“How are you today?” is not normally a question that elicits tears, but when I ask it of Samah Sabawi she takes a moment to blink them away. The Palestinian playwright, scholar, commentator and poet says it’s a complicated question.
The January 15 ceasefire in Gaza is just weeks old; US President Donald Trump has yet to announce his “plan” for the land that Sabawi’s family have called home for hundreds of years.
(When he does, the world reacts with a mix of horror and disbelief while Sabawi, a board director of Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA), will respond with an almost understated, but clearly enraged, editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald titled, “My Gaza was beautiful. We had beachfront views. Trump thinks we’re broken, but we will rebuild”.)
But when we speak, a fragile ceasefire still holds following 15 months of daily bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel in retaliation for the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas-led Palestinian militants.
Sabawi has been watching videos of people returning to what is left of their homes and neighbourhoods. The scale of destruction has left her numb.
“I don’t know how I am. It is a hard question to answer because there’s a numbness that prevents the mind from jumping to an answer when you are receiving lots of videos from the ground of what our land look like, what our homes look like…”
The destruction of property is one thing: the loss of some 40 family members is another.
“We could trace our family back to the 12th century, now there are no Sabawis left…”
So, what comes as a surprise is Sabawi’s optimism and belief that the future can – and will – be better. It’s a message she’ll bring to New Zealand this month as she tours the country, hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, to speak about her book Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A family story from Gaza.
Published in July 2024, it’s part memoir and part family history, sharing stories of her family’s life over the past 100 years with historical change as its backdrop. Starting in Palestine under British rule, it ends in Australia where her father, poet Abdul Karim Sabawi (who died in October, aged 82) settled after he was exiled following 1967′s Six-Day War. Samah, then a babe in arms, her mother Souhailah and three siblings later followed him.
Sabawi wrote Cactus Pear for My Beloved as part of her PhD research into “post-memory in the context of generational trauma and exile”, travelling to Gaza in July 2023 to visit family and find the places and landmarks fundamental to her the Sabawis, especially her father’s story. Before the book, she’d written the critically acclaimed and award-winning plays Tales of a City by the Sea and THEM receiving in 2020 the Green Room Award for Best Writing in the independent theatre category as well as being shortlisted for the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
There have been successful collaborations, too. Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, coedited with Stephen Orlo, received the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s Patrick O’Neill Award and Sabawi cowrote the poetry collection I Remember My Name with Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, which won the Palestine Book Award.
She says writers – be they poets, authors or dramatists – have an essential role to play in tumultuous times by challenging dominant narratives.
“We have to be good storytellers, but we have to be grounded in our lived experiences and the truth of what’s going on around us,” she says, adding that she’ll talk about her own experience of being a Palestinian who belongs to the world. “Our role is educational. We have a challenge of breaking through a very hateful and disastrous narrative…”
The cost of war
Whatever side you come down on, decisions made and actions taken have been calamitous for all. The October 7 attack killed some 1200 people while 251 Israelis and foreign nationals, were taken hostage.
Using statistics from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the United Nations estimates about 47,354 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,319 children and 7216 women, while thousands remain missing, presumed buried under rubble.
Studying satellite data, the UN estimated that 69% of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, generating more than 50 million tonnes of debris and rubble that will take decades – and billions and billions of dollars – to clear and rebuild.
From October 2023 to September 2024, Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates the US has spent at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel.
“Look at those statistics,” says Sabawi, shaking her head. “Do you really think it was worth it? I mean how many homeless in the US could have been given homes for that or health insurance. How do you make these decisions to put all that money into the destruction of a tiny enclave?”
She says talking to her father - recording and writing down his reminiscences - reinforced for her the need to view life through the lens of love.
“In close societies, you can lose a big part of your individualism. Whatever choices you are forced to make, you make them out of love. Never in any of the lengthy interviews I had with him did my dad say anything blaming or negative about his parents. How his mother was illiterate but he spoke of her as if she was some kind of saint.
“He himself didn’t finish his university, but he was forgiving of that. He never thought it was an issue. What I’ve learned, really, is just how important it is to be able to give and build and be loving within your family. Because you are no good to the world if you can fail at that most basic thing: to be good to the people around you and your own community.”
Sabawi admits she learned much about the history of Gaza that she did not know and that perspective has helped her when discussing Palestine and Gaza with others.
“Not everybody needs to be blamed or accused of wilful ignorance and all that stuff that people throw around sometimes. I, Palestinian born to a Palestinian family, born in Gaza, had all that history, but I had no idea that in 1948, part of our family story was that they were displaced…”
She recalls her oldest son, Nahed, who had recently travelled with her to Gaza, visiting his grandfather when the latest onslaught began, holding the old man’s hand and looking him in the eye to say how sorry he was about the terror that was unfolding.
“My dad was actually peeling an apple, cutting it into pieces and offering it around, and he did not seem as deeply concerned as my son was,” says Sabawi. “He looked at my son and said, ‘What are you talking about? We’re used to this.’”
When Nahed replied that this was different, that there would be destruction on an unprecedented scale, his grandfather advised reading some history books to learn that time and time again Palestinian people had rebuilt.
“For me, it just made sense. Whereas before when he said something like that, I would think that he was just trying to calm us down or it was just rhetoric, that it wasn’t something that came from the heart, but having done all these interviews and seeing what Gaza was like in 1948 or 1956 or 1967, I could see these cycles.”
While Sabawi acknowledges that the destruction and loss of life is unparalleled, she believes the Palestinian people have a strength and resilience equally unmatched because of their history: “There is an attitude of ‘we just have to wait it out’ because there is no other choice.”
