These seven letters mark the beginning of Dearest Gaza, written during a time when the suffering of the Gaza Strip unfolded in full view of the world and many of us found ourselves watching from afar, unsure what witnessing truly demanded of us. They are not reports, arguments, or attempts to explain events, but reflections on faith, distance, responsibility, and what it means to belong to an ummah that feels both connected and powerless in the face of injustice. These letters form the first stones of this archive. They are an opening act of remembrance and witness, from which other voices may one day emerge to write, reflect, and carry forward the act of remembering.
Dearest Gaza,
There are moments in history when the world cannot claim ignorance, when the suffering of a people unfolds so openly that distance no longer excuses silence. This feels like one of those moments. I do not live where the sky carries the sound of drones, nor do I wake to the tremor of bombs or measure my days by the fragile promise of survival. My nights are quiet, my streets intact, my life still arranged around ordinary routines. Yet the knowledge of what is happening in the Gaza Strip travels far beyond its borders, carried through images, fragments of stories, and the uneasy realization that the world is watching something it cannot pretend not to see.
I often wonder what witnessing demands from the one who watches from safety. It is easy to believe that suffering belongs only to those who endure it directly, that the rest of us remain merely observers. But witnessing does not leave the soul untouched. To see suffering clearly is to feel a quiet weight settle somewhere within us, a question that lingers long after the news cycle moves on. What does it mean to belong to the same humanity as those who suffer, yet live untouched by the flames that surround them?
Perhaps the first demand of witnessing is that we refuse the comfort of turning away. The human heart has a strange instinct: when pain becomes too large, it seeks distance. It scrolls past another image, changes the channel, returns to the safety of familiar routines. But witnessing asks something harder. It asks us to remain present to what we would rather escape, to allow the suffering of others to disturb the quiet order of our own lives.
You endure the fire. We endure the knowledge of it.
And sometimes I fear that knowledge itself is a test. Not a test of how loudly we speak or how quickly we respond, but a test of whether we allow the reality of injustice to shape our conscience or whether we slowly grow numb to it. History is filled with moments when suffering unfolded in plain sight while the world struggled to decide what it meant to watch.
I do not know if words can carry any real weight across such distance. Words cannot rebuild homes, nor can they quiet the skies above you. Yet silence feels heavier still. Silence risks becoming another form of forgetting, and forgetting is often how injustice survives long after the violence itself has passed.
So I write.
Not because my words can change the reality beneath your shattered horizon, but because witnessing without speaking feels like a kind of betrayal of memory. If the world insists on moving forward as though nothing has happened, then perhaps the smallest act of resistance is to remember clearly and refuse the comfort of indifference.
Gaza, may your patience, your courage, and your steadfastness be seen, even when the world struggles to understand what it is witnessing.
— Ever your sister of the ummah you dignify
