A Palestinian Anthology & Personal Plea 🙏🏼
Launching an artist book & family fundraiser
A Chorus of Voices Singing in the Dark
Last time I mentioned Passport of Witness, the project was still in production. I’m honored to announce the artist book is now available for purchase here.
Passport of Witness is a limited edition Palestinian anthology created over 7 months. It’s more than a passport: it’s a portal, a prayer, a personal artifact.
A Living Document of Identity & Survival
A Glimpse into History & Longing
A Visual Narrative of Homeland From Afar
An Act of Resistance & Solidarity
This booklet includes stories from diaspora and photographs of Palestine. It has been handcrafted at each step of the process as you can glimpse in this video:
For a limited time friends, family, and readers like you can make a donation to receive your own handmade copy which will be shipped in September.
You can donate $60-$120 to UNRWA, PCRF, or a family fund like this one below!
Family Fundraiser: For Tamara & Her Children
Almost all of my paternal family lives in Gaza.
After 10 grueling months of unrelenting genocide, they’ve lost their homes, they’ve been denied nourishment, and they’ve depleted their savings.
I have 70+ family members in Gaza. How can I even begin to describe the horrors they’ve survived? I wouldn’t be able to do them all justice, so I’ll let just one of my cousins, Tamara, tell you in her own (abbreviated) words:
'I was packing my child’s bag and preparing for his day of celebration at school on the occasion of the olive harvest. I was very happy and was planning how to make my child special today. We went to bed and I read a story to my child about his early day.
Suddenly, we heard strange noises and did not understand anything. We felt afraid, terrified, and anxious. We went out to escape from the horror of the sight and the fear, everyone searching for their children and the screaming. I was looking for my child and taking care of the health and care of the injured. Then they started bombing again.
From here, I, my child, and my husband dispersed and fled to Nuseirat. And my family is in Khan Yunis. My big brother is in the UNRWA center.
We were living in suffering due to the lack of water and food. My child's body has become weak and sick. I decided at that time to leave Gaza. When we left for Egypt, my child and I, my husband returned to Gaza.
I need help so that I and my child can be safe, and to help my family in Gaza and stand by their side. They have lost everything. And I don't have anything anymore. I want to start over. I want a place that is safe for my child.’
Please read Tamara’s full story, one out of many my family has lived to tell.
Please help me alleviate their suffering and give them hope, especially the innocent children who are caught in the middle of this devastating situation.
Any money donated now will be used for food, water, and medical emergencies.
No matter how big or small the contribution is, it brings my family one step closer to safety, security, and sustenance.
If you can’t afford to donate at this time, you can support me by sharing the GoFundMe link on substack, social media, with your friends and family. Each share could have a ripple effect that impacts the fund and ensures their survival.
This will be a long term effort on my part. While the war rages, the priority will be basic needs but eventually, I would love all of my family members to have a bed to sleep in again. It will take a long time to clear the rubble and rebuild their homes so if you have any tips on organizing raffles, auctions, and other ideas for raising funds please let me know. Endless gratitude for any aid you can offer 🤍
Cumulative Grief & Survivor’s Guilt
I’m a private person so I didn’t intend to share so intimately on this platform, but the truth is 16 of my family members have died, both of my parents are grieving the loss of a sibling, a cousin is in chemotherapy for cancer, the only grandparent I’ve ever known has been recovering from brain surgery for the past year, and two of my closest friends were in a car incident this month.
The truth is I dread the question how are you? because I haven’t known how to answer since October. I’m not bearing the brunt of suffering like my family is, but the compounded grief has taken its toll on me. I share this to explain why I’m asking for your help, friends and strangers alike.
I know many may be fatigued at this point, tired of reading about never ending tragedies while dealing with their own crises. The cycle of news, politics, and conflict threatens to drown us in overwhelm.
We may look away momentarily for our sanity, to tend to our wounds and daily responsibilities, but we must remind ourselves to turn our gaze back toward humanity. We must slowly build our capacity for endurance, resilience, and compassion. The world needs your actions, art, and lovingkindness more than ever. It needs us to support life and create alternative futures in any way we can.
I’ll end with this note on survivor’s guilt which I come back to often. Maybe you relate or maybe you’ll find rest & respite amidst the practical tips to the question:
How do you sleep when your world ends in new ways every day?
‘Sometimes it’s not all low self-esteem or a cop in my head, it’s just true. I really don’t deserve to be alive more than anyone else. So then losing sleep over the depravity of the world, especially depravity directed towards people I feel kinship with, people that look like me, isn’t something that needs resolution. It’s something that needs archival and grieving.
Days like this, where I leave the responsibility in the kitchen sink to wash tomorrow, where I have floors to wash and peace to water (tomorrow), I don’t work to resolve the survivor’s guilt at all. Sometimes I smoke and let her find me in the night. Sometimes I let her lay up on me until I disappear, til she confesses in my ear that I’m smaller than nothing, that I am not special, that there is no good reason I should be alive when good people on my name didn’t survive to see me til adulthood. Didn’t survive to meet me at all. And I kiss My Guilts goodnight lovingly, because she is honest with me. I make us both tea at a soggy, groggy 9am because she’s right and I can’t do shit about that some days but smoke and try not to die and make something worthwhile for all these names I got on me.
This campaign makes it very easy for me to fall asleep upright in front of my laptop, because real people that I know and love are starving on the other side of this. How do you just… sleep when people are depending on you? And the answer is that you will anyways. You’ll either crash into sleep or you accept the limitations of you being an animal. Tomorrow will come either way. Conditions will not change overnight. I don’t move to resolve or numb my survivor’s guilt, I just recognize it as the natural product of loving those that are suffering. And I equip myself well to pick up the work tomorrow. I allow it to motivate my actions. Love is the feeling of wanting someone’s highest good and the action of doing so. And love and grief are the same thing.’
Thank you for your moving offerings and how you’re moving and sharing your experiences. Sharing your words with others 🤍
leila, thank you for your vulnerability, for sharing with us your grief, your story, your family’s story, your anthology, your heart—i know nothing can salve the ache you’re feeling. but i want you to know that i hold that ache with you. from one human heart to another, i send my love.