I’ve recently found myself reflecting upon many things in my mind and heart and memory of these past two years, reviewing the impressions and stories and connections, thinking about how I met certain people, how one relationship has led me to another. And as I’ve tried to trace back various pathways and intersections, it struck me that my friend Majd is the one person in Gaza who I did not meet through anyone else. He is the only person I can't trace back a connection to other than what first drew me to him, which were his words. His writing. The way his words affected me. How they made me respond, caused me to reach out to him directly with my own words, despite not knowing him and not knowing how he would respond.
When I first messaged him, I was trusting a feeling that was more than a feeling–it was almost as though I was acting without thinking, without analyzing–just moving in a direction that was pulling me, magnetically, organically, naturally. As though carried by a rushing river with the strength of a current that was somehow lifting me forward, bolstering me, keeping me afloat until I arrived in a different place. A place of meadows and flowers and illumination.
Reflections and memories about Majd have been ever-present with me in a particularly strong way these recent weeks, stronger than usual, I should say. He has been collaborating with me on the two recent live reading events for “Read Palestine Week” we hosted in the town where I live. He has done this despite being sick, despite dealing with the innumerable challenges and injustices that are part of daily life and survival in Gaza. I’ve been thinking a lot about how no matter what we see or hear or think we know, for those who are being forced to withstand the unbearable, forced to endure what is beyond my capacity to comprehend–for those who are being asked to demonstrate a faith and persistence and willingness to survive, despite the constant presence of death, loss, and violence– there is a gap we cannot close. As another friend once said to me,
"You know what I tell you. But I know what I am living." I have often said that Majd’s writing is a gift to an undeserving world, a gift for which I am very grateful. His writing is not only clever, powerful, and technically-skilled, it holds depths beyond what is apparent at first glance, containing multitudes, carrying a rich vastness of understanding, emotion, insight, and feeling.
He has told me before that he just writes what he feels. And this is something I think about a lot. Beneath everything he says and does, there is also a foundational vision rooted in compassion, integrity, and justice. I am frequently overcome with emotion by what he shares, how he writes, and the way he captures a feeling, a truth, an observation, a devastation, a moment of joy. He is a writer who is more than a writer. He is an educator who is more than an educator. A translator who transcends the limitations of language, who crosses barriers and borders and hindrances of proximity, time, and materiality.
Majd possesses both a mastery of language and an instinct for understanding how to combine what is said with what is left unsaid–how to use words which simultaneously confer and infer. How to combine insight with humor–humor that can sting with a kind of realism that brings home the harshness, reality, absurdity and injustice of a situation–yet still somehow offers a strength that emerges out of this understanding. Always clever and never contrived, Majd’s writing is a reflection of him. And the way he writes emerges naturally, through him, of him, carrying with it a sensitivity and a kind of integrity that is core to his being.
There is also a precision in his writing that is unique and profound, a way in which he offers subtle clarity on a point that needs elucidating, bringing light to something that has not only been obscured, but whose very obfuscation had altogether eluded me before he not only casts his light, but also shows me where the shadows are lurking. I find myself returning to his words, again and again and again, always grateful for this chance to go deeper into an understanding that changes me and helps me stay afloat when the river of the darkness of this world threatens to subsume me.
No matter how much I strive to know, to comprehend, to understand, I know I am still removed. There is a distance. And I miss many things. But I am always changed by Majd’s writing, and his words bring me closer, collapsing that distance. And I have seen first-hand the transformation of other people who read or hear or see his words. And no matter what words I choose now, no matter what I say, nothing will be enough to adequately convey the depth of my regard, appreciation, love, and admiration for my friend Majd, for the connection we have that emerged from his writing, his words, his voice. A connection that is sustained because of our friendship. How grateful I am to him for his beautiful, wise, caring heart, for this love I have the privilege of experiencing.
Majd is a writer who is more than a writer. He is also a colleague, a teacher, an educator. He is a brother, a son, a friend. He is all of these things and so much more. He cares deeply about his family and his community. And his commitment to education and his determination to do all he can to support his students, to counter the many ways the world has betrayed both him and them, is unlike anything I have ever observed in any educator I have ever known. He is a kindred spirit, a beautiful soul, a man who cares and feels things deeply. We have talked before about writing as a means of coping, survival, resistance and resilience. A point of connection. A demonstration of determination to continue, to exist, to keep moving through the darkness towards whatever light can be created or made visible.
And all of these things I share about Majd, these glimpses and descriptions and inadequate attempts to capture so much that cannot be captured–I offer them now as just one small piece of something to reflect back just a fraction of what he has given me. How grateful I am to him for his friendship; how lucky I am to know him. Sometimes the distance of time and proximity does not feel vast. It is as though there is a connection despite these barriers, a magnetic beam of light stretching across these limitations. I feel its gentle pull. I see its shimmer in the darkness. And I know it will remain, now and always.
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