Of Loss and Survival

Being Gay and Human in Gaza

Gaza after 1967, under Israeli control following the Naksa(Six-Day War).

We all know loneliness — its familiar shape that throws you into your room, where you spend most of your time lying on your bed, scrolling through reels, carrying with it that mixture of laziness and frustration. And we should all understand that this kind of loneliness is optional; dating apps are an available option to break isolation, as is joining one of those circle groups. I do not deny they are not radical solutions, but as I said — they are merely options available to you wherever you are right now reading this absurd text.

But to live in the countryside of loneliness against your will, inside a tent where you cannot masturbate for even a minute because of the lack of privacy — that is real loneliness. I will not talk about loneliness today, nor about privacy, and certainly not about ejaculating within a minute. I will talk about the nonexistent space for lesbians and gays to speak about their past scars, their memories, or even sex.

And now, let’s talk about sex.

Yes, we will begin where we left off, just as the occupation army does with us every time. I would very much like to kiss someone, or to sleep in someone’s arms — just that, no extra sauce. I don’t want to have full sex with someone, not only because I cannot, but because I long for some emotion, and without a doubt all of this need is caused by longing — only longing.

It may sound somewhat dramatic to tell you that my boyfriend was killed in March 2024, but I live inside Gaza, and every detail here is dramatic, my dear. The matter is more complicated than it appears; you cannot really do anything in this space, but let’s try — you and I — to do it. Come on, let’s masturbate together.

In my previous article, I told you about the thin tent walls that cover your naked backside, yet fail to cover the sounds of your desire, where the sound of pleasure blends with the sound of pain, and sometimes you cannot distinguish between the moans. But now is a suitable moment for some privacy; the entire family is visiting my grandmother’s tent, and they will not return for two hours. You will not need two hours to come, will you? We do not want to end this with blue balls.

Take off your clothes, place the blanket over yourself as a precaution — you never know. Someone may have forgotten something inside the tent and return to retrieve it. Slide your hand under the blanket. Feel your inner parts. Imagine your lover — current or former — it makes no difference when you masturbate; it will not count as betrayal. Don’t worry.

You will have to rely on imagination, because watching pornography is not an option; the telecommunications company here has blocked all such websites. We could use a VPN, but it would have to be a paid version, and I am recently unemployed.

From Unsplash website

I hope your imagination is capable of summoning something that arouses you. You have to use it, Because the absence of privacy and living inside a camp crowded with people ,where judgments are thrown at you, around you, and at everything, is exhausting and requires you to relax for a minute. Unfortunately, during that minute you will hear everything around you as if you were still outside the tent.

The problem is not only that there is no space for desire — there is no space for mourning either.

Can you believe that until now I have not been able to find adequate space to grieve properly for the loss of my loved ones? A fact that I believe — and hope I am wrong — has thrown me into the depths of emotional numbness. Because when you do not find the bare minimum of space and privacy, and you cannot speak at all about your queer sexual life in front of a heterosexual society — or one that believes itself to be heterosexual — then shame and self-surveillance begin in their ugliest forms. And before that, or after that, or during that, or all the time, you will be emotionally numb — or perhaps none of this is certain, much like this war that I always ask myself: has it truly ended?

And when physical space disappears, social space shrinks with it.

I used to believe that once the ceasefire came into effect, I would become a free gay man again. I was once free inside Gaza. Can you believe it? Well — not free the way you are in Hell’s Kitchen in New York — but at least I had a proper space. I would throw a flirtation toward a man and measure his reaction like casting a fishing line.

Now, try as a man to flirt with another man without making it completely clear that you are joking, and then come afterward to take a bandage from my tent. I have many bandages here — but not a single one in my size.

Now it is not only that you must hide your sexuality entirely; you must also speak in a very low voice, because this time the walls truly have ears, and the listener behind this piece of fabric may be one of your second-degree relatives. That relative whose mother does not like your mother and vice versa. He will fish for your mistake with the same hook you used, and we will fall into a new trauma added to the collection of traumas you have not yet healed from.

I understand you completely. I know you want to have queer friends and begin talking to release some of this pressure, but that will not happen. Try sharing all of this on WhatsApp with a close friend outside Gaza, it is healthier that way.

We learn to survive in fragments when we cannot survive in public.

Most importantly, do not suppress any of this. Adapt to the condition of nonexistent space and seize appropriate moments, because if you do not, you may find yourself married to a woman, because heterosexuals are the normal people and can collapse beneath each other’s bodies out loud as they wish.

I know, my dear, that the war is crushing your sexuality little by little, but you must be patient. Perhaps you will have romantic sex, or somewhat rough sex — the way you like it, you naughty gay. Do not complain too much, complain just enough. I know that the absence of space has stripped you of dignity, and that the lack of sexual contact and skin-to-skin touch deprives your humanity of something, and that repression and silence cause deeper scars.

But if you preserve the minimum of what you need ,even your desires, then you survive this way.

But space is not taken only by fabric walls. It is taken by power.

This is what life looks like here — or what I call, as a gay person: the countryside of loneliness. Welcome to this countryside that sits in the middle of the earth, to the west of the Holy Land (where the far right resides), and to the northeast of the Sinai desert (where apathy resides). This countryside, like its location now, is horizonless, full of complaints, and strangely full of love as well, because you do not know how many times I had sex on this land before this war began. Everything was possible ,even threesomes. When space existed, even excess felt harmless.

Strangely, I cannot now determine who took that from us. The United States, in all its majesty, tells me that Israel has nothing to do with it, and that leaves me confused in trying to find a single answer.

These are some of the things you will conclude when you live through an entire war: that the surface means nothing, that the essence we feel will ignite all your emotions, and that to feel is far better than to be aroused.

And if imagination is the only space left, then I will enter it fully.

Close your eyes.

Do not search for a perfect image — let memory choose for you.

I know which memory will choose me.

I see him approaching. Not as he was during the days of war, but as he was before it, when laughter preceded him by a step, and when his hands knew their way to me well. I need no more than a second. One second is enough to believe that this place is not a tent, that the walls do not have ears, that my body is not being monitored.

I move toward him slowly, as though I fear he will disappear if I hurry. I kiss him. A short, light kiss, like a first attempt no one wants to ruin. I kiss the lips of my boyfriend who was killed, and I allow my heart to forget the truth for just one second.

YES… I did it. I kissed him

Not because the war ended. Not because space returned.

But because I am still capable of imagining.

I managed to remember him without running away. I managed to touch him without everything inside me collapsing. I managed to feel.

I feel my body finally responding, as if something inside it was not entirely crushed. And maybe ,just maybe, I can reach the end this time.

But the moment I open my eyes, I return to the thin fabric, to the nearby sounds, to the space that is not enough for full grief nor full pleasure. I realize the kiss happened only in my head, and that he will not return to test whether my lips still taste the way he liked.

And yet, for one second, I was with him. In this horizonless countryside, I am learning to celebrate seconds. Because desire ,even when broken, is a form of survival. And because to long is better than to go numb.

I open my eyes, adjust the blanket over my body, and listen carefully. No one is approaching the tent. The walls are still thin, but silent this time. I breathe deeply and think that ,somehow, I survived this minute too. I survived through imagination. I survived through a kiss that never happened. I survived because my body did not entirely abandon me.

Then I remember that you were here with me all along.

So.

What about you?

Did you manage to make it?