Amid the Ruins

Amid the Ruins includes 36 brief pieces written by the Gaza writer and publicist Sama Hassan during the first year of the war in Gaza (2023–2024). Some of these fragments of stories were scrawled on a page of paper and some were written as text messages that Hassan sent to herself through her cell phone and later worked into stories.

Hassan’s voice has been known for many years as one of the important and vital feminist voices in Gaza, and her writings portray the double siege experienced by many Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip. To date Hassan has published several collections of stories in Arabic, including City of Silence (2008), The Diary of a

Besieged Woman (2012), Gentle Chaos (2014), Laughter and Play, Tears and War (2015), and Corners (2016). “No!” is the piece in the of short story collection With a Severed Tongue, which was published in the Maktoob series in 2019.

Literary editor: Dafna Rosenblit

Copy editing: Tami Burstein

Afterword: Yael Shenker

Cover: Farras Shehade