Dalia
Mikulska

Ferya shows me photographs of her husband.

In the first two photographs, a handsome man in uniform looks back at me, standing tall. In the next, he is already dead.

On wine produced on the site of the former Palestinian village of Susiya.

On occupied land, then, not formally part of Israel. Yet the bottle bears the words “produced in Israel”.

On Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza.

Motaz shows us shattered buildings, shattered dreams. And perhaps sometimes he wonders what else he must show the world before it responds.

On Tunisian judge Béchir Akremi.

Instead of a judge’s robe, he wears ordinary clothes. He is weak: he has been on hunger strike since his arrest.

After a young refugee jokes about fireworks sounding like Aleppo.

I realise that this laughter is not a sign of happiness at all.

On a territorial division that was meant to be temporary.

The “temporary” turned out to be permanent.

On the hopes of the Syrian revolution and its aftermath.

What was meant to be spring brought a piercing cold, one in which there is no way to get warm.

On Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals, in a reportage from 2018.

In a room intended for one patient, two were being operated on at once.

The second photograph in the reportage: Sara Hegazy with a rainbow flag at a concert in Cairo.

Photo 2: Sara raises the flag, laughing broadly. This photograph later became evidence of her offence […]

Hasan refuses a cigarette offered by the judge questioning him.

Not because he did not want one. He simply knew that if he smoked, the taste would haunt him when he returned to his cell.