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This article is an excerpt from Gaza: The Story of a Genocide edited by Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro. This text was originally published by Verso in 2025 and has been reprinted here with permission. The following belongs to Chapter 8, “On Teaching in Gaza,” by Eman Basher.

I used to be an English teacher. My classroom walls seemed to breathe with the wind, and the light depended on the mercy of the sun; a very eco-friendly setup, if you think about it. Who needs electricity when the sun graciously decides to show up for class?

For eight years, I taught in Beit Hanoun Prep School for young girls; a place where optimism stubbornly thrived in conditions that would make even the most dedicated teachers elsewhere quit by lunchtime. Beit Hanoun, the closest city to the Israeli settlements in Sderot, was the first to face evacuations during escalations. The village I worked in was often referred to as “Bora,” meaning “wasteland” in English, a grim nickname earned from the relentless bombing by Israeli warplanes.

In this battered corner of the world, poetry, stories, and literature were the tools we used to carve out moments of imagination in a world that often felt like it had none to spare. I introduced my ninth graders to Maya Angelou, Mahmoud Darwish, and Langston Hughes. And let me tell you, when a fourteen-year-old in a war zone starts dissecting the nuances of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” you can’t help but marvel at the irony. These weren’t just students; they were young women whose lives were already laced with feminist resistance. They didn’t need lectures on empowerment; they lived it every day, walking miles to school, clinging to their books as though education could physically shield them from the chaos outside. And maybe it did, if only for a few hours. They wrote stories in which women were heroes and poems that raged against injustice, all while the world shrugged and called them statistics. In that drafty little classroom, with sunlight doubling as our electricity, these girls found power in words, even when the world seemed hell-bent on silencing them. It was absurd, really, that the most fragile place could also be the strongest, but that’s Gaza for you — a place where hope is the ultimate act of defiance.

In Gaza, education has long been a beacon of hope amid adversity. For many girls, attending school is a cherished opportunity, even when resources are scarce. Classrooms often lack basic amenities; it’s not uncommon for students to sit on the floor due to a shortage of chairs. Despite these challenges, these young women engage passionately in their studies, including lessons on feminism and empowerment. My girls came to school without lunch boxes, without raincoats, and on foot. To a class that did not have enough chairs and tables and often leaked on heavy rainy days. Yet, they came. And kept coming. And insisted on coming. I used to look at their combed ponytails and pretty hairclips and see them as tiny freedom fighters, little super women who do not have the luxury of three meals a day yet would always come to school with combed hair and clean, ironed clothes. And I wanted to offer them the fine education they deserved. I would give my life if I could. They put every effort into learning so that they might have a future. Yet, the world offered nothing in return.

However, after the genocide began, even this fragile system crumbled. Schools have been reduced to rubble, with over 200 facilities targeted by airstrikes. The tiny joy of learning........

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