Why do any of us read books these days? There are so many other forms of information and entertainment that are much easier to consume. With 20 minutes to hand, why wouldn’t you just scroll for a while through TikTok, or check in on a news app? Yet sometimes bite-sized doesn’t work. I want to share an example from my own reading.
At the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, I was following the Israeli offensive in Gaza the way I usually follow news media. Which is to say, I mostly read headlines and saw photos. I knew something shocking was happening, but that very sense of shock sent my brain into short-circuit.
I couldn’t stay with the story; I couldn’t understand it. Then my friend and research partner, Claire Squires, told me about a book she had just read: Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide by Atef Abu Saif. The Palestinian Authority’s Minister for Culture, Abu Saif was visiting Gaza from the West Bank with his 15-year-old son when the bombing started.
Don’t Look Left is his diary of the next 85 days, shared with his publisher through WhatsApp messages and voice memos. Reading this book clicked with me in a way other media hadn’t. Over the course of its 288 pages, I got to know Abu Saif, his extended family and his friends.
The diary format and the ever-present threat had the immediacy and urgency of news media, but the way the diary unfolded helped me to see people and places in a new way. I learned the names and nuances of different neighbourhoods – li.