I, Ghost
An extract from the Gaza Damage Proxy Map, an open-source mapping tool adapted from the war in Ukraine. Yellow indicates a 70 percent probability of population and property destruction since October 10, 2023; purple indicates a 98 percent chance. A surly old man is speaking Hebrew on my laptop screen. He scowls. He says, “I have ordered a complete siege.” He gestures his resolve. He says, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water,” counting on his fingers to emphasize each negation. He glares. He says, “We are dealing with human animals.”
It doesn’t hit me till later that what the man has ordered is a concentration camp, with air raids. To prepare for a ground invasion with mass graves. Video clips like postcards from hell confirm: He is getting what he asked for. Every day, survivors of the previous day’s bombing are bombed. Hospitals, universities, mosques, churches, UN facilities, schools where the wounded and starving shelter — anyplace where people can take refuge is bombed. Every day for two months, three hundred humans killed.
But in the story the West is telling, those deaths are not the point. Genocide, war crimes — not the point. The point is: the bad guys have attacked the good guys; it’s payback time. The surly old man is one of the good guys. This makes the dead babies in the clips the bad guys, right?
At eighteen, I leave, and I think women will be crazy about me. I’ve read Waguih Ghali’s , and I think I’ll be talking Arab politics at the union bar. The closest I actually come to any acknowledgment of my identity is drunken students doing “Walk Like an Egyptian” dance moves while they point at me. It would be fine if I were popular, but there is hardly anyone to talk to. This is the best move I can make, but I’ve lost what social life I had, and I’m forced to give up on my secret plan.
