Eventually, I had my panic attacks under control. I read about the two young women from Gaza — Samar in Cairo and Shatha in Istanbul — who died from heart attacks after losing touch with their families. I stopped turning up the sound on footage that came through my screen; I needed to see what they did to my people, but listening to the booms invited grief into my sleep. My aches, however, worsened. An ovarian cyst burst inside of me this summer, twisting and almost rendering my reproductive system dysfunctional. “Stress can do this,” the doctor told me. I had a doctor, a hospital, safety, privacy, medicine, water. How many women have that in Gaza?- “May this be the biggest catastrophe,” my mother told me, propping up pillows on the living room couch for my recovery after surgery.
- One of my writers in Gaza checks on me. She’s worried about me. Can you believe that?
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