“One time we were playing in the yard of the school, and the gates were open, and the watchman, he was so precious, he was praying. So we packed our bags and ran for it. There were five of us girls. The watchman saw us and began to call us back, and all of them ran back, except for me. I kept running. The only thing is—I literally had nowhere to go. My uncles worked in the middle of the city. If I went there, they would see me. Nothing ever happens in Gaza City without everyone finding out and everyone talking about it. So I just went home. That’s the thing about this place; it’s the only place I feel like I belong, but it was always so suffocating. There wasn’t even space for a teenager to be rebellious. I think the craziest thing we did was paint on walls. Like all teenagers we were convinced that everything was so dark, and the world was ending. So we’d graffiti Pink Floyd and Cold Play lyrics onto walls: ‘Lights will guide you home.’ Meanwhile home is literally two blocks away, two streets away. The entire neighborhood is rubble now. Honestly I don’t even like to talk about the past because it feels like the world keeps begging us to prove that we’re human beings. And if we could only do that, if we could prove that we once lived in nice houses, and listened to Cold Play, then we could prove that we deserve to live and eat and exist and survive. I hate it. I hate pity so much, because it belittles the person you’re pitying. Please don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t feel sorry for us. We don't need you, I promise. We don't need anyone. We have farmers with farmlands, but they cannot harvest their own farmlands without being shot. We have fishermen who can collect fish from the sea, but they’re banned from using the sea. We have these beautiful, beautiful cuisines. We can feed ourselves. Just let us, we've reached that point. Just let us. Don’t feel sorry for us. Feel sorry for yourselves, that you're living in a country that is arming Israel, that is sending weapons overseas to kill children. Your bombs are killing children. If that bothers you, then don’t feel sorry for us. Feel sorry for yourself. That you don’t have enough of a say in your own country to stop it.”
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Nour Alsaqqa is the communications officer for Médecins Sans Frontières / MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in Gaza. When I first decided to do this series, the MSF main office warned me that the entire Palestinian staff was exhausted and traumatized. They told me: ‘Let’s try one interview and see how it goes.’ By that, they meant: ‘Let’s try one interview and see what Nour decides,' because Nour was the only member of the communications team in Gaza. It was Nour that decided to dig in and turn this into a full series. It was Nour that was able to source all of these interviews, in the most difficult of conditions. And it was Nour that took it upon herself to take beautiful portraits of all the interview subjects, so their stories could be presented in the same style as those collected in New York City. For these reasons Nour is, and will always be, the co-creator of this series.
