The Road from Gaza: A Displaced Artist on Her Journey
An excerpt from Doha Kahlout's personal essay, published in the New York Review, about her departure from Gaza during war, her journey to France, and the heartbreaking experience of leaving her homeland as part of Columbia Global's Displaced Artists Initiative.
I had been in Paris for more than a week when Gaza surfaced again, like a scar the body has come to accept. On the train to Argenteuil I sat facing the wrong way—which most people avoid for the dizziness it causes—as my phone lit up with notifications, either bearing news of Gaza’s unfolding sorrow or messages from loved ones that calmed my anxious heart.
I scanned the faces around me, a habit I’ve carried since childhood. Quiet features, soft murmurs, the hush of exhaustion after a long day. I turned to the window, watching the sun drift behind clouds, and I noticed how the road ran in reverse, how the buildings seemed to flee against the wind.
Then a scene from my final evening in Gaza came back to me. Returning home through the city that night in April, my cousin Shahd and I boarded a bus from Saraya Junction to the far end of Al-Jalaa. With transportation scarce, we didn’t hesitate: I climbed into a backward-facing seat. And there it unspooled—the city in ruins—like a shot in a film. My mind went dizzy with all the contradictions we had faced there, our lives held in this unraveling image.
Now it all reappeared in a flash: the war-scarred streets, the buried homes, the shattered walls. How had I held on to every detail of the damage, after trying so hard to repair it in my mind? Longing surged through me, along with tears I had deferred. And there I was, despite all my attempts to flee: facing the city I had left behind.
Co-sponsored by the Columbia Global Paris Center and Institute for Ideas and Imagination, the Displaced Artists Initiative is designed to support artists who have had to leave their countries of origin due to extreme circumstances (war, natural disaster, political oppression).
