To Palestine| Paths of departure, routes of return

In my previous dispatch from the Global Sumud Flotilla, I shared my obsession with small boats. Once, at the height of the pandemic, I bought a miniature red boat model on the Spanish island of Menorca. I posted its picture on Facebook. My Cuban friend, Rosa—married to our mutual friend Armando Cabo—commented, “I want that boat for my baby, Armando Cabo Jr.”

They had already decided, during the pregnancy, to name their child after his father. When I reached Cuba, after Armando Jr. was born prematurely, he was still in the neonatal unit. I carried medicine from Madrid, as they had asked, and along with it the little red boat.

A few days later, Armando Jr. died.

But on Friday, Sept. 6, 2025, as I sail toward Gaza, Rosa and Armando—together with filmmaker Kiki Alvarez and other Cuban friends I call family—organize solidarity events in Havana for the flotilla. For the Palestinian people.

Yesterday, Rosa made paper boats. Others crafted candy boats for the children in one of Havana’s old squares. They will play with them, then eat them. But I am not in Havana. I will not attend. My presence is only through a video sent from this real boat—not a paper one, not a candy one.

Our lives now are boats. Our eyes fixed on them.

The lives of Palestinians, too, are filled with boats. The foreboding vessels that brought the first Zionist settlers in the early twentieth century. The boats that carried Palestinians into exile in 1948. Again in 1982, departing Beirut. The first time, they sailed to Lebanon. Others walked north around this same season, or crossed into Jordan over an old wooden bridge.

Today I am on the boat with Yousef. He’s 37, an architect, and a citizen of New Zealand. He is my closest companion on this boat. His parents, Khalil and Samira, fled Palestine during the Nakba, as so many others did, escaping the massacres carried out by Zionist militias. Yousef’s father, carried as an infant on foot towards a camp in Lebanon, was born on May 15, 1948, the very day of the Nakba. Yousef has never set foot in Palestine. This voyage is his first attempt. His family left on foot. Now he attempts a symbolic return, by boat.

Palestinian lives are steeped in the symbolism of boats and walking. So are ours. So are the lives of those watching us.

In recent days, as I met others sailing with me, or volunteers assisting from land, many said to me, when they learned I am Egyptian: “We were in Cairo.”

Many of those now aboard the flotilla tried earlier to reach Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, as part of a solidarity journey that began in Tunisia months ago. They were denied entry. Our government turned them away.

You should know who sails beside me. Academics. Artists. Intellectuals. Journalists. Activists and people of conscience from across the world. Trade unionists in their 80s who once fought Spanish fascism, now sailing for Palestine.

One of them is both a boat captain and a doctor. During training, he told us, “I will be captain of one of the boats taking you. I will also be your doctor. I am 77 years old. I want this to be the last thing I do in life: to go to Gaza on this mission.”

Our governments painted them as though they came to destabilize our country. And now, here we are, trying to destabilize the sea, with fragile boats, tiny compared to the vast waters. Like Rosa’s paper and candy boats. Yet these can reach Palestine.

But rest assured, this time, we will not give any government a headache. Even though the blood of the Palestinian people in Gaza deserves to shake every government into action. It deserves to rattle the world awake.