Sami al-Ajrami, author of The Keys to My House: A Gaza Diary On October 20, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. in the UMass Honors College events hall, I’ll be hosting a presentation by co-author Anna Lombardi (in person) and author Sami al-Ajrami (via Zoom) of the latter’s The Keys to My House: A . . .
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Photo: The keys to our house that was destroyed in Northern Gaza. Courtesy of the author. When I was ten years old, I was studying at the Beach Elementary School in Gaza. My teacher, Rahma, asked us to write about our original villages. “Go home,” she told us, “and ask your grandparents . . .
Read More“The only possibility of regaining one’s balance is to face the whole problem, for all these discoveries, all these inquiries lead only in one direction: to make man admit that he is nothing, absolutely nothing—and that he must put an end to the narcissism on which he relies in order to imagine . . .
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On Gaza’s beach, a young girl kneels beside a sand turtle she shaped with her hands and decorated with seashells. All photographs by Shams Mazen Rajab. Every day, thousands of children wake in tents instead of homes, stand in lines for water instead of classrooms. Play has become a rare luxury, and . . .
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Photo: Islamic University of Gaza. “The science and library buildings.” Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, 2018. Each time I see another student from Gaza manage to leave to pursue their studies, I feel depressed. This is not jealousy. It is the pain of my multiple failed attempts to secure a scholarship and fulfill . . .
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A review of Rising for Palestine: Africans in Solidarity for Decolonisation and Liberation, edited by Raouf Farrah and Suraya Dadoo. Pluto Press, 2026. During a 2025 residency in Lagos, I met with some of the local LGBTQ organizers hosting me. I was wearing a Free Palestine bracelet when someone asked me a . . .
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One day recently, I sat down to teach my little sister, Marah, who is six years old. The lesson was about colors in English. But on the pages before us, I found that despite their names all the colors were printed in black. How will children learn the difference between colors when . . .
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One morning, as I sat on the beach near the displacement camp where I live, I was scrolling through my phone when I came across a post about my city, Rafah. It was written in the past tense, as if the city no longer existed. I reached into my bag and touched . . .
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Photo credit: “2015 Dron DJI Phantom 3 Advanced,” from Wikimedia Commons. I have become an expert in distinguishing the sounds of Israeli death blasts. The roar of warplanes. The relentless thump of shelling. Each day in Gaza is a new battle to navigate the different cacophonies of Israel’s massacres. But it’s the . . .
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Since 2014, Ramadan in Gaza has repeatedly arrived under the shadow of war. From Israel’s attack in 2014, to the escalation in 2021, and the ongoing genocide that has cast its shadow over the holy months of 2024, 2025, and 2026, for more than a quarter of the past decade the sacred . . .
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