For Gaza (after Faiz and Fahmida)

Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Author’s Note: I wish to dedicate this offering to my dear friend and colleague Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, whose concept of “exiting without” becomes a way of in-gathering: the lamlameh of ashlaa, rendering (w)hole the fragments of shattered bodies—and psyches. 

It has been an enormous privilege getting to know and befriend this noted Palestinian-Armenian feminist scholar, whose courage in calling out the Israeli genocide forced her into leaving her position as a tenured faculty member at Haifa University in Jerusalem under ongoing conditions of harassment and surveillance by the Israeli state. She is the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London, organiser of the Hadinah Fiqriyah, and her work on trauma, state crimes and criminology, covering topics of surveillance, gender violence, law and society and genocide studies has resulted in widely-cited and renowned books and scholarly articles. Her course at Princeton University, Gender, Reproduction and Genocide became an object of vitriol by the self-appointed off campus group, M.A.C.A (Mothers Against Campus Anti Semitism), leading NJ Congressional Representative Tom Kean to condemn the class for allegedly misusing the term genocide to target Israel.

Rain sobs in the

Desert 

Men, women, babies

Swallowed into 

Quicksand

Grass screams 

Water disappears into

Holes

Whispering of bone

The skull spouts

Hair

And the earth drops into a

Ship

In this ship of exile, memory becomes a wound, the lacerated land in which we (re)build our homes with the cement of solidarity on a sea of hope.  Survival, layering bricks of dignity and memory, becomes a home that must become an exit, a departure that seeks different ports of entry through corridors of connection, corazon a corazon, as we swim against the tide, enlarging holes in the nets of imperial capital seeking to entrap us even as we reach the ship of no return.

Like the Gaza Flottilas, our new home is a ship of solidarity where we dont feed ourselves from little fish we catch through the same old nets but rather, build up our strength through words and concepts that can satiate our hunger for radical imagination and total love. 

On this ship we sew a multicoloured flag, a map that sails us to new shores where our

our tongues a cornucopia of languages, which we translate not to betray each other but to build better, best. 

I am not you, nor you me; together, you and me are we. 

'Flesh and Earth' by Hamza Qazi

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Fawzia Afzal-Khan is Distinguished University Scholar at the Department of English at Montclair State University, who has recently taught as a Visiting Professor of Gender as Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. She is author of seven scholarly books and a memoir of her youth in Lahore. In addition to teaching and writing, she loves to sing, act, travel and spend time with her grandchildren.

Hamza Qazi completed his formal education in visual arts from National College of Arts Lahore in 2021. Following his graduation, his works have been prominently featured in 17 group shows nationally, and his work has also been selected for the Hunkensten International Art Fest 2024 in the Netherlands. Notably, Qazi holds the distinction of being the first artist to exhibit a non-fungible token (NFT) in a public art gallery of Pakistan, a feat that has earned him recognition within significant art marketplaces. In 2024, Qazi was bestowed the prestigious Nigaah Art Award for being the best emerging artist. He has taken in several residencies and collaborations. He is presently drawing instructor at Studio RM.