Gaza is a city at breaking point. The economy has stalled and unemployment spreads its shadow over all the young people fruitlessly searching for any kind of work. Nor is the political climate any more hopeful. Every time one faction tries to turn the page, local, regional, and international interests unite against them to reinforce the status quo, and thus the siege separating us off from the world. Days pass, heavy as clouds in a polar winter but the madness that occupies our reality and imagination does not.

In this tense, charged climate the holy month of Ramadan arrives. We hope it will herald international efforts to ease our situation, if only for a short time, but this year it brings only renewed Israeli aggression. On the tenth day, as all Gaza is at home awaiting the Maghreb call to prayer which announces an end to the fast and a start to the feast, I hear a loud rumbling in the sky…Israeli warplanes. The ground shakes, windows shatter, walls come down and the smell of gunpowder fills our nostrils. Iftar is marked with Palestinian blood.

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