Book of Wills

“In Gaza, where the world wavers between silence and forgetting, the written word becomes a final sanctuary – a fragile, luminous act of survival,” Reem Ghanayem writes in the Editor’s Note to the bilingual edition of Book of Wills (Akoya Publishing, 2026). Both erasure and preservation are recorded in this collection of brief writings from Gaza during the genocide. As the writers in this anthology address various people, including the readers themselves, there is no escaping the importance of language. 

“Language is a feeble tool,” Alberto Manguel writes in the foreword. “And yet, despite the impossibility of finding language adequate to address a victim’s suffering, when confronted with that suffering, our human condition impels us to speak.” 

The book opens with a strong denunciation by Saleem al-Naffar, killed in December 2023 by an Israeli airstrike. Al-Naffar’s contribution is written just 25 days into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and his words are directed at the Arabs who failed to stand with Palestinians: “They and their leaders are part of the conspiracy that aims to exterminate us.” 

In most of the writings in this anthology, extermination becomes a personal reckoning imparted to various audiences. Several contributions impart the final wishes of a person expecting death, because death became an inescapable reality during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, rather than a natural termination of life. However, the book also forces the world outside Gaza to a reckoning with its own oblivion, as Amal Abu Assi al-Yazji writes of the aftermath of genocide: “Tear Palestine out of the notebook of your memory, since you’ll have no need for it.” The reader cannot help but contemplate the various levels of oblivion, and al-Yazji’s use of language is particularly striking when she writes, “That worry of yours is gone for good.” How much did all the people outside Gaza worry about Gaza, and what form did that worry take from a sheltered distance? This is perhaps one of the book’s deepest moments, as no one outside of Gaza can truly comprehend the imminent threat of erasure Palestinians have experienced. What would the Palestinian people’s erasure mean, from a distance? 

What significance does a will have when military power supports erasure? As the writers in this anthology ponder their last wishes, some create ambivalence through imaginings of survival, even as forced displacement and airstrikes limit areas of safety. Others ponder a will and testament from the hypocritical lens of the humanitarian paradigm, such as Hussein Hazrallah who writes, “I’m nearly certain that the world has seen nothing but a tiny fraction of what’s happening in Gaza, less than the trickle of crumbs that have reached the people here under the label of ‘humanitarian aid’.” The same humanitarian aid also carries death with it, as the author remembers “the death we carried away in sacks marked with United Nations logos, or with the propaganda of the Arab and Islamic nations.” 

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Hazrallah also connects the past to the present when he notes of Palestinians’ ancestors, “They died after escaping death previously, and we were born to them in an attempt to restore the rights that are now slipping through our fingers.” Colonialism, however, made sure that rights and Palestinians are separated by the coloniser’s violence. 

Layan Osama Abu al-Qumsan narrates the story of her family’s death by an Israeli airstrike, reflecting upon the fact that her father, a doctor, was unable to live up to his promises of keeping her safe: “I realise that the doctor, with his medicine and medical knowledge, couldn’t avert the disaster that had come upon us.”

Ni’mah Hassan also reflects on her inability to keep her children safe from Israel’s genocide. “I keep trying to put off writing my will,” she writes, while she imagines futures in Gaza despite the absence of futures. Turning to the present scenario, she writes of looking at her children’s fingers: “I never thought of writing their names on them, to prevent death from noticing them. May death leave their limbs intact.” 

Other writings take a completely opposite direction – the normalcy in the abnormal life during genocide also speak of having abandoned the fear of death. “Death no longer concerns us as much as the question of how to get a bag of flour or a gas cylinder the next morning,” Nasser Rabah writes. Yet death also occurred during the search for necessities such as flour or gas. The mind filters out the fear of death to accommodate the human instinct to survive. 

Writing provides testimony in the face of annihilation. The imagined audiences for each testament in this book vary – from loved ones to the global population away from Gaza. It is through reading from the point of view of the latter that the pain sears through in a different way. Language testifies not only to the lived experiences of the writers, but also as to how much all those not living in Gaza do not know. Under the threat of erasure, language is a tool of preservation.

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