Today I attended the Developing a Short Story workshop with Aamer Hussein. When I first signed up for the workshop, I had a vague idea of what to expect. I have written a few short stories and some poems, so I had a general feel of what the main direction of the workshop would be.

As the workshop started, there were around 9-10 people and we all sat around a table and started brief introductions. I was very eager to soak in all I could from the author. I read some extracts of his work and was very keen on listening to what he had to say.

What I didn’t expect however, was how stimulating the discussion was going to be. The discussion not only helped me see a lot of things differently in terms of short story writing, but also of writing in general.

It also inspired me. I found myself slightly daydreaming of bursts of ideas that began to come to me when someone expressed an idea or came up with a completely different take on whatever question was asked.

The workshop also helped me look at the way I write differently, because Mr. Hussein also asked us to perceive things from the reader’s point of view — which is something I’ve never thought about doing when writing. I took a lot out of this workshop; it helped me improve the way I write, as well as the way that I see that process. Our discussion about poetry vs. short stories, and capturing the reader’s attention gave me new ideas about how writing differs from one form to another.

All in all, today’s workshop with Aamer Hussein helped me sharpen my craft, especially in short story writing, although the advice given can be applied to any genre of writing. And as always, in any Palestine Writing Workshop, it gave me a new creative outlook on writing, as well as a feeling of need — even a sense of urgency — to write.

By the time our bus drove towards Allenby yesterday, I had a thousand different scenarios floating through my head. Reaching as far back as I can remember, stories of nightmares with Israeli soldiers have been a staple of conversations about trips to Palestine at home. In the lead up to coming here, every person I met seemed to relay a horror story or two, so I was pretty anxious.

The short version is that it wasn’t what I expected. It was as chaotic and tense as I would have expected, but there weren’t uniforms and guns marching around. It’s funny to think that one of the most tedious borders in the world is run by a bunch bored teenagers.

No one was mean to me, but that couldn’t mask the process’s crude racism. American passport or not, my surname earned me more special time with the young Israelis working the border, and meant that I had special forms to fill. In retrospect, I don’t think that this pisses me off enough: but I think the experience of airport security as a hijabi post-9/11 has desensitised me to some of the rage.

I don’t know what it would have been like if I hadn’t been in a group, or if we didn’t have Ahdaf guiding us. But I do know that it was depressing to catch glimpses of some of the things happening around me. While most of my experience could be boiled down to inconvenience, others weren’t so lucky. A woman near me in the passport control queue was attempting to get the attention of an officer, who was more engrossed in joking with his colleague. Following a louder and annoyed “hello?”, the officer began singing at her mockingly. It felt out of place in the clinical border control lobby.

While we were waiting, there was one point where I looked around me, and I think I understood my parents a little better. Growing up, I was always frustrated that we didn’t make trips to Palestine. But I realised that it wasn’t just about the hassle — they were attempting to protect us from seeing that kind of hatred and discrimination.

Despite the process, finally crossing through to the other side quickly melted away the irritation from stupid questions and waiting times. I was tired, but I suddenly felt really happy, I felt like I was finally home.

GAZA – We wrapped up a full day in Gaza yesterday. I am trying to handle my obsession with the sea by not photographing it too much. But then it’s in everyone’s mind and the recurrent saying here is, “We don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t for the sea.”

Our day unfolded with a counter-story to that state of exception that is always looming around Gaza as a site of conflict. For someone to whom Gaza has been systematically inaccessible even though it’s a bordering neighbor, you can only imagine it as a state of exception.

But to stroll in the old market, chat with vendors about what they sell, what comes “illegally” from the tunnels with Egypt and what is permissibly acquired through the Israeli crossing, a sense of normalcy prevails. That normalcy of being under siege, at times actively countering it by working with a thriving insurgent underground economy and at others succumbing to it by buying and selling Israeli products. That normalcy of being Israel’s war playground, and claiming, confidently, that you have developed an expertise in recognizing the difference between shelling and sonic booms.

In conversations, there is more than normalcy. There is the untold story of Gaza. In our first encounter with Gazan youth at the workshops, we talked about how the media around Gaza, both in production and consumption, doesn’t transcend the crisis. Perhaps it is understandable because crisis is prevalent, visible and haunting. But crisis is a hegemonic moment that manages to sustain itself at different times masking other conversations, events and possibilities.

In the workshop, we asked, if we are the media producers, the main constructors of narrative, what would we write from and about Gaza. A group spoke of Gazan rap as a political statement and a counter-culture, interrogating questions of taste and social acceptance. Another spoke of speculative urban design of the city as he is interested in developing 3D models for buildings. A participant suggested to turn herself into a tourist and write a day in the life of Gaza as a traveler. Another wanted to look inward at the class structure in Gaza and how it is intersecting in everyday life. Another wanted to look into the possibility of grassroots media guerrillas, the seeds of which perhaps lie in the sporadic conversations in online social media spaces, which have the seeds of a discourse autonomously engineered from below. My journalistic self quickly imagined how these ideas can become a line-up for a one-off publication from Gaza, a thought hacker for both Gaza and the world.

By evening time, the whole city was cheering for the golden boy of Gaza, Mohammad Assaf, who is making it to the finals of the Arab Idol singing contest. Gaza was singing and alive, and I fell asleep to the faded out sounds of the party.

Romanticizing crisis by talking about normalcy at the time of siege and occupation is currency and dangerous. But talk about normalcy is only about making space for the array of possibilities populating our consciences and sub-consciences. Talk about normalcy is about championing the everyday as a site of alternative arrangements to the oppressive status quo. It is about glorifying the “ordinary man… the common hero… the untold wanderer” to use the language of Certeau.

At my own times of negligible crisis, I recall Sonallah Ibrahim’s line in his Oasis prison diaries, “make space for laughter.” Gaza, the gateway to the sea, knows how to do that.

Lina Attalah was the chief editor of Egypt Independent, a Cairo-based news website and print newspaper.

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