On Dying Loudly, or Eulogies of the Uncounted

For some, dying loudly might be the only means to alarm the world that their right to live has been robbed and that their suffering cannot be borne. If death is inevitable, Gazan writer and photojournalist Fatma Hassouna (1999–2025) did not want hers to be reduced to a number to be counted, a piece of breaking news bound to the ephemerality of current events. She wanted a death whose “impact remains intact, never buried by time or place,” as she wrote in a social media post shortly before her murder.

Fatma was killed by an Israeli airstrike alongside six members of her family, just one day after Sepideh Farsi’s film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, in which she is the main protagonist, was announced for the ACID section at the Cannes Film Festival.

What does it mean to live in a world where the only hope left to you is to die differently? How does one grieve lives when death has long been folded into the marrow of their very being? What does Fatma’s legacy tell us about living and dying in Gaza? And what does Gaza reveal about our failures, our impairments, and the shame that envelops a world that has normalized genocidal violence? What and how can one narrate all of this?

Following the screening of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk by Sepideh Farsi, ALFILM presents this special event with writers from Gaza and beyond, reflecting on these questions and on writing as a medium to survive, to grieve, to condemn, and to enact solidarity. The event is co-curated and moderated by literary scholar Dr. Maha El Hissy.