Monsoon Speech for October 7th Vigil

The date is November 14, 2023. Solafah is standing in the kitchen of her apartment, washing the dishes with her 13-year-old daughter, Haya. That is when she hears an Israeli airstrike hit the neighboring house just a few feet away. The kitchen begins to shake as pieces of glass and concrete fly through the window, striking Solafah and her daughter. Haya is found dead hours later. Solafah's husband does not allow her to see the body, hoping it will help her preserve the image she has of her daughter in her mind. Solafah’s own injuries are so severe that she must travel to Egypt to seek medical treatment. This is only the beginning of her tragedies. 

It is now March 2024, and Solafah has returned to Gaza. Her husband tells her that the Israeli Occupying Forces have arrested their son, Montaser, after ordering a nearby neighborhood to evacuate westward. Solafah knows nothing of her son, except that he remains detained. She wonders about how he sleeps, and what he eats. She wonders if she will ever see him again, or if he faces the same fate as her daughter and many other children in Gaza. There is no clear answer.

The date is July 13, 2024. Solafah is hanging laundry to dry from the rooftop of her home when she hears three explosions, one after another, at a displacement tent near her other son Mohammad's workplace. Forty-five minutes later, she hears that Mohammad has been injured. She rushes to Nasser Hospital, but the ambulance does not stop. Instead, it continues directly to the morgue, where she finds her husband standing beside a white body bag. Solafah holds her son's body tightly, wrapped in white, and says, “Until we meet again in Jannah, Inshallah.” Solafah’s story is just one of tens of thousands. Every day, families across Gaza live in grief and loss.

Last year, on October 10th, 2025, the first phase of a ceasefire came into effect. By then, 68,000+ innocent lives had been taken, and the Gaza Strip had been bombed into rubble. When it was announced, so many of us hoped things would finally get better. But this was a ceasefire only in name. Since then, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed, over 5,000 injured, and more than 800 bodies have been pulled from the rubble. 

We were told the ceasefire would bring peace. But the people of Gaza are still burying their children. The world continues to paint a beautiful picture over an ugly reality. Real change has never come from the top down. It must come from the ground up, and it must start with us. That means speaking up in an uncomfortable moment. It means sharing their stories, like Solafah’s, so the world can’t turn a blind eye. Donating whatever you can, because for a family in Gaza, another dollar could mean surviving another day. And most of all, it means never going silent. The news cycles have moved on. October 7th, our day of remembrance, will end, but that does not mean we forget. We cannot let ourselves become numb. Hold on to your grief and your anger, and let it continue to fuel you. 

I want to close by sharing a famous line from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish: 

“على هذه الأرضِ ما يَسْتَحِقُّ الحياة.” “We have on this land what makes life worth living”.

This is صمود: holding on to your land, your culture, and your people, no matter what is taken from you. It is what Solafah carries with her. After having so much taken from her, she is still there, holding on. May the Palestinian people keep holding on, until the day that we see them free, from the river to the sea. Ameen.