Author Description

In this special spring issue, ArabLit Quarterlyand Gaza’s Majalla 28 come together to publish words and art from Gaza. In the face of immense death and loss, the brutal and inhumane destruction of cultural and academic infrastructure, and the utter callousness of those in power, co-editors Mohammed Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Al-Shaer have collected essays, poems, and life-and-death reflections by writers living in Gaza that speak to their lives between October 2023 and March 2024. We also have work that expands our vision of Gaza, looking back as far as ancient Egypt. In her essay "Naming Gaza," Salma Harland follows the area’s name from its earliest known use among the Ancient Egyptians through to the seventh century, countering narratives that want to call into question the region’s and its people’s long history. Ten centuries later, traveler ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi describes his 1693-94 trip to Khan Yunis, which he experienced as a place of “happiness and bliss: / a breeze at dawn / blowing all the way from / Jerusalem,” translated for this issue by Tom Abi Samra. Continuing the long tradition of Palestinian poetry, we share poems of lament, praise, and contemplation by Samer Abu Hawwash (tr. Huda Fakhreddine), Olivia Elias (tr. into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and into Arabic by Salma Harland), Basman Aldirawi (tr. Tala Ladki), Ibrahim Nasrallah (tr. Huda Fakhreddine), Yara Omar (tr. Nashwa Nasreldin), the late Saleem al-Naffar (tr. Ruth Abou Rached and Salma Harland), and Yahya Ashour (tr. Khaled Rajeh). Muin Bseiso’s “Fighting with Matchsticks and Chalk,” translated by Cara Piraino, comes from Bseiso’s 1971 Gaza Diaries and draws a portrait of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of 1948. It is joined by short and excerpted fiction, from the beginning of Atef Abu Saif’s 2019 novel, Walk Don’t Walk, a mystery that begins when an old man is put in a coma by a hit-and-run (translation by Alice Guthrie). In Heba Al-Agha’s “Sour Memory