the evening call to prayer is echoing through amman’s sky and whispering through my window. the fog swallows the last rays of sunlight and it’s officially the 40th night of the latest campaign of genocide on gaza.

for forty days and forty nights i have cycled through moments of feeling like i have the words to articulate the experience of witnessing the most horrific nightmare unfold in realtime, and moments of losing touch with language completely. for forty days and forty nights i have suppressed the urge to scream, mainly because i do not know what direction to throw the sound in

for forty days and forty nights

forty!

my mind breaks at the thought of how long that actually is

in islam, it’s the time of the formal mourning period after someone passes. no one has had the luxury to mourn in these last forty days or nights. not for the babies. not for the children. not for the teens. not for the parents. not for the grandparents. not for the siblings. not for the disabled. not for the hundreds of families who have been wiped off the civil registry. not for the thousands upon thousands of unburied bodies

no one has had the luxury to mourn the people who were killed on the first day, let alone all the people who are still being massacred by hellfire missiles and white phosphorus gas and the inevitable butterfly bluets that will follow. no one has had the chance to process the ways in which their lives have been taken. the ones with burned bodies, charred beyond recognition. the ones with chopped limbs. the ones who suffocated under the weight of bombed buildings. the ones who suffocated because machines that were keeping them alive ran out of fuel and electricity. the ones who are dying from the stench of death that has taken over the city. from the flies that feast on corpses that decompose in the streets. the ones who are dying from dehydration because water and food have been cut off for forty days and nights

forty days and nights. and there are still people who justify it. “it” being cold blooded murder. there is no other word for it. they might mask it in softer terms. might tell themselves there is some kind of moral reasoning, maybe even a theological one. there is none.

as i type that, i can feel the scream work its way through me again. it gets stuck in the same place in my chest every time. though sometimes my body has the ability to convert it into a sob. neither feels productive or effective, and i wish i knew how to alchemize those feelings into something that can make a difference. i wish i knew what could actually make a difference

the thought is overwhelming. the feeling of helplessness is overwhelming. i reach for my phone to take a break from that feeling. to check in on what’s happening. to see the unimaginable through the eyes of some of the people who have somehow survived so far in these 40 days and nights

plestia’s latest video is the first thing that shows up on my feed. that she can still find a reason to smile is a miracle. that she can share reasons to smile must be a testament to her personality. for a brief moment, the thing that wanted to be a scream inside me simmers down as i smile along with her

i think about how many times a day i reach for my phone now. how i ignore almost any notification until i check my saved searches to see a quick overview of who from the people i know to follow has posted an update. motaz. hind. motasem. abod. bisan. youmna. wael. samar. ahmed. anas. hossam. momin. abd. abdallah. mahmoud. mohammed. mohamed. ali. saleh. yousef. belal. dr ghassan. dr. kouta. dr. ezz. mosab. it goes on, and it will continue to grow. i think of how everyone i talk to has their own version of this list and has developed this same habit over the last 40 days and nights

forty!

i think about how a media theoretician i’ve followed for a while recently talked about the power of parasocial relationships. i think about how everyone i know from jordan is emotionally invested in and through people we have never met – will likely never meet – but who have become part of our every day concerns. soon the people i care about deeply in gaza in will surpass dunbar’s number and i wonder how that is fundamentally changing me. i wonder how waking up and falling asleep to the images and sounds of these horrors is fundamentally changing me. hours are measured according to when they do or don’t post. every moment of silence brings with it a question about their safety, an unfamiliar anxiety that can’t be quelled because even in real time there is a delay

there is a delay because electricity has been cut. and telecom networks have been cut. and both those cuts mean that communication is almost as rare as drinkable water in gaza. almost as rare as flour after the bakeries were decimated. i get nauseous whenever i think of that

i am not speaking about nausea as a metaphor or hyperbole. i mean it in the physical sense. my body experiences it so often throughout the day that i’m surprised i can hold meals down. perhaps my ability to do so is linked to how every bite i take is accompanied by prayer. every sip of water is recognized as a blessing. and that’s an extension of how everything i do throughout the day is now experienced through the lens of what i see happening in gaza. of what i see happening to gaza. atrocities i never ever thought i might see

forty one days ago gaza was already in crisis. and forty two days ago. and forty three days ago. it was already barely surviving the heavy blockade forced upon it by the occupation. it was already barely surviving the emotional toll of multiple displacements that generations of palestinians have experienced– many of whom have lived as refugees, in refugee camps, in their own country for decades

forty one days ago we were already talking about the catastrophic cruelties the occupation enforces throughout all of palestine. and forty two days ago. and forty three days ago. and for decades that add up to a century, people more eloquent than me and more consistent than me have been talking about the apartheid system that disappears people at random. about the military checkpoints where palestinians are made to stand between barbed fences until they are judged worthy to pass, but only after occupation guards demean and belittle them

forty one days ago all that was happening. and some people were listening. some people were looking. some people were talking. but many deemed it too complicated. some said it was not relevant, even though every system of oppression everywhere is connected

and then forty days ago a new round of ethnic cleansing began, and now we go into the fortieth night of the latest genocide campaign on gaza

the fog rolls in thick, and the rain thunders onto millions of human beings who have been bombed out of homes and hospitals, who have nothing to protect them from the elements but the now wet clothes they wear

for forty days and nights, a gang of politicians have ignored this reality — ignored humanity — for the sake of a few more dollars that they might make through alliances, or many more dollars that they might rake in through gas deals. and many media corporations continue to run with misinformation — barely correcting themselves after the damage is done.

but throughout these miserable forty days and nights, people everywhere have been seeing beyond the facade that has been fed to them. they are seeing a truth that they have long overlooked. and they are speaking in unison — amplifying palestine’s calls for liberation

and this global unity is something else i never imagined i would see.