The Road from Gaza: Doha Kahlout Writes in the New York Review

The personal essay “The Road from Gaza” by Doha Kahlout, published in translation in the New York Review, is a poignant reflection on the author’s forced departure from Gaza during war and her journey into exile in France. It explores the emotional, psychological, and physical toll of leaving behind a homeland scarred by destruction and loss.

"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. [...]"

Doha Kahlout is a poet and teacher from Gaza. She is the author of a poetry collection, Ashbah (“Similarities”), and a contributor to several publications and anthologies. A member of the PAUSE program, she is currently in residence at Reid Hall in Paris as part of the Displaced Artists Initiative, cosponsored by the Columbia Global Paris Center and Institute for Ideas and Imagination. 

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).

The piece was translated by poet and critic Yasmine Seale, a 2022 – 2023 fellow of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination and Visiting Professor at Columbia. Seale writes, 

"In May, after a year of contact, I finally met the beautiful Doha Kahlout. A poet and teacher from Gaza, she had just been evacuated to Paris along with a hundred other artists, students and scientists. That night, Doha sent me an essay she had written about the experience of leaving. I found it so moving — a heartbreaking piece of writing and a singular document of this unbearable time. Today a translation is published online at the New York Review of Books, with thanks as ever to the editors. Here’s the beginning and the end. I urge you to read it." (via Instagram @performingseale)