Questions On My Mind: Musings About Gaza, My Home, And The Things I've Lost - Dina Maher Ashour (Coast Line Press)

Written by Dima Ashour, Illustrated by Alex G.

“I am a short story writer trying to find beauty amidst this chaos. I believe that beauty lives longer than ugliness.”—Dima Maher Ashour

“Dima Maher Ashour’s ‘Questions on my Mind’ is a beautiful and devastating work that asks the most urgent questions of our time. ‘I look up and see no tents, no / occupation. Why don’t we live in the sky?’ the clear-eyed narrator asks in its opening page. In precise and captivating lines, Ashour voices the despair of grieving one’s home, the heartbreak of homesickness, and the righteous anger in the face of Israel’s ongoing genocide: ‘Is the door of my house still black? Or is it smeared in the blood of the martyrs in Gaza? Is it now a disheveled grey, covered with ashes of destruction?’ From meditative recollections of daily life in Gaza that offer a richness of details to a litany of unanswerable questions implicating each of us, this zine is a testament to the resilience of a people under siege and the sustaining power of language.”

—Cassidy McFadzean, Author of Crying Dress, Drolleries, and Hacker Packer, and Poet-in-Residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.

“Dima Maher’s language is powerful and poignant and her voice must not be missed.” Reem Faruqi

Coastal Lines Press is a collective of writers in Gaza. Through Zines from Gaza, they publish independent booklets of poetry, essays, and testimonies that travel like vessels from coast to coast, turning words into vital aid for their families.