They Cannot Steal Spring from Our Hearts

Regular readers will remember that I’ve shared previous letters from Rawand Gawad abu Ghanem, the young Palestinian mother of two small boys who lives in Gaza and with whom I’ve developed a very real connection through our mutual friend, the playwright Naomi Wallace.  Today I received another letter from Rawand, this one dated March 30^th, 2026. – Bill Ehrhart

Dear Friend,

         Each day when I open my eyes the first thing that comes to my mind is:  I am still alive.  I then look quickly to see that my children and husband are still alive also, and I say: Alhamdoulelah.  Praise be to God.  You must know that this war is not over?  We still live the ongoing violence every hour— and it has increased since the attack on Iran.

         In the mornings I open the tent flap and see the trees—what is left of the trees— moving.  Did you know that in Gaza the Israelis also target the trees?  This is because our olive trees are symbols of life and sustenance.  So the trees that have survived one more day are like me, and we greet one another.  It is a comfort to hear the sound of leaves to my right and left.  Like us, the trees are exhausted with living.  Like us, they insist on staying.

         In fact, I want to shout out the beauty of the leaves moving but all the tents are so close to one other that I cannot feel free to shout.  I cannot move or laugh or cry with any privacy.

         This war has changed us from a people who fought to make free spaces inside an imprisoned Gaza to a people living in small tent-prisons surviving the rain, the cold, the illnesses that easily overcome us.

         Before the war, we kept our floors clean, our bodies washed.  I don’t have enough water to wash myself and my children.  My hands are continuously unclean from the refuse with which we make fires because we don’t have gas.

          But today I want to speak to you about sand: How can something you yearn for turn into something that is almost a torture?  Sand is this way for me now, though once it was my closest friend. [Rawand was actually the first girl to become a member of the Gaza Surf Club when she was still a teenager.]

          My father was a fisherman.  In fact, my father was a pioneer of surfing in Gaza, so I grew up near water.  As a child, I would make hills in the sand, and faces, and holes for mouths where the water would pour in from the sea and fill them up.  As an adult, I was always quick to take off my shoes because I needed to feel the sand on my feet, precious drops of sand that would give me a cold happiness all over.

         I once read that sand from the sea is full of calcium and is important to the bones of our body.  So I would sit down on the beach, almost always preferring this to a chair.  And best of all, the sand was a place I could write words, until the sea took them back.  I never minded.  I trusted my words were kept safe there.

         The sand that was once my friend comes into my tent without invitation.  My tent cannot stay clean.  At night I feel the kernels of sand on the mattress.  Try it out yourself, as an experiment.  Spill a handful of sand into your bed and lie down on it.  You will feel that your body becomes a friction and you cannot sleep.  When the winds come, the sand spills into our food, onto our plates, and into our glasses.  So much sand.

          Sometimes I think we each are building inside us a beach of sand where no one can walk.

          At night the constant sound of drones rips thru our dreams before we can even dream them— and wakes us up.  To rest well, one needs safety and security, but we have none. A thief can enter our tent and steal from us.  Dogs can enter our tent like wild shadows and scare the children.

         And yet every day we still try to make a new beginning.  And today the leaves that greet me in the morning remind me that spring is not far away.

         They can steal our safety.  They can— and do— steal our lives.  But they cannot steal spring from our hearts.

          There, too, the leaves are crowding and giving us a fragile hope.

With regards, your friend from Gaza,