At just 26, Jehad Jarbou has experienced a lifetime of displacement and loss. Born in Al-Zawaida, she was forced to move through Khan Younès and Rafah as violence swept through Gaza. In the months before the genocidal war escalated, she had received recognition for her photography in Bethlehem, winning the Imagine Freedom award. But in November 2023, a single bombardment claimed the lives of her father and elder brother, leaving her and her remaining family amid the ruins of their home. “I emerged covered in grey dust with my mother and younger brother,” she recalls. “I lost everything in the war, even my artistic tools and paintings.”

From painting and photography, Jarbou turned to poetry, channeling grief and survival into words that bear witness to daily life under relentless destruction. Her verses navigate death, scarcity, displacement, and fleeting glimpses of the sea, transforming trauma into a medium that both mourns and preserves memory. Her work has become a personal archive of Gaza’s endurance, capturing the resilience that persists amid the shattered urban landscape.

Support came from afar. Through virtual connection, Jarbou met Ana Mattioli Aramburu, an anthropologist based in Barcelona, who has spent years supporting Palestinian artists. Together with the Ramallah-based collective Fana, Aramburu helped bring Jarbou’s poetry to publication and organised exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, London, and Barcelona under the project title Gaza I Will Write Our Will Above the Clouds. The initiative illustrates the solidarity networks that sustain Gaza’s creative voices, ensuring that even amid displacement and destruction, art continues to speak.