sleeping giant', Hamas decided.
They flew undetected into
Tele Aviv.
The Mossad truly fast asleep.
Complacent, confident,
Rip van Winkle.
Hamas, with paragliders,
parachutes, rockets
A war revisited.
Israel embarrassed, confused.
And then retaliation.
Vengeance, vindictiveness,
vindication.
"They began the war," each side says,
this isn't a battle anyone can win.
But everyone loses.
Fundamentalist groups that fail to understand the fundamental rights of people.
I am Gaza.
I've been shut down, no water, no electricity, no supplies
I watch as events unfold,
the fourth wall has been broken.
I am Gaza.
My worries are much deeper.
Three million people packed into 365 square kilometres.
They wish to shift 1.1 million of those today.
Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,
where do my people go?
Collateral damage takes on new meaning in the Israel-Palestine playbook. Slaybook.
Beheading of babies.
"You behead 40 of ours, we retaliate in kind."
How can a political battle be so primeval, so primeval, so primitive?
This isn't warrior vs warrior anymore.
I am Gaza.
I am the motherland, I am the fatherland.
I am Gaza, I am a strip of land.
A strip of land stripped down to the bone.
Till nothing's left, save a carcass.
Do you stand with me?
Do you stand with Gaza?

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com