On Palestine.

Since last Sunday, I have been staring at a screen, stuck in a state of horror, watching, every minute, as the genocide of the people of Gaza begins, relentless, every minute bringing news of cruelty, of displacement and death.

Now, a week has passed, and all I do is walk around with gut churning, endless nausea. It is 2003. The war on Iraq is looming; it happens, you watch it again. It is 2001. It is 2004. Somehow, you're back again, and Palestine is experiencing another Nakba, a war even bloodier than the ones you remember -- how is that even possible, you think? Wasn't it already awful? Don't you remember? Wasn’t it just yesterday that the people of Gaza were bombed again and again by Israel, with nowhere to go, trapped in an open-air prison; doomed to not just be dehumanised, but simply forgotten.

Newspapers call the bombing 'targets', one has no stories altogether. I don't know what I find more insulting: the idea that millions of people dying is not of interest because they happen to be Palestinian, or that if you don't even mention them, no one gets to know. There are live blogs, none that seem to mention that people -- families -- are being wiped away. Someone will win a prize for this. No one, who seems to care so much about 'children', and 'both sides', and 'peace' will ever care to ask about the children, and the other side, and peace in the days and months to come. They never have.

I have no experience with war -- urban conflict, yes, which, but it never directly was targeted at me. I am protected by layers of privilege: majoritarian faith and sect on paper, ethnicity, security, money. I am never at risk of losing my home and my nationality; I have never had to flee. I experience conflict on the fringes, first as a viewer, stuck at home, then as a witness, as a writer. I get to leave, to run, to hide.

Instead, I am a witness. I watch my life go up in flames in 1999. A few years later, I watch the world change, and that change will impact everything I do in life -- actively, passively. It is 2000, it is 2001, it is 2003. I am a viewer. I watch war: first through blogspot and CNN and Al Jazeera, now through the sickening, gut churning constancy of Twitter.

I grow up. I have opinions; some change, the core doesn't. It is 2023, it is 2003 again. I interview people who have fled war, sitting by their side, asking questions that must sound horrifyingly inane. I am brave, I think. But year after year, in government offices in Pakistan, at forms that are delivered to my house, on a screen where I have to sign up for a document, I look at the form in front of me, and realise that if I do not sign on denouncing Ahmadis, I could end up hounded, but perhaps I will still somehow manage to escape. I am not brave enough. I make a hypocritical choice and tell myself that words matter, that I can write, but really, I am both of these people: the person who signs the form, and the one who thinks that what is truly revelatory is my work, not this.

Perhaps the nausea is horror at myself.

As I grow older, as I am no longer in 2003 but in 2023, I am even more cynical and dead inside. I am disillusioned. I am hopeful, I am disillusioned again. I write, it's all I've ever known to do. I am always an observer, I tell myself, words matter.

This nearly breaks me. It takes me ages to convince myself that I am also a person, not just an observer.

War poisons everything around you. There is no escape: this is a world of people whose moral compass does not exist, who are simply content with seeing others as 'targets', who are content, happy, uncaring about genocide and apartheid.

I click on Instagram: There it is, one story at a time: the knitting influencer is posting Zionist talking points; an editor is posting apologies because she said that cutting off water to Gaza is wrong. It should horrify you, that someone has to apologise about saying this. It is the stuff of displays in war museums.

I delete Instagram off my phone. It doesn't help with the nausea.

I get to turn off war, go away, come back to it. It is a luxury. I hate it. I get to watch it on my phone. I get to do work while war is in front of me, on another screen. Are you still watching? The war screen asks us. Yes, I want to say. I am here, still horrified. But this time around, I can't seem to turn it off, my mind is an endless scroll of horror. I knit incessantly, as if this humdrum knitting will somehow make my mind stop whirring, as if this is the one thing that has some order to it: knit, purl, bind off.

You realise, again, that all you can do is write, and talk, and walk around, with nausea, and the scroll of death. I am still here, still watching, as family after family in Gaza dies. There are no words anymore. There is nothing to say that can ever match to the horror we have witnessed for decades. But I know this: I will never forget, because I never have. War is a poison that never leaves you. I will walk around with this for all my life, and I will somehow believe that writing matters.