Tender, nostalgic vignettes of a childhood growing up in Gaza, often told from the perspective of the twenty-something narrator looking back from the present, now living in exile in London. She is constantly longing for old places while finding new ones, the past never far from being elicited by the present.

Each new chapter has an associated song, vignettes accompanied by a playlist.

The image of the sambac, the tree that filled our back yard with its sweet, creamy scent, appears in my narrator’s attempts to create life where this shrub doesn’t naturally thrive.

The little stories are so compelling, I finished them in one sitting and was left wanting to read more. I sincerely hope the author is writing more stories, preserving important memories, while there is a terrible war raging in her home town.

These stories are the anti-thesis of that violent incursion, they speak of family outings to the sea, of friendships, of Aunties, though so many are tinged with reminders that it is almost never without some reference to loss.

As the narrator grows into unlikely circumstances away from Gaza, memory is her greenhouse; her way to bring back the voice of the girl who was sacrificed and born in the hands of her identity. At her desk in a flat in Southeast London, she writes of what makes her soul flicker: community love, especially the kind embodied by circles of women and girls.

Guns and Figs

In this vignette, our narrator shares a childhood memory of driving along the Gaza coast with her parents, beside the Mediterranean, in her favourite place, by the window facing the sea, window down, sea breeze rushing in, an unchanging view for the duration of the 20 minute drive.

The song accompanying the vignette is Fairuz ”Nassam Alayna El Hawa’ (The Breeze Is Upon Us)

My brother and I each had assigned places in the car, until our little sister grew old enough to claim her window-seat rights. Then the rotation became tricky, involving fights that mostly ended with my brother crying in the middle.

I usually sat by the window, facing the sun and the sea, breathing the salty, creamy air and occasionally eating grapes and figs: the ultimate Mediterranean snack.

These drives all felt the same, until the last one.

At a checkpoint, a soldier indicates they should pull over, “I’ll just be a minute” says her father. An hour later he returns, the Friday barbecue trips end indefinitely that day, though she is never told why.

I started to notice Baba paying more attention to the road; it seemed like he was avoiding certain checkpoints. Every so often, he would point out something ahead and wonder aloud whether it was a checkpoint or a fruit cart. As Fairuz sang from the cassette player, Baba drove on, trying to guess the difference between guns and figs.

Friendship, Fear and Foreign Places

Other stories ‘Ask Me Anything’ tell of school days interrupted by explosions, of friendships interrupted by disappearances, ‘A Carry-On Full Of Pictures and Letters’.

We were never trained for emergencies at school. We just knew what to do. We would sit on the floor under our tables each time we heard the recurrent loud explosions – ignore the first two, exchange a few nervous looks, and then, in one swift move, we’d all be in our places by the third. That consistency was comforting. The fact that we had survived the first two was a good enough sign that it’d be worth shielding ourselves from the rest.

In an attempt at reassurance, our teacher would remind the class: ‘The one you hear isn’t the one that kills you.’

One day her best friend Lubna leaves Gaza without telling anyone. She had visited the Al-Shifaa hospital after breaking her arm and never returned.

When she was ten, Lubna’s dad had been one of seven people martyred after the occupation forces targeted a car in the middle of a busy street. She’d been planning her exit for years; I just didn’t think it was really going to happen.

Three years later, she visits her friend in Amsterdam where she now lives.

Song: Lucy Dacus – ‘Yours and Mine’.

That day feels like the oldest memory I have. Yet somehow I can barely remember it at all, or the person I was when I hadn’t yet imagined what it meant to leave.

‘I love my mother, but she couldn’t protect me. I love you, but you couldn’t either. I’m a lot better now, you see?’ She waves her hand in the air, and I look around and nod.

A Moving Tale, Of Family Drama

Song: Nina Simone – ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’

In this vignette, we first hear that our narrator has been kicked out of her flat after secretly hosting an Airbnb guest to help pay the rent. Homeless, she moves into the office where she works and takes on additional responsibilities.

Sometimes, I even feel content in my windowless bunker, stealing bits of people’s lunches from the common lounge – not the entire meal. As I look up flats in my small college town, I think of my first big move.

Here, we learn of when our narrators parents leave the family home, the summer she turns six, after problems around inheritance became intolerable. Their last day living in an apartment above her grandmother Sitti, arrives:

Moving out of the family house was never a casual affair, but rather a statement. It’s like leaving home for the first time – making a point that it’s time to move on. Changes like these usually carried an undertone of wives taking their husbands away from their families and keeping them for themselves.

The move also meant that no one was going to interfere in how to raise us, except for my parents. It was a bit of a slap in the face, especially for Sitti. But I was excited about it; I wanted to be like my other cousins who visited only on Fridays and wore something new each time: a little bag or a hair tie, or even a completely different hairstyle. I was ready to rebel with my parents and become the daughter of a mean woman. I started to imagine what I would wear the next Friday.

Some years later, she visits her grandmother in Belgium, where she now lives and finds her safe, but malcontent.

Song: Idir – ‘A Vava Inouva’

Seventy years since her birth,our Grandma is in a French-speaking town, barely able to move, again a refugee. She tells me she didn’t want to leave Gaza, and that she regrets it.

‘Who leaves at this age?’ she says, slightly ashamed of her attempt at survival. As though there were an age limit to craving life, or to that quiet longing older folks back home often fear expressing.

It is a wonderful collection, that preserves childhood memories and shares with the rest of us, a slice of life for a member of a Palestinian family in Gaza, where growing up is fraught with uncertainty, trauma and nothing can be taken for granted.

From afar, the beauty of family and fragmented moments of friendship gain additional significance, as a way of life is slowly and methodically destroyed.

A must read, excellent portrayal of a lonesome yearning for home.

To order a copy of this book, visit Hajar Press here.

Heba Hayek, Author

Heba (she/they) is a London-based, Gaza-raised Palestinian author, creative and facilitator. She completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Miami University, Ohio, and studied for an MA in Social Anthropology at SOAS University of London.

Rooted in anti-nation-state, decolonial, queer, Afrikan feminist thought, Heba’s work navigates topics such as disposability, Global South solidarity movements, land justice, Palestinian drill music, and more.

Heba’s first book, Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies, won the Creative Award in the 2022 Palestine Book Awards and was chosen as a 2021 Book of the Year by The White Review, Middle East Eye and The New Arab.