07/05/2026
In a moment saturated with images, commentary, and claims to “explain” Gaza, how can writing still make us see rather than simply repeat what we think we already know?
In Fearful in Gaza, Abdalhadi Alijla offers a strikingly different answer. Rather than presenting Gaza as a symbol, a case study, or a moral argument, the book insists on something far more demanding: to take the ordinary seriously. Through a fragmented memoir structured around two voices, “the son” and “the mother,” Alijla reconstructs a childhood shaped not by spectacular violence alone, but by the slow, pervasive presence of fear as an everyday condition.
As highlighted in the review , the book refuses the familiar “economy of shock” through which suffering is often rendered legible to international audiences. Instead, it dwells on routines, relationships, and small acts of care and adaptation. Gaza appears here not as metaphor, but as home: a lived world marked by contradiction, intimacy, and endurance. It is precisely this refusal of abstraction that makes the text politically powerful.
At this INTERACTdowntown event, we invite you to join a conversation with Abdalhadi Alijla on writing, memory, and the politics of representation in contexts of protracted violence. The discussion will explore how narratives of everyday life challenge dominant frames of conflict, what it means to write from and about Gaza today, and how personal testimony intersects with broader questions of knowledge production, solidarity, and epistemic responsibility.
The event will be held in English, and no prior registration is required. Please join us at Mulackei (Mulackstraße 27, 10119 Berlin) on 12 May 2026 at 19:00.
About the author: Abdalhadi Alijla is a social and political scientist, non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative, and author of Trust in Divided Societies as well as co-editor of Rebel Governance in the Middle East. His work spans political sociology, conflict studies, and questions of social cohesion, with a particular focus on Palestine and the Middle East. More information: https://abdalhadi.net/
