Essay: Why I Write

I have begun and abandoned several essays lately because I collide into a voice that taunts and challenges: “You can’t write that. There’s a genocide going on.” Less “What’s the point?” and more “There is no point.” What’s the point in words when the screams, sobs, and lamentations in Gaza are in your mother tongue and so lacerate your heart that by the time it hands over the Arabic for your mind to translate into your written tongue, English is too traumatized and wrecked to speak and so its painful silences echo endlessly.