A Catalog of Gaza’s Loss

Shabir Moosa

2 months ago

A question has been haunting me for some time now, a question whose answer I hope is not already lost. It is less a neat inquiry than a muffled cry inside each of us, rising over and over against days filled with repeated loss: Who are we?

I refuse to accept that Gaza will come to be defined only by destruction and loss. This is a land shaped by long and layered human experiences across history. A natural byway between Africa and Asia, it has long been a meeting point for people, trade, and culture. Lineages of language and conversation, shared traditions and space, all came together to create from our long history a sense of “we”—a nomenclature for our collective identity.

What I seek is a serious attempt to recall this “we” in the midst of a genocide that has never been just a material act of erasing bodies, but a systematic effort to target both spirit and memory. It has stripped places of their soul and their physical appearance, distorted the very image of belonging, and left us, individually and collectively, digging through the ruins of memory for some natural reflection of who we are. …more