‘Rebuilding with words is not a luxury’: Tabish Khair on writing after the war on Gaza

Recently, as a ceasefire was announced in Gaza, even as Israel continued killing and bombing in West Bank and Lebanon, I returned to a book by my American friend, Jim Hicks, who in his writings, and also as the editor of the literary journal, The Massachusetts Review, has consistently backed just and humane causes. Early in the preface of that touching book, Lessons from Sarajevo: A War Stories Primer, I came across these lines: “The first lesson from Sarajevo is clear: media coverage and artistic engagement will not suffice. This time we knew, and still the longest siege in European history took place.”

This lesson has obviously been expanded a hundred times by what happened and continues to happen in Gaza, and Jim would be the first person to say so. He goes on to note, quoting Fran Lebowitz, the New Yorker columnist, being interviewed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001: “Writers are luxury items.” Jim annotates the quote thus: “In such moments, many people are essential for the services they alone provide: one imagines a list including police, firemen, surgeons, construction workers, even journalists. Though help and support from everyone, on some level, may also be needed, the skills of the various professions are not…

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