Alfred Corn: Instagram posts of Dr. Ali Tahrawi (second gathering)

Early this past summer I saw posts on Instagram of Dr. Ali Tahrawi, a Gazan medical doctor actively engaged in dealing with patients harmed during the Israel-Gaza conflict. Apart from the gripping content of the pictures, the posts were accompanied by texts in English, daily accounts remarkably vivid in portraying life in Gaza since last October. Ali and I began exchanging messages and have developed a friendly online acquaintance. I asked him if he would allow me to assemble his texts into a single document, making minor clarifications in grammar, etc., and then seek publication for them. He agreed. Vox Populi published that first gathering on September 16^th. Since then Dr. Tahrawi has continued posting about the unbearable conditions in Gaza. His most recent statements are collected below.

September 25, 2024

What’s happening in Gaza is a real and living test, not only for us Gazans, but also for every human being witnessing it.

As for us, no matter what burdens we face, we are forced to carry them and move forward, we cannot surrender, and we must be patient and rise from under the rubble, believing and hoping in God’s justice.

So, Gaza is a real test also for hundreds of countries, civilizations and cultures, a test in all languages, to all religions, a test to the humanity and billions of people, and until now, no one is passing the test except us!

Gaza is a test, not to see how many atrocities we can face before going crazy, but to see how many atrocities normal humans must see to be able to resist the irresistible, and being in enough pain, in their minds to start making the greatest change that a person can make.

The continuation of all this does not mean that Gaza and the Gazans did not do enough, but rather that the world and billions of people are still weak and have not yet gathered the necessary strength to rescue children and innocents!

September 28, 2024

Sometimes I feel that I would rather not survive all this misery, and that it is either me, or Israel and America in this world. I have witnessed deadly pains, and painful deaths, that broke my heart into million pieces and caused permanent damage in my soul and mind. The world was watching us as if it was away from their danger, while we were slaughtered one after the other, and one family after another, by tons of explosives sometimes, and with a blunt knife at other times. I don’t wish for any of you out there to live in this hell, and I do not want to witness more massacres. I want to ease all pains, and calm all souls, but how can I, while there are people still causing more pain and taking more souls. I want to live to witness the end of it, and I want for my family and friends to live, and I want for the killers to vanish from our lives like they didn’t exist before. We just want to live in peace! Can we? When? Why is this still happening? Come on world, end it!

October 2, 2024 (posted with a picture of a little girl celebrating her birthday, and then a video of the doctor walking through the hospital ward to the accompaniment of the sounds made by medical apparatus).

The life of a doctor in Gaza, is unlike the life of any doctor anywhere else.

About my shift yesterday. It was one of the most difficult days ever. But what made me survive it is that we were happy celebrating the birthday of Karaz, and she was so happy getting her gifts. I’m really thankful for everyone who sent her love and gifts.

More about my shift: I saw an elderly cancer patient, a little girl whose face was burned, and a mother with shrapnel penetrating her body. All were screaming and crying from the severity of their pain.

There was an injured young man, whom we were able to transfer with difficulty to another hospital for a CT scan, and it turned out that there was shrapnel lodged in his spinal cord. Having severe pain and unable to move his right limb made him pass stool involuntarily. He was lying on the ground because there were no beds, screaming in pain and saying, “I am a human being, I just want to go to the bathroom to clean myself, I wish the missile had killed me!”

I saw a girl crying and screaming in the hospital yard and saying, “My brother is still alive in the morgue, come and save him!” I was trying to calm her down, but in reality I wanted to scream with her, and all I could do was to go quickly with her because I really hoped she was right and that he was still alive.

I saw many orphaned children, helpless elderly patients, and I saw people without limbs and without families and friends, I saw pains that could not be relieved by medicine, I saw fear and anxiety in every letter and word and in every breath and movement, and I saw many brains outside skulls. I saw many hearts beating their last beats, and people breathing their last breaths. Two families slept in our triage tent, to escape the cold.

After midnight, a journalist asked me to contact his colleague, who had been under the rubble for hours, after their house was bombed, because the ambulance crews could not reach the area, due to the intensity of the bombing. There were dozens of injured people in the house. I asked about their condition; some were stable, others were unstable, which after everything I lived during my day, made me feel a terrible helplessness.

October 6, 2024

Do you condemn the world? This misery will never end, and this genocide will never end!

We are dying in the longest nightmare in the history of humanity, with the most disgusting and immoral generation in human existence, witnessing the most human abusing and destructive period.

Nothing in this world has been enough to stop the genocide, nothing is enough.

Not just for a day, for an entire year!! How does the humanity, the religions, billions of people, hundreds of armies, all civilizations and cultures, and everything God has created, fail the cries and screams of million children for help!

Why do we always have to die, and the world only has to cry. Why is it never our turn to just cry, and not to die?

When are we going to be alive again! NOW, AND NOT TOMORROW!

~~~

Dr. Ali Tahrawi is a Gazan medical doctor actively engaged in dealing with patients harmed during the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

Alfred Corn is an esteemed American poet and essayist who has received many honors including an Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. The Returns: Collected Poems by Alfred Corn is available from Press 53.

Instagram texts copyright 2024 Ali Tahrawi

Introduction and compilation copyright 2024 Alfred Corn