We’ll Meet Tomorrow in the Daylight

What follows is a selection of brief texts composed by Hamed Ashour between late 2024 and early 2026, a period of extended displacement and starvation amid the ongoing genocide. Together they form a series of portraits of people and places in Gaza. They were initially posted on Facebook and accompanied by photographs.

28 November 2024

I’ve been watching this woman. For hours she has refused any and all offers of help. I watched as she pulled a lone loaf of bread from her bag, ate a third of it, and gave the rest to her daughter.

She drank a third of a cup of hot tea, then presented the rest to her daughter. And when it was time to sleep, she took a third of the seat and gave the other two-thirds to her daughter.

Even with the phone call she asked me to make for her, she spoke for a few brief seconds and let her daughter finish the conversation ...

So it went, for hours – she took no more than a third of anything. 

A third of the air and the food and the water, as if to say:

It is the nature of mothers to take a third and leave the rest.

Except for ‘grief’ – the one thing they carry in full.

28 December 2024

Life is harsh, Rahaf, so very harsh, sweet little one.

I remember the story you wrote, during the writing and filmmaking workshops, about your displacement and hardship.

I still have that piece of paper. The text was full of mistakes, and I scolded you that day, in front of your classmates: Why so many spelling errors!

You tried to explain why as we walked back from the workshop; you said that your heart was shaking, that you were writing the story with eyes full of tears.

Now I understand …

Now I write to you carrying my mistakes in a basket of excuses.

I can’t see the phone screen, and I don’t know how many spelling errors my fingers have made, but my heart is shaking and my eyes are filled with tears.

You know, little one, I don’t believe in goodbyes. 

So … go to sleep; stay warm. We’ll meet tomorrow in the daylight.

19 January 2025

In the centre of the image is a cat.

This cat is my guide to finding my home amidst the rubble. I went to Rafah and couldn’t find anything there. Memory did not serve, nor did asking around. I was lost looking for streets and buildings; everything had been wiped out, everyone was lost.

Except this cat. 

She knows me and I know her. She emerged from the rubble and ran towards me, fawning and rubbing against my leg – as though she wanted to apologise for finding nothing to eat but the corpses of my friends and neighbours. 

Then she went and stood atop a pile of rubble, as if to let me know somehow that this wreckage in the picture 

is my home.

4 April 2025

I walk past this hill every day, and every time I see this kind young man standing in front of it, as if stunned, or digging into it like a madman, using his fingernails in the absence of tools. He is searching for something.

Months ago, the hill was larger than it appears in the photograph – more like a sand dune created by Israeli bulldozers. They hauled in a great deal of sand to build this barrier, and in doing so, they swept away the bodies of four members of this young man’s family right before his eyes.

To this day, he digs and digs; whenever he finds a part of one of his brothers’ bodies, he takes it to the cemetery and buries it. Whenever his hands brush against a bone buried in the hill, he pulls it out, examines it carefully, and places it in its proper grave.

This is how a Palestinian builds a family.

21 July 2025

Chronic hunger and malnutrition made me so weak that a tiny insect bit me in the foot.

The insect was barely visible – no bigger than a pinhead … but it left a scar, and this was followed by a disaster.

Imagine this body, which once had a strong immune system, normal white blood cell count, and natural antibodies, unable to recover from the effects of that bite for a whole week.

The small scar turned into a massive tumour; it oozed pus and blood; it prevented me from walking.

I had no choice but to limp to the British field hospital. As I watched the wounded without hands or feet, I was too ashamed to say: ‘All there is to it … is that an insect bit me.’

But I know, and the doctor knows, that the problem lies not in the bite, but in this body that has lost even the right to heal.

6 September 2025

On day 700 of the genocide, this man is still calling on people to remain steadfast.

He opened his heart and his home to the displaced while he slept on the doorstep.

He organised the water distribution queues and was the last to drink.

He ate half his loaf of bread and drank half his share of water, then chanted for all of Palestine, because he wants all of it.

This is my father.

For days now, I’ve been carrying him in my arms, running with him from tent to tent in the field hospitals.

I found no stretcher, no ambulance, not even a donkey to help me carry him.

My sorrow is heavy because the eagle is wounded this time. The hero is bedridden, unconscious; he has forgotten even my name and who I might be.

His voice is missing from the tent; his place in the water queue remains empty.

This man, who split firewood and lit fires and gathered the young and the old, who was the last to leave Rafah when the fighting and the siege intensified … here he is, opening his eyes this morning.

He called my name. I ran to him, falling to my knees with joy.

He cursed at me, and my heart nearly burst with happiness.

This man, undefeated by a diabetic coma, undeterred by hunger and malnutrition, is still standing, even if on a field bed. 

His voice is still chanting for Palestine, all of it, all of it.

28 October 2025

Now I know how the Sudanese live. 

This morning I know the taste of their breakfast, and what they must do to survive until the afternoon.

I know how cunningly they trick the Janjaweed militia to enter El Fasher with wheat and barley in hand.

I know you, noble Sudanese, and I see you.

Before you, I ate the mule’s fodder and hauled its loads; I still roam like a bull among the waterways.

I know what jingles in your back pocket – a few coins, a draft of air – while you tally the bill of hunger and look at the queues,

at the tents

at the ruins.

I know you, son of sand and salt water, when you pass a morsel by your heart and your mouth, when you fill your nights with stars and your days with corpses, when you measure your distances by the muezzin’s call.

And I love you even more when you lie, when you point to smoke and say: ‘This is a passing cloud, and that blast is but a clamorous celebration in the distance.’ 

And I love you when you steal, when you plunder all the stars of the night in order to not to lose your way.

13 January 2026

To Malik al-Shinbari and the smell that lingers in memory.

This is the man we found lying near Nasser Hospital. The indifferent rain poured down on him as he lay stretched out under a blanket, face and identity hidden. Nothing emanated from him but that smell. I tried to move the man and stopped.

The smell was more than I could bear.

People gathered around me as I emptied out my insides, as if my body were rejecting the whole scene.

You came afterwards and carried him. You leaned him against the entrance of a shop, as if to offer him a shred of dignity, and you returned towards me, vomiting your own insides. 

What are we going to do now? I asked, and you said:

'Let’s kill him … Let’s kill him without delay … We’ll take him from here to the cemetery and shoot him.'

We laughed out of sheer helplessness and distress – an unforgivable laugh.

Now the man has died, bitten by the rabid cold. On WhatsApp, his photo was circulated among those who were unidentified. When I saw it, I recognised him immediately.

We should have killed him so he would have a place to call his own, a door to close behind him, a warm bathroom, and radiant skin as you can see,

and a white robe, we suppose.

It was our duty to kill a homeless man so the earth would accept him at last, with a square metre where no one bothers him, no one crowds him, and no one asks him to leave. 

He died weightless, with no debts or farewells; he did not cost the state a burial permit or an inheritance inventory.

He slipped away from life, without commotion, uproar, or funeral.

He died alone, outside memory, outside the news, and outside of mourning, free from the tears and the wailing of parents and neighbours.

We should have killed him so he would become more handsome ...

Look, this is the man I couldn’t bring myself to get close to; and now I am ready to kiss him.