Fables of the sea

The sea is the first place we knew and the last place that remains. It has carried our stories long before we could name them, before we understood that memory, like water, can hold everything—loss, resilience, and the quiet traces of survival. In Gaza, the land once bloomed with flowers, its soil thick with the promise of life. But war redefined the landscape, stripping it bare, turning abundance into absence. The northern lands, once famed for their fertility, were devastated in 2008, their disappearance leaving behind a silence too heavy to ignore. What remained was the sea—an expanse of water that became our refuge, our escape, our only horizon. But even the sea has boundaries here. The shore is lined with restrictions, the waters polluted, and the waves, though constant, no longer carry only the promise of renewal. For nearly a decade, I returned to the sea—not just as a place, but as a witness to its shifting realities. My practice in Gaza was shaped by it, drawn to its edge where fishermen cast their nets into uncertain waters, where objects drifted ashore like messages from another time, where each tide carried something both lost and found. The sea became an archive of its own, holding onto what the land could no longer keep. Through photography, Fables of the Sea traces these encounters, capturing the lives that unfold along Gaza’s shore. Fishermen, who have learned to read the currents as one reads a story; the objects returned by the tides, whispering of journeys we cannot follow; the children who still run toward the water, as if it could carry them somewhere beyond the horizon. The sea, even in its restrictions, continues to offer something—whether it is escape, survival, or the memory of what once was. This project is not just about the sea itself, but about what it holds. About how, in Gaza, we have always turned to it—first and last—as both a place of departure and a place of return.