This poem was written in December 2023 in Amman, during my evacuation period after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The music and the lyric video followed. It started as an attempt to fight my self-judgment, and the sense of powerlessness, pain, and frustration I felt during those months. I felt so empty and alienated from humanity. Shaken by the heinous situation, I saw myself as an answering machine, repeating the same thing over and over again when talking to friends and colleagues in Israel and Palestine: “How are you?”; such a mundane greeting seemed completely absurd in those circumstances. Here I grief, I mourn, I condemn, I pray, and especially, I hold close to my heart and honor special people who, with their relentless courage and sumud, showed me the value of caring and loving each other amid the war, including by graciously asking “how are you?”
