The Keys to my House: A Gaza Diary

Sami al-Ajrami’s account of the first six months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza starts with a tenacious link to home and homeland. A week after Hamas infiltrated Israel, al-Ajrami decides to leave his home in Gaza, taking his two nineteen-year-old daughters with him. “This isn’t a rented apartment in some random condominium,” al-Ajrami writes in the first page of The Keys to my House: A Gaza Diary. “The house was built literally stone by stone by my family.” Originally from Beer Sheva, al-Ajrami’s grandfather arrived in Gaza in 1953. For al-Ajrami, Gaza is his permanent home, yet immediately the reader is told of how fragile the concept of home is in Gaza. Forced displacement remains a reality because of Israeli […]