I used to watch the reels of Renad Attallah, a girl living through the genocide in Gaza. Like others in Gaza, her story revolves mainly around food; as she demonstrates how to cook recipes. But as these terrible years have passed, I’ve also seen her learning English so as to tell or show her tales to more people, participate in aid distribution, and talk about how there is no food. Lately, I can see that her face is changing; she’s growing older. There is a new shadow on her face, and I mean that literally. Instead of sunlight, there is a blue tinge, her eyes are shaded, and I vacillate between thinking she is naturally losing her baby fat, and worrying that she is not getting enough to eat.
Why does watching Renad worry me so much? Children’s lives are not the only precious lives in Palestine. Why didn’t I pay more attention to Anas al-Sharif before Israel made him a shaheed? I feel guilty. Palestinian men have to hold up their children or their cats to the camera to show that they have small beings who depend on them, as if their lives weren’t worth anything otherwise.
When I try to bring my unconscious bias for Renad to the surface, I realize that I have a son, and that there was a time when I wanted children so badly; a daughter, specifically. Why the desire for a daughter? One answer is that men generally want daughters due to a heterosexist logic. We want some girl’s or woman’s femininity to throw our masculinity into relief, and make us more aware of the power and freedom we have as men. Daughters reinforce the power of fathers, and help fathers to feel their male power. That wish must be there in me. At the same time, there is also what I would call a transgender desire. That is, perhaps I wish for a version of myself that was not in a man’s body, and that would grow up without patriarchy inhering in it. So, I understand–or, same thing, I tell myself a story about –why I am fixated on Renad, and why I worry about the continuation of her life.
Of course, my story is nothing compared to Renad’s, and her story means much more. The other matters, but we cannot lose sight of our selves.
