Ahmed Saleh, writer and organiser from Gaza: ‘No, habibi, you don’t have to die’

Ahmed Saleh is continuing his writing far from Gaza, transforming his exile into a series of literary encounters. At Passa Porta, he is launching a series of evenings inspired by the ones he used to host back home. Despite the pain of being separated from his loved ones, he holds on to life.

As a teenager, Ahmed Saleh would write to say what he would not dare expressing to the girl he loved. A few sweet words, scribbled in Gaza, where he was born in 1998. He has never stopped writing since. For a long time, poetry intimidated him – “I couldn’t see how to make my mark” – so he got involved in another way: as an organiser of literary evenings. Events with no funding and no set programme, where writers, musicians, and thinkers would cross paths. “Gaza is a scene overflowing with writers,” he recalls.

It is hard not to feel the cliff separating him from those years. Now 27, Ahmed lives in Brussels, while still in the process of seeking asylum. He is the curator at Passa Porta for a series of cultural gatherings he will launch in October. The same concept as in Gaza, but a different setting, a different reality. His friends have disappeared, the neighbourhood where he grew up is now a field of ruins, and his family is trying to survive in a tent in Khan Younis, after a period in Rafah.

The project he is spearheading is entitled RIHLA (“journey” in Arabic) and is an acronym for Roots, Identity, Home, Language, Alienation. It says it all. Joining him for the first Brussels edition will be Palestinian novelist Karim Abualroos, Egyptian poet and film-maker Alaa Hassanien, and Tunisian musician Amel Sdiri. A sensitive cartography of Arab exile, conceived by a man who, three months before 7 October 2023, had left Gaza.

For my people

He didn’t want to leave. “I wanted to do something at home, for my people.” With degrees in political science and management, he quickly understood that, back there, qualifications don’t open any doors. Unless you join the machinery of Hamas or Fatah, which he considers as “pawns of the genocidal Israeli government.” He refused. He protested. He wrote against those in power. He was arrested and threatened. “I was told that if I carried on, I would never see the light of day again.” After a brief spell in Egypt, he chose to leave. With an artist’s visa for Italy, he eventually made his way to Belgium.

On 7 October, Saleh was in hospital in Brussels. A friend from Gaza sent him a message on WhatsApp: “Something’s not right.” A few days later, an Israeli strike hit that friend’s house. His family, who were on the ground floor, were killed. His friend, on the first floor, survived. At the same time, the hospital told Saleh he had to leave. He found himself heading for the Petit Château, the reception centre for asylum seekers.

There, he lived in a seventeen-bed dormitory, with no curtains to separate the bunks. He wrote. He posted on social media. A Palestinian reader alerted a friend in Brussels, who contacted Piet Joostens, head of residencies at Passa Porta. Joostens reached out to him: “He pointed out my desk, the heating, the kitchen. I didn’t speak English at the time, but I understood what he was doing for me.” In the warmth of the office, he burst into tears. “The heat made me cry. I missed my family, and my friends in Gaza, searching for clean water and food, no longer had time for me. At 6 pm, Passa Porta would close, and I had to go back to the dormitory.”

the Language of the future

One day, he found his copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm torn up and thrown in the bin by one of his dormmates. “There was a pig on the cover.” He had a panic attack. In this cold city, he felt in limbo, misunderstood. “I felt I had been reduced to a number on a refugee card. I had left the camp in Gaza to search for my humanity, to become a name among others – but I soon realised: I will be a refugee my whole life.”

Even in Brussels, threats against him and his family have caught up with him, he says. His stance against Hamas has earned him the hostility of radical pro-Palestine groups. He distances himself from activist circles and turns down invitations to themed evenings. “We don’t share the same vision of resistance. They try to make us believe it requires sacrifice. Hamas is a culture of death. I refuse to be a part of it.” What he wants is simply to be a figure in the cultural world. “Not ‘the poor Palestinian.’ I am not a victim, and I refuse to build a name on our dead. I am a survivor.”

Though he had once forbidden himself from writing poetry, he is now fully embracing it again. To “keep my emotions alive,” he says. “The day I no longer feel anything, it will be over for me.” In his poem “Can I die or must I wait”, he writes: “[Why can’t we] convert prisons jails torture chambers to fields and gardens and songs”? “Arms factories [...] to cinema houses [...] tanks [...] to jewelry”? He thinks of his nephew, born in a tent. A child without walls, without music, without school. “I can’t bear it. The children of Gaza must know the language of the future, of games, of love. Not that of war.” He adds, “No, habibi, you don’t have to die.”