organised by Palosanto at MONDIACULT 2025 event under the auspices of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
We were delighted to welcome the young Palestinian poet and writer Marwa Abu Raida on stage at this high-level event. Recently escaped from Gaza, she read with great sensitivity from her text “From fragility to flight: Creativity and resilience in exile” (read the text below).
Currently in exile and hosted by NoCallarem AR-Barcelona at Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture she was joined on stage by AR’s co-directors Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky.
We would like to thank Nodes/Palosanto for inviting us for this talk under the auspices of the Government of Catalonia held as a side event of UNESCO’s major MONDIACULT 2025 conference.
Thank you also to Clara Vera, a journalist for Betevé, for introducing the event!
From Fragility to Flight:
Creativity and Resilience in Exile
by Marwa Abu Raida
My name is Marwa Abu Raida, a poet and displaced writer from Gaza
I have suffered greatly, just like all the people of Gaza today, enduring repeated
displacement from shelter schools to the streets between tents.
Sometimes, it feels as if we, the people of Gaza, are like a football, kicked around for the
amusement of a cruel, endless game thrown back and forth in a deadly struggle that is at
once absurd and tragic.
And like a baseball, we are rolled mercilessly toward our own graves, our freedom and
movement only a spectacle for others, never seen as beings made for a deeper purpose.
These experiences left hidden scars within me, but they were not just wounds. They
became windows, eyes that watch the world differently.
Through this pain and fragility, I have come to see how darkness mixes with light, how
loneliness intertwines with beauty.
And it is from this very weakness that creativity and sensitivity emerge.
The war, exile, and repression that I have lived through did not only mark me with
suffering. They carved within me a sensitivity that awakens the human within us all.
It is from these experiences that I learned that weakness, when embraced, can become a
source of insight, imagination, and resilience.
Yes, the hidden scars of the war no longer remain as bleeding wounds, but have turned
into a window.
They have turned into eyes, watching the universe, seeing how darkness mixes with light
and loneliness with beauty.
These pains, this weakness, have transformed into a deep fragility, exactly like a thread
passing lightly between those patches with hope and determination, to restore life to the
fabric of the soul.
The cruelty of occupation and exile has carved within me a subtle sensitivity: the sound
of planes making the ground shake,
the image of a small child without a head
lying on the ground,
like a water bottle without a cap,
bleeding a life
that could have been a path to rebuilding this land,
running with life like an unstoppable river.
Yes, this war and this conflict have granted my soul a cosmic fragility
that softens cruelty and awakens the human in us.
As long as conscience and humanity are alive, hatred and battles end.
Because it simply means to be a waterfall falling onto the earth, inspiring beauty and
watering greenery, better than being a missile rising in might to kill the innocent
everywhere.
Peoples have the right to live side by side in peace.
Your race or religion does not matter.
The important thing is to respect your humanity and work for this planet
and for the good of all.
The fragility within me now,
over time,
has become deeper than being a thread stitching,
or a medical thread healing wounds.
It has become deeper and stronger.
The scars and wounds have become those strong metal rings,
and the fragility has become the chains that pass lightly between them
to bear the weight of truth and humanity,
making it a swing that does not break,
passing among beings
exactly as if waving to them from afar,
like eternal birds teaching us to fly
and rise above hatred and enmity.
