2023-12-14 03:54:12
Gazan intellectuals are mourning the death of Refaat Alareer, professor of English literature and emblematic voice of the enclave, killed on December 6 during an Israeli bombardment.
“If I must die/You must live/To tell my story (…) If I have to die/Let this bring hope/Let a story be born. »
In Gaza ravaged by Israeli bombs, the writer Refaat Alareer shared, at the beginning of November, this poem in English on his X account, an epitaph and bulwark against the permanent shadow of death in the enclave. On December 6, late in the afternoon, he was killed in an Israeli bombardment of Gaza City. He was 44 years old. His brother, his sister and four of their children were taken with him. Their bodies are still under the rubble.
His death shook a large part of the Gazan intellectual elite, of which Refaat Alareer was one of the emblematic voices. A whole generation of English-speaking authors was formed in the English literature courses that he taught with passion for more than sixteen years at the Islamic University of Gaza. “More than a teacher, he was a mentor, a friend, and he truly cared about his students”, wrote on December 8 on X, one of his former students, the academic and writer Jehad Abusalim. The latter, who had published one of his texts in the collection Light in Gaza. Writings Born of Fire (“light in Gaza: writings born from fire”, Haymarket Books, 2022, untranslated) then added: “For Refaat, English was a tool of liberation, a means of breaking free from the prolonged siege in Gaza, an instrument of teleportation that challenged Israel’s barriers and the intellectual, academic and cultural blockade of Gaza. »
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