“You are alone,” says a voice in my head. “No one cares about you.” It is always nagging at me, exhausting me — whether I am in class, with a group of other students, or today, on a crowded bus from Dublin back to Maynooth University, my new home in Ireland since leaving Gaza in August.
Everyone on the bus seems to be traveling with a friend, child, or partner, but not me. The bus is packed, and the couple near me splits up, one standing while the other sits next to me, until two seats open up.
A painful loneliness fills the vacant seat beside me. But memory reminds me that it wasn’t always so.
Back in Gaza, I never heard that voice in my head. Family and friends filled every waking minute — especially Nour, my brother who disappeared during Israel’s bombing of Khan Younis. He was my rock, my partner in crime. “Abdallah, have a cigarette?” he used to ask, knocking on my door in the middle of the night. I’d always make sure to pick up extra cigarettes on my way home from work, so that Nour could have his fix and we could share each other’s company — filled with the warmth of knowing you mattered to those you loved.
The bus turns into the road on to the main highway west, leaving the city. People are already out partying. I tell myself to snap out of it. I try to take a deep, slow breath, but the inner voice won’t let up. “Why does everything beautiful die or disappear?” Not a day passes without me missing Nour, whose name means light in Arabic.
I try to focus on the view emerging from the front of the bus, but I get distracted. In front of me is a young couple. They are laughing, so intoxicated with each other. He tries to creep his fingers into her hand, and she tries to act like she doesn’t feel it. She says nothing, but smiles. I’m on the verge of suffocating. I want to scream at them, “Enjoy the moment, guys — it might not last!”
Life has taken 26 years to get me here, and my bus takes 11 stops to get to Maynooth. I keep asking myself: Is this the end of my journey? This is the quiet college town that was supposed to be a refuge; these are the safe, rain-swept streets I walk through every day on the way to class. There is the cafe where I get my coffee, and that’s the bar where I sprained my ankle when Irish friends wanted me to do a Gazan version of Riverdance. And despite the security — what should be a relief after surviving a genocide — I hate it. I hate my time here.
I take this bus most weekends, and each newly familiar landmark, the crossing, the pub, the Tescos, reminds me of versions of myself that are no more. These streets have no tents. There are no armed Israeli drones in the sky. No mosque is calling me to pray. I don’t have to spend the day looking for flour. Nour is gone, my cousin Mahmoud is dead, and I don’t know who walks my little sister Aseel to school every morning now, or even if she has a school to go to.
I finally get back home. It’s 9 p.m. and I’m hungry. I have a brand new kitchen that I share and I can cook my own food, but it’s Friday night and most of my classmates have gone home for the weekend. There is no one around. Right now, everyone back in Gaza is gathering to eat food together. But here, people must think I am the most focused student around. What they don’t know is I’d trade my books for people anytime, but right now, I have no choice — John Milton and Seamus Heaney are my new best friends.
I decide not to cook alone and head to O’Neill’s, my favorite restaurant in Maynooth. Friday night is busy there, and families walk past me with their takeaway burgers and chips that smell amazing. I stop myself from asking, “Can I have a bite?” Unlike in Gaza, people eat by themselves and don’t share their food with strangers. That seems so weird.
Sitting at a table, I pick at my burger and munch one or two chips, and then stop, staring at two old men sharing war stories at the bar. I realize there are deeper hungers than just food.
“Another drink? You haven’t eaten much — don’t you like the food?” the innkeeper asks as she comes alongside me.
“I do,” I reply. “Just taking my time.”
What I don’t tell her is that I don’t like myself, and I feel time is running out. I keep looking at the entrance expecting a soldier to rush in. I look for exits. But the innkeeper keeps passing by, throwing me winks. She is beautiful and kind.
She brings me another glass of red wine. “I saw you writing. Are you a writer?”
I tell her, “Not really, but one day.”
“I wanted to be one, but I got married and have five kids, and that’s why I’m working here,” she explains. “Writers need time to be alone — I admire you for being able to do that.”
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I almost choke on the lettuce. “What did you just say?”
“You know, great writers don’t come from crowds.”
I put down my fork. “Thank you, you have no idea what that means to me,” I tell her. “You’re welcome,” she says, and beams an even bigger smile at me.
As I left O’Neill’s, I was laughing. My inner voice must have turned in early for the night. I might have broken my ankle at that shady bar across the road, but tonight, this forlorn Gazan Irishman goes home with just a little bit of a jig in his feet.
