How do I write when I’m hungry? 

I did not begin writing as a writer. I never intended to define myself by a literary profession. I wrote because writing, quite simply, was the only air available to me – a means of structuring my days, of organizing the feelings overflowing inside me without order, and creating a temporary space of calm amid an endless storm. 

Writing was not my window to the world, but my window to myself. And when I possessed language, I felt as though I had finally gained a friend on this savage planet: a friend who listens and does not flee, who makes me feel that, for a brief moment, the world can escape its monotony.

War is a strange creature; it doesn’t stop at destroying homes – it pulls the rug of certainty from beneath your feet, erasing the small sense of reassurance you place in your room to comfort yourself. But do you know what hunger does?

But what I never expected was that a day would come when this friend would fall silent – not because I chose to stop writing, but because I was no longer capable of it.

And the reason? I am hungry.

Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, I have been re-examining and reconsidering everything. Every value that has shaped me is shaken. I even began to view writing – this hidden, deep-seated strength I've been able to rely on time and again to resist fear, displacement, and loss – as one of the things that could unravel, melt away, and disappear with time, until disaster overwhelms me.

War is a strange creature; it doesn’t stop at destroying homes – it pulls the rug of certainty from beneath your feet, erasing the small sense of reassurance you place in your room to comfort yourself. But do you know what hunger does?

Hunger has become my first language. Stronger than memory, than my ability to process, and even stronger than my need to document. This is not a withdrawal from writing — it is a complete incapacity. I no longer have the tools to express myself. I no longer have a body that can sit still, or a mind that can hold a complete sentence.

I would ask myself: does writing still have any value? What meaning is there in piling up sentences while bodies lie piled beneath the rubble? What sense is there in writing about beauty and love in a world that continues to starve you and remains indifferent to your pain?

Yet something inside me resisted this disintegration. I have written a lot, in the heart of displacement and under the roar of bombs. I wrote about lost children, about the dead without shrouds, about the homes turned to dust. I wrote despite the fatigue, despite the sorrow, despite the fear – but I had never written while hungry until March 2025, when hunger took its residence inside my body, not knocking on the door, but forcefully opening my chest and settling down permanently.

Hunger, as I’m experiencing it now, is not something I could ever have imagined – nor is it what you’re imagining either. It’s not simply the feeling of an empty stomach. It’s a sweeping numbness that creeps from the intestines to the brain. It confuses the memory, weakens vision, and turns every thought into something that requires deep excavation that the exhausted mind can no longer perform. Hunger robs you of your most basic abilities: focus, patience, feeling, and the desire to speak. Thinking becomes a luxury, and words become burdens too heavy to carry.

I ask myself: does writing still have any value? What meaning is there in piling up sentences while bodies lie piled beneath the rubble? What sense is there in writing about beauty and love in a world that continues to starve you and remains indifferent to your pain?

Hunger, as I now lie inside it, as it swallows me whole, is nothing but an emptying-out of comfort and inner calm – a new reckoning with the self. 

A while back, I told my editor at Raseef22, Asmaa, that I no longer had any ideas or suggestions for writing, that I could no longer thread the needle.

I took Asmaa’s advice and decided to write about this mental thinning, this frailty, and how my mind is falling apart – for that became my new writing proposal: my pain, a pain I had never known before.

I write a sentence, then stop – not to rethink it, but because I don’t have the energy to continue to the next line. Hunger crushes you slowly, as though you are dying alone in a desert no foot has ever crossed. I can no longer sleep soundly, or sit down to read. Writing, which once held me together, can no longer do anything in the face of this slow collapse.

You die alone in hunger. The presence of others starving around you offers no comfort, no psychological support. On the contrary, when hunger becomes collective, it means every helping hand around you has been severed – and no one will come to your aid. How can I write about this?

You die alone in hunger. The presence of others starving around you offers no comfort, no psychological support. On the contrary, when hunger becomes collective, it means every helping hand around you has been severed – and no one will come to your aid. How am I supposed to write about this?

In northern Gaza, where I live, not a single grain of wheat has arrived since March. The markets are empty, and the few goods that do exist are extortionately overpriced — with no oversight, no shame. Last month, all we ate was lentils, rice, and canned beans – none of which would satisfy hunger. Lentils, the only thing available to us then, became my enemy. The repetition of their taste was nauseating. There is no energy in them, no hope. But now, even the lentils are gone.

I have been living on one meal a day — just like everyone else in Gaza — if you would even call it a meal. A meal with no protein, no calcium, no bread, and no taste. A meal as devoid of meaning as it is of nutrients. And yet every day, I have to carry out exhausting tasks: carry firewood, fetch water from distant points, climb the stairs up to the fifth floor, and spend hours searching for a kilo of flour that sells for $20 USD, or a measly can of sardines.

All of this with the lowest levels of energy I’ve ever known in my life.

The worst thing about this hunger is that it makes you a stranger even to yourself. You lose your empathy for things. You go numb. You shrink. You watch your life as though you are a stranger to it. You fear yourself, and you fear for yourself. Food becomes an existential idea, a mythical specter. You remember flavors you had forgotten. Your preferences change. A can of tuna becomes the peak of your dreams – and when you cook it over the fire with a piece of potato and some tahini, you celebrate as though you’re feasting like a king.

Under such conditions, writing ceases to be an act of resistance – it becomes an impossible act. My body no longer holds me up, my mind is lost in a haze of dizziness. I try to begin a text, but my head is as empty as the city’s warehouses. There is no idea present, no passion pulling me forward, no inner feeling that drives me to create. Nothing remains inside me – as if hunger has swept away the soil from which my words once grew.

The worst thing about this hunger is that it makes you a stranger even to yourself. You lose your empathy for things. You go numb. You shrink. You watch your life as though you are a stranger to it. You fear yourself, and you fear for yourself. Food becomes an existential idea, a mythical specter. You remember flavors you had forgotten. Your preferences change. A can of tuna becomes the peak of your dreams – and when you cook it over the fire with a piece of potato and some tahini, you celebrate as though you’re feasting like a king.

This writing is not just a text about tragedy. It is a text about being stripped bare – when hunger leaves you with nothing but your fragile self, your weakened body, and your absent language. When you feel that the world does not see you, does not hear you, and does not care whether you are alive or on your way to death.

I write a sentence, then stop – not to rethink it, but because I don’t have the energy to continue to the next line. Hunger crushes you slowly, as though you are dying alone in a desert no foot has ever crossed. I can no longer sleep soundly, or sit down to read. I feel myself disintegrating. And the writing that once held me together can no longer do anything in the face of this slow collapse.

This hunger, an enforced condition within a war of extermination, is more than physical deprivation. It is a disintegration of the self – a gradual extinction of your will to live. You begin to wonder: what is the value of writing if I cannot feel full? What is the point of memory if I can no longer retrieve it? What does it even mean to be alive if every day is a failed attempt to secure a meal that doesn’t even resemble food?

Today, when I sit down to write, I feel as though I’m writing from outside my body – that the words are not mine, but rather remnants of a man I once was. I feel that I write simply because I need something to distract me from the hunger. Writing has become exhausting; it demands a physical and emotional effort I can no longer give. Hunger strips you of language, just as it strips you of sleep, of rest, and of hope.

And the worst part is: the world remains utterly silent. As though the hunger that is killing me cannot be heard, cannot be seen, and does not matter to anyone.

I am a writer – or at least I used to be.

This hunger, an enforced condition within a war of extermination, is more than physical deprivation. It is a disintegration of the self – a gradual extinction of your will to live. You begin to wonder: what is the value of writing if I cannot feel full? What is the point of memory if I can no longer retrieve it? What does it even mean to be alive if every day is a failed attempt to secure a meal that doesn’t even resemble food?

Hunger has become my first language. I am hungry, and the hunger has become stronger than language. Stronger than memory, than my ability to process, and even stronger than my need to document. This is not a withdrawal from writing — it is a complete incapacity. I no longer have the tools to express myself. I no longer have a body that can sit still, or a mind that can hold a complete sentence.

I’m afraid I’ll die before I write about my own death.

I’m afraid the words, the language, will remain imprisoned inside me, unable to find a way out.

I fear hunger more than death – because it takes you in stages, turning you into a fading shadow, eroding silently without a single scream.

Will anyone read this? Will anyone believe that a writer could no longer write because he had nothing to eat? Will anyone care that, in some corner of this world, there are people starving until their spirits fall silent?

Maybe not. But I wrote this, despite everything.

Writing is only possible when the body is permitted to survive.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Raseef22