INDIGENOUS Soul: Gaza And Me, by Nada Shawa, is an extraordinary book – a first-hand report of experiences none of us would wish to have or to compel upon another, and yet which we all share, as human beings capable of sympathy, understanding, common feeling, common purpose, hope.
It is an individual’s record of encounters and continuing relationships with family, and the political world to which we can so easily become inured.
It’s a deeply moving book. Here is where the bare skeletal bones of simple writing tell all that is required about a reality almost impossible to believe in its inhumanity. Sensationalism is the sick-inducing diet of our daily media. This writing has nothing of that. It is a single human being’s document, not a construction of mass propaganda.
The “hundred days” part of the final section, “Poems 2023-24”, is right to note how such atrocities become normalised, even sanctified, and the horror is increased by its blatant, banal, omnipresent visibility, on screens on TVs, computers, phones, anywhere.
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Look just how quietly and yet emphatically this is presented:
a hundred days
of tears
a hundred days
of rubble
a hundred days
of death
a hundred days
of a televised annihilation
That solitary, horrifying word “televised” takes us out of any conventional world of “poetic” laments for the scenes and effects of warfare.
It raises very straightforwardly, very simply, what is happening to us watching this as spectacle, as well as what is happening to them, the victims of such atrocities, out there, over there, where the bombs are falling and human beings across the generations are being torn to pieces or crushed under broken buildings, heavy concrete blocks and shards, or children shot to bits.
The mind staggers, thinking of it. But this writing, lucidly, without embellishment, holds steady:
a hundred days
of normalising the killing of Palestinians
a hundred days
of starvation
a hundred days
of being buried alive
a hundred days
of complicit leaders
And that last phrase, too, takes us away from the scene of the immediate and bloody crimes and extends it to the criminal witnessing of those complicit – not the helpless, sympathetic, protesting witnesses, but the “complicit leaders” in positions of actual power and influence.
This is the quiet, rock-hard statement. This is the pointing finger. Nor is it only a testament of guilt and judgement but its solidity and solidarity are based upon compassion.
a hundred days
of searching for water
a hundred days
of broken trees
a hundred days
of bloodied Press vests
a hundred days
of bloodied doctors’ stethoscopes
Nada writes from a unique and highly personal perspective. She recounts her experiences of travelling with a wheelchair in and out of a country in military occupation and the unique hardship this brings.
Her voice is powerful, peaceful yet fierce. Her poetry deals with grief, displacement and war, but also the restorative power of nature and art. That’s why she includes the points of reference that lean against the horrors with their sense of what a good life might be: there are a hundred days “of birdsong competing with explosives” and “millions shouting ‘Ceasefire Now!’”.
Nada is a Palestinian writer who moved from Gaza to Scotland at the age of eight to receive treatment for her cerebral palsy and has lived here ever since.
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She has made Scotland her home and has worked extensively in the field of refugee support and human rights, including disability rights, helping to bring Palestinian athletes from Gaza to compete in the London 2012 Paralympic Games. She has performed her poetry widely, most recently during the 2024 Edinburgh International Book Festival.
A Scot by adoption, she is also a Palestinian in exile. Those two identities are deep sources of solace and strength, of sorrow and grief. Much as she loves her adopted country, she bears a deep dedication to try to find justice for Palestine, and her book seems to say: “If all we can do is write, let us do that!”
There are three prose pieces, written between 2009 and 2019, beginning with ‘Gaza, A Personal Story 2009-12’.
She writes: “Before leaving Gaza at the age of eight to come to Scotland, I remember a carefree environment among family and friends. This was in spite of being in a fierce Israeli military occupation, which recorded many atrocities against Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
“As children we weren’t exposed to the danger surrounding us; the adults faced all the danger and hardship and shielded us from it.
“Many happy moments I recall from my childhood: wearing a new dress for special celebrations with family and friends; picnics and swimming in the sea; drives along the Gaza coastal road and watching the beautiful sunsets; listening to my mother reading poetry. She would say, ‘See how many times Nada is mentioned in poetry?’ In Arabic, Nada means morning dew, and she would say, ‘Nada is so important to all the beautiful flowers.’ To a seven-year-old this was pretty exciting.”
The idyllic childhood takes us back with Nada to her grandparents and a time when things we take for granted here (so far) were everyday pleasures. This sense of the value of everyday life runs through the whole book and is an antidote to the ways in which TV news bombards us. It is deeply refreshing writing, full of both love and pathos.
She recollects travelling through the streets of Gaza passing a derelict building, being told: “‘That’s the cinema your grandfather built, we remember when we were able to watch films there.” Due to the occupation, in her own lifetime, the cinema has never been in use. “It just stands there, lifeless.”
Her grandfather told her in his youth “people were able to travel freely between Palestine and Egypt and Lebanon, something that was quite unimaginable to me. My grandmother, who was from Lebanon, would travel back and forth without any difficulty, as their borders were relatively free then. ... Things changed dramatically when the state of Israel was declared in 1948. As history shows, 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their own land.
“Six refugee families and their children spent over a year in my grandparents’ home and enjoyed their support and hospitality. Some of those families left in the hope of making a new life in the wider Middle East and beyond. We were aware of my grandfather’s belief in standing up for justice and Palestinian rights, no matter how difficult things got.”
Nada’s parents sent her to Scotland partly to be safer but also for treatment for her disability. Each time she returned to visit her family, she saw the occupation becoming harsher: “The more that Palestinians rose up against the oppression, the more brutal the response.
“I became aware that I was in a city, situated at a crucial crossroads linking Africa and Asia, which traces its roots back to the Canaanites and has seen conquerors come and go. It has faced the ancient Egyptians, the Israelites, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians, the Crusaders, the Ottoman Empire, and the British …now, of course, it was the Israelis.
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‘The fact that Gaza, and indeed Palestine, has been able to rise up again and again keeps a light of hope in my heart.”
Nada’s parents had been in business – her mother had a fashion boutique and her father had a small supermarket.
“Neither had any intention of entering into politics, but events didn’t leave them any choice: they felt it was in the best interests of Palestine to do so.”
Her father was involved in peace negotiations and became mayor of Gaza City, and her mother became a writer and columnist.
Nada describes going through security checks on her return visits in calm detail, an account all the more infuriating for the reader witnessing this infinitely patient woman’s confrontations with the bureaucratic bullying foisted upon her.
She was given clearance to go through Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in 2016 to visit her very ill mother. The arrival “may have been more welcoming to an extraterrestrial alien than to a Palestinian. Hardly any Palestinians from the occupied territories have been allowed to travel to or from Ben Gurion Airport since 2002. However, I was certain my name was in the system as permitted to enter, due to the special circumstances of needing to reach my ill mother and having a physical disability.
“But they checked and deliberated and rechecked and checked again, going through my whole history and background. For a long time I was detained in the border control holding area, the other detainee being a man wearing handcuffs.”
The harrowing but heart-lifting and spirit-affirming story of her visit with her mother and their return home from the hospital in 2016, ‘Fairuz In The Morning’, is also a measure and acknowledgement of a kind reconciliation: “Israeli emergency medics did save my mother’s life, now it was time for Gaza to help her recover.”
The recovery comes also through a constant recourse to music, music of all kinds – American popular crooners, Beethoven and the classical repertoire, and the songs of Fairuz, one of the most celebrated singers in the history of the Arab world, also known as “The Bird of the East” or “The Cedar of Lebanon”.
Nada tells us: “For my generation, Fairuz’s voice has always been there ... Transcending race and religion, her songs are filled with dreams of freedom and independence. In the sad reality of today’s Middle East, freedom and independence are just a dream and so Fairuz is far from easy listening.”
Leaving proves even more fraught. “All my belongings, including my wheelchair, went on ahead with the help of one of the baggage handlers. I then had to figure out how to get myself on to the tuk-tuk with my elbow crutches.
“I was leaving my family behind Israel’s huge, concrete, impenetrable wall, which I could see as it slowly disappeared behind me.”
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With the help of the baggage handler, Nada tries to get through security clearance, but then: “The next dread came when they also insisted I stand unaided in the full body scanner for a security check. Contemplating this, I asked the man, ‘How long must I stand for?’ ‘About 10 seconds,’ he responded. That may not seem much, but for me it is difficult, unaided.”
With help from a friend of her family, she manages to get through. “I believe that this dehumanising, invasive process is primarily designed to deter any Palestinians from ever returning to their homeland.
“My question is, if more than $30 million have been spent on Gaza’s border crossing, and probably another staggering figure on airport security, could they not obtain sophisticated screening equipment to be used on people with disabilities that would avoid such a gruelling and humiliating process?”
At last, on board her flight, Nada’s eyes fill with tears when an attendant asks simply if she is comfortable. She reaches for her MP3, scrolls down and finds a love song by Fairuz called Bint el Chalabiya.
“At this point I really was not strong enough to cope with Fairuz. However, this lifted my spirits. The song talks of a girl from Chalabiya, an old city in Andalusia, Spain, a place where there was once religious harmony. The word ‘chalabiya’ also describes someone who is refined, has quality and beauty.
“This beautiful song makes me want to dance. Dance has been something in my life for a very long time. When the Israeli authorities took my wheelchair away, to me this was like stating, ‘You don’t deserve dignity or freedom’.
That same wheelchair allows me to move freely and dance, expressing my humanity and freedom, in the knowledge that the right to freedom is a belief I will always dearly hold on to.”
The final prose section of the book is an account of Shawa’s return from Scotland in 2019 for her mother’s funeral, ‘The Continuing Song, 2023-24’ and brings us up to date with clear-eyed immediacy, unsentimental, moving, shocking.
“Every moment in Gaza was precious. Spending time as a family in calm grief had given us all a sense that as the ones who were now left we must cherish life. There was a great mixture of laughter and tears as we exchanged memories of mother.”
Grief and sorrow, the joy of good company, family and friendship, and through it all, music, of all kinds, give this short book a remarkable buoyancy and assurance.
Nada’s poem ‘The Wave’ imagines a clear and gentle wave being sent from Scotland to calm and cool and pacify the burning horrors that are being rained upon Gaza now.
Addressing the people who are delivering such atrocities directly, she notes, “Now, blatantly / and in front of the world, / you wish to eliminate me.”
And then she calmly, coolly, gently asks, “What have I done to you? / What have my mother’s / cypress trees done to you?”
I do not hate you,
and never wish
to be made to hate you
but if you intend on breaking me
I will not bear the sight of you.
The founding fathers
of your state of Israel
would be quite staggered
by how inventive
your cruelty and deceit
have become…
would they applaud you?
It has been 75 years
since my name became obsolete
but it will never be insignificant.
Beneath the shelter and care
of Scots pine and heather
from exile
I send a gentle Scottish wave
to flow over you, Palestine,
to give you the strength
to continue
to resist
and survive.
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