The Electronic Intifada 18 October 2024
Al-Azhar University students pose on the steps in 2023.
Graduation is truly an amazing experience.
In August 2023, my best friend Muhammad invited me to his university graduation. It was a brilliant ceremony, captured in a thousand photos and filled with music and song and a generally festive atmosphere.
Muhammad was a year ahead of me, and we had first met through a project for writers where we developed a close friendship.
We even planned for my graduation ceremony. I chose my outfit in my head. We were so thrilled, thinking the year would fly by quickly. I pictured myself at the ceremony with my family and sisters, looking radiant, lively and full of laughter. I envisioned us taking countless photos together in the most gorgeous dresses.
University has been great for me.
In the summer of 2020, I completed my baccalaureate studies and got ready to pursue my undergraduate degree in translation at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City.
I felt hesitant. I’m shy and somewhat self-conscious. I didn’t interact that much with students in high school. I firmly believed that books were my true companions and the key to discovering the world.
But on my first day at university, to my surprise, I was very excited and acted impulsively, talking to students, getting to know them. I felt like I had been there for years.
In my junior year, I felt a significant shift in how I viewed myself, my life and relationships. I’ve come to realize reading alone can’t teach me; life itself is the most crucial book. Oddly, that’s the key lesson I’ve grasped from university.
Also, I took numerous courses at a different university, obtained additional certificates, and my ambition for more achievement and success continues to drive me.
On the last day of my junior year, my twin sister Amal and I snapped photos in front of the literature department building and took group pictures with classmates to get a feel for graduation. We felt like it was a trial run, and we were so thrilled about it. Little did we know that we wouldn’t experience the actual graduation ceremony at the university at all.
Studying again
In October, war broke out, and we were forced to leave our home. That November, the Israeli military bombed my university buildings.
Whole buildings vanished, leaving just sand and rubble. Every place I had learned or trained in was either bombed or burned. A group of occupation soldiers took a photo in front of the building in which we were supposed to take our graduation pictures and mark the end of our time at the university.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish my final year of college.
But eight months after the genocide began, as I sat feeling trapped in a world of destruction, sensing that I’ve missed out on so much, Al-Azhar managed to restart online courses. I quickly made the choice to continue my education despite the grim backdrop. I refuse to be idle and merely pass the time waiting for something wonderful to happen.
Israeli soldiers posted a picture of themselves on social media posing before the damaged buildings of Al-Azhar University.
Am I being naive?
In June 2024, I resumed my studies. I started attending online lectures, writing assignments, taking exams.
I did this even amid the sounds of explosions and gunfire, while watching Israeli occupation tanks drive by every day.
I did it despite coming to terms with the loss of so many people in my life, witnessing death and destruction daily, and the constant displacement from one place to another.
The fear was overwhelming, disrupting my thoughts, yet I persisted. It’s tough to study and graduate during wartime. It’s hard to know that there will be little happiness in graduating because of the horror around me.
But I also felt perhaps a sense of accomplishment would be amplified due to the unique circumstances.
Sometimes, I find myself yearning for a miracle to take me back to my former life. Sometimes I wish this were all a prolonged nightmare, and I would waken suddenly to find myself back at university, standing by the literature department, adorned in the graduation robes, cap and gown.
I miss the smallest details of university life. I miss the autumn’s onset with its fallen leaves, the rain in the university square in December, the vibrant spring flowers I would gather from near the university wall, the familiar path from home to university, the breakfasts with friends, the engaging lectures, conversations with fellow students and the calm moments spent reading in the university library.
The last lecture
It’s almost impossible to wrap my head around the fact that all the libraries I’ve ever visited are gone now. These peaceful spaces, surrounded by countless books – all vanished.
And my little library in my home in Gaza City, filled with books I loved. I wonder what happened to them. Did they go up in flames? I had hoped to keep them forever. Each book or novel holds memories, especially those university books that saw me through my studies, the last ones I got in my graduation year, and that unfinished novel that still awaits.
Is it really a whole year since then?
Now I don’t control the course of my life. War dictates time, place and events. It dictates who we can see and where.
I can’t see Muhammad. He made it to Egypt in April. We are still friends. And we plan to see each other again when this is over.
When that is, who knows? Despite this, I hold on to the many aspirations that I hope will become a reality. I sense beauty in the future.
When we reached the end of the semester and had our final lecture with Dr. Jamal Al-Shareef, the head of the English Department at Al-Azhar University – he is a special person, and I consider myself lucky that he taught me – he ended it like this:
“Thank you for being good students for four years. This is my last course with you.”
This sentence really hit me hard. I wanted to be in that lecture. I wanted to be present with Dr. Jamal as he spoke those words. I yearned to bid farewell to the halls and the literature department building.
I will now graduate in December. Graduating this way wasn’t how I envisioned it. But I’ve done it nonetheless.
Aya Hattab is a writer and translator in Gaza.
