On a Zoom call in late December, Mariam Marwan Malaka, a university student in Gaza, uses her phone camera to survey 360 degrees of rubble and devastation that was once her home: “Yes, I’m sitting at the rubble of my home. This is my area. There is no house.”
Despite these dire circumstances, a number of displaced students are on the call to Middle East Eye to discuss a book they have co-written that is now published in English by a Canadian publisher, Daraja Press.
One student on the call, Obay Jouda, has just returned from a library in Gaza where the very first copies of We Are Still Here have been printed. It is their first chance to see this anthology of reflections and poems by more than 60 students from Gaza in print.
The book emerged from international solidarity, by one person in particular, Dr Zahid Pranjol, a professor in biomedical science education at the University of Sussex in the UK.
He began coordinating an education solidarity project in April 2024, when it became clear that Israel was obliterating Gaza’s university infrastructure and in-person learning was no longer possible.
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Since October 2023, Israel systematically destroyed universities and schools, killing thousands of students and targeting many renowned academics and teachers. The campaign has even been given a name: educide.
Rawan Marwan Omar Matar, on the Zoom call, explains how it has been as a student since the war began, and how the reflections and poems in the anthology express the conditions they have endured.
“We were forced to pursue our education under the harshest and most painful conditions imaginable. So, I’m not talking about myself when I wrote what we – all of us – feel.
“It’s based on what we have lived through, each student’s personal circumstances and our experience.
“At first, it was incredibly difficult and exhausting, but life keeps going, and the future remains uncertain.”
Solidarity with Gaza students
Academics in Gaza started a campaign in 2024 looking for academics around the world to help them, says Pranjol, and he was the first in the UK to respond by sharing the required materials that they needed.
He started providing biomedical education materials, as well as teaching students in Gaza online. The project grew with requests for materials from other Gaza academics.
“I got in touch with lots of students and academics, and it kind of expanded” into subjects like engineering and life sciences, business, social sciences, English and mental health, he says.
Sussex University and other institutions outside of the UK, in the Middle East, began sharing academic licences with Gaza academics.
In June this year, Pranjol initiated a conversational English programme with a few volunteer teachers from the Sussex area for students in Gaza.
That programme has now grown to 70 teachers with more than 1,000 students in Gaza, 80 percent of whom were displaced or in partially destroyed homes. All classes are on WhatsApp and on weekly Zoom sessions when possible.
Pranjol says the idea of the teaching wasn’t just to help the students in Gaza to learn to speak English, but it was also a lifeline, to give them therapy en masse.
“Fifty percent you learn English, but the other 50 percent is that you are in touch with someone outside of Gaza who really cares for you and really wants to help you, and you can talk to them about your aspirations, your struggle, your feelings about the war and genocide.”
During the brutal offensive waged by Israel this summer, students began to send their own writing to him, raw personal accounts of their experiences and feelings.
Pranjol had the idea for a book, which he discussed with Jacob Norris, associate professor in Middle East history at Sussex, who agreed to help edit and publish it.
Norris reached out to a number of publishers, and Daraja Press in Canada agreed to print it.
‘It happened very quickly’
Given the urgency of the situation, they moved quickly. Before they knew it, in a few weeks, the book was in print.
Pranjol explains: “When these stories were being collected, these students were being actively displaced, their houses were being bombed in the north of Gaza. A lot of these works capture their live, almost last words.”
Norris tells MEE: “Students started to send in to Zahid – really on an ad hoc basis – pieces of writing that were very much in the moment, from the heart, very raw, unfiltered.”
‘We wrote a book filled with emotion of sorrow and grief, and first-hand testimonies of our attempt to survive’
– Rawan Marwan Omar Matar, Gaza student and writer
“Once we kind of opened the invitation, dozens and dozens of students were coming forward with really amazing pieces of writing, some of it poetry, others more prose-oriented.
“So it’s kind of opening a tap in this time of horrific trauma.”
Hada Mohammed Homaid, a writer on the call, says: “I think that the idea of a book from groups of students who witnessed this genocide was, I can say, brilliant, because we are truly talking not for ourselves, but for our people in Gaza in general.”
And to the readers of the anthology she says: “These words are not only words on the pages. These words carry lived experiences.
“These words carry endurance, and the quiet strength of survival, so please read slowly. And look at these words, there is a whole society is still pleading beneath every word.”
Rawan explains how students continue to study even in extreme conditions: “When internet access became available, in certain areas and shelters, students began going there and trying to study, despite the ongoing danger, destruction, and the freezing winter.
“We wrote a book filled with emotion of sorrow and grief, and first-hand testimonies of our attempt to survive, written by university students who turned to pen and paper when no one would listen.”
Translations of We are Still Here, in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, are on the way, and there’s already a second book in the works.
‘We Are Still Here’
Middle East Eye asked the writers, all university students from Gaza, about their experiences over the last two years and how they became involved in contributing to the anthology.
We have also included excerpts from the work by each contributor.
Rawan
“Our lives were turned upside down in a moment. Everything was destroyed. There’s no more space for learning. There’s no internet, no electricity.
“There’s only fear and bombings everywhere, and a complete disconnection from the world. We were suffering truly when it came to education… everything was very hard, and our lives were on pause for two full years.
“As a student, I once had a dream, a future I longed to build, but the occupation never gave me that chance. It stormed into our lives, stealing our hopes and shattering our plans. Now, our focus is no longer on education or dreams, but on the simple struggle to stay alive.
‘We are Still Here is not merely a [book]. It is a message of survival and steadfastness’
“My university was completely destroyed, and I have no clear information about the rest of the professors. Some were martyred, some were forced to leave the country, and the others are still here struggling just to do their work under the harshest and extremely difficult conditions.
“We got to know the wonderful professors through a WhatsApp group shared by our teacher, Dr Mona al-Khazendar. Then we joined this group, and Dr Zahid began explaining what we needed to do. He supported us, comforted us, and he helped ease our pain. So, together, we completed this meaningful work.
“Later, assistant teachers began giving us English language and development lessons. They supported us in every possible way, so we are really grateful to them.
“In Gaza, the lesson doesn’t end with the sound of an explosion. It begins again with the first word written on the page. So, We are Still Here is not merely a [book]. It is a message of survival and steadfastness.
“And the only things that give me hope and makes me feel optimistic, is the fact that I’m still here, that I’m still alive. I know it may sound strange at times, but surviving this deadly genocide, means that there are many things I want to do, there’s so much I want to accomplish for my future and the future of my people.”
Excerpt: I Write Because the World Is Deaf by Rawan Marwan Omar Matar
I am nothing but a precious soul who once had everything – my family and I lived in safety and dignity. But the days turned against us, stripping us of all we had, making us forget who we are. Yet we have had enough. Haven’t we endured enough of this genocide? Haven’t we carried its burden for long enough? Isn’t it time to stop these massacres?
Let the world rise up against this injustice. Let your voice be heard – for we can no longer bear more tragedies. Stop this monstrous genocide, and do not let the world grow numb to the scenes of mass killing, as if it were a daily routine.
Tell it louder. Tell it raw. Exaggerate, if you must – because the world hasn’t even tasted a fraction of our truth. It hasn’t caught the scent of burning bodies, hasn’t heard the full scream of a mother clutching her dead child. Humanity is asleep. So shout it, stretch it, paint it in fire until even closed eyes are lit by the truth.
Hada
“Being a student [in Gaza] was never easy, but since the war began, I felt like the smallest things, like having a stable internet connection, feels like a luxury. Staying in contact with my lecturers turned into a daily struggle.
“It is really so hard to be a student in these circumstances…For this interview, I have walked half an hour far away from my destroyed home to access this meeting.
“Since I was a child, I’ve always been writing, but writing during the war suddenly demands great courage…I remember once, when I tried to write about when my brother was martyred, I remember my feeling and my tears were falling onto the page before even the words were finished.
“So, when it comes to the means, all I needed is my paper and my pen, but for the courage and the power to truly say what’s inside me, this is the hard part.
“It fills me with a gratitude to know that my words are going to be beyond languages and borders, but also, I think when my words travel, they carry weight, because it also carries responsibilities…because we are not only speaking for ourselves, we are speaking for our people, as Palestinians in general.
“The doctors [Pranjol and Norris] had showed us how solidarity could be, because, when people say that they cannot do anything…they showed them that we are all able to do anything, and he actually did that.”
Excerpt: Not Just Numbers: The Story of a Soul Silenced by Hada Mohammed Homaid
These martyrs are not statistics. They are not digits in a daily report. They are beloved partners, family, friends.
One of them was my guiding light. My second father. He was not a number, not a footnote in history. He was our soul.
His name was Al-Hassan. He began life with relentless determination. At just 18, he secured a stable job while continuing his academic studies, eventually graduating as a lieutenant. At 21, he married and managed to balance the demands of work, study, and family. His rise continued – he became a major, earned a bachelor’s degree in law and police science, and completed postgraduate studies in law.
He was deeply committed to his family visiting his parents daily, caring for his siblings, and giving all his heart to his wife and children. He moved through life quickly and with wisdom, a quiet urgency no one understood until he was martyred.
Al-Hassan never wanted to live as a passive bystander. And he succeeded in that.
Many others, like my brother, had dreams, families, and futures. But fate had its own plan.
They say foul is fair and fair is foul. But I still cannot see the fairness in this fear, or the justice in the suffering we endure.
One truth remains: this life is short. This fragile flame will go out. And when the day of judgment arrives, every tyrant will be held accountable for every drop of innocent blood they spilled.
Obay
“Everyone knows what happened to my university. It was completely destroyed. I had a teacher [who was martyred]. And, his name was Mustafa Abu Sabhallah. No one asks the powerful, what are you doing?
“Everyone knows Refaat Alareer, the doctor of English Literature at Islamic University [who was killed by Israel]. He has a poem, ‘If I must die, you must live to tell my story’. Now, today I continue what he began, inshallah.”
Excerpt: Screaming by Obay Jouda
We live in a forest.
Not because there are trees, but because there is no mercy.
No one hears you.
No one wants to hear you.
No one here hears the screaming or perhaps, no one wants to hear it.
The scream of an empty stomach.
The wail of a mourning mother.
The howl of a city.
The roar of falling shells.
The crying of children.
The screaming of grown men.
There is no time here for anything except screaming.
No time for tomorrow.
No time for hope.
Not even time for an embrace.
Perhaps someone might save us from a torment that hasn’t slept in two years.
Since I opened my eyes to this world, the wind has howled without pause.
I remember no comfort.
I remember no full day.
All I remember is the screaming.
The screams of the voiceless who, this time, “did knock on the walls of the tank”, but it was never they who were silent…
It was those inside the room who were deaf.
Saad
“I’m in a public place. The internet has been cut off in my area, and so I have to go to this cafe. It’s just next to the highway.
“I just write to document how everything changed, how everything, I’m sorry, I’m losing… [Saad wipes tears from his eyes] I just, I wrote because I wanted to be honest.
“You know, at some moments, some Palestinian people made bad actions. I did not try to judge or to blame them. I just wanted to explain how extreme conditions of starvation, fear, loss pushed them to this place.”
Into the Abyss by Saad Aldin Ahmed Muhanna
The day an old woman kicked an empty water bottle and cursed at a child trying to beat her to the queue – I knew we had reached rock bottom.
We’re no longer who we used to be. Not me.
Not the people.
Not anything.
Since the war began, and with every wave of displacement, we’ve been uprooted from one place and thrown into another – a school one day, a mosque the next, then a tattered tent barely big enough for the ghost of a human being.
Eventually, even space itself couldn’t hold us – not even for a breath.
People piled up – not like bodies, but like layers of class, dignity, and morality crammed into a pot with no lid.
They melted.
Evaporated.
And from them rose a new layer… nameless, but lower than anything that came before it.
There was once a time when people said: “He’s respectable.”
“She’s educated.”
“She comes from such-and-such family.”
All of that shattered the moment someone tossed down
a bottle of water from a truck, and the crowd lunged for it like starving wolves.
Here, you cannot afford decency.
If you wait your turn – you lose it.
If you show respect – you get robbed.
If you try to remain “a decent human being” – you get trampled.
With time, I learned to shout.
To shove.
To speak in a tone that isn’t mine, with a voice I never thought I had. I became one of them.
Or maybe I always was – and only ever lived under conditions that let me pretend to be rational.
We are not just fighting to survive.
We’re fighting not to lose ourselves completely while trying to survive.
Each night, I return to my corner of the tent. I look at the faces around me.
Then I reach into my chest to feel Is there still something alive inside me?
Mariam
“My pain only rises throughout [this] hardship. My destroyed city is my source of inspiration.
“I will keep writing about it, and it is because of We Are Still Here that sometimes words can express this experience of our suffering. But they can never fully capture or explain it.”
Excerpt from Lost Wish by Mariam Marwan Malaka
And I wished I had gone before you – or with you.
I wished I had kissed the brow of freedom.
I wished my kiss had come in your presence.
I wished, when sleep slips past grief-heavy lids, it would find you waiting.
I wished there had been, at the very least, a farewell
One in which I could weep myself to death,
So they might carry my coffin and yours, side by side.
It was a cruel departure, beloved
One whose cruelty clings to every tick of the clock –
Relentless, unyielding.
……..
What now?
In your leaving, did you find eternal bliss?
In your leaving, did you find a faithful lover?
In your leaving, did you leave behind a place
For the beloved once bound by fleeting love
And the eternal ache of parting?
Memories linger within her,
Tormented by a yearning chained in naked longing.
A dream wraps itself around her on the edge of delusion
Dancing for moments, collapsing the next.
What reason is there in such love?
A beloved in a mirage…
And a lover lost to eternity.
We Are Still Here is published by Daraja Press
