TIMEKEEPERS
“ Sadly, it was completely destroyed,” she says.“ What emerged from the rubble were small fragments of pages and a piece of the manuscript’ s cover no larger than three centimeters. The scene was devastating.”
The Diwan is far more than a literary work. The Palestinian historian Dr. Abu Hashim has described it as‘ a literary masterpiece and a historical document,’ because it contains many place names in Palestine under their ancient names— a living testimony to the presence and continuity of Palestinian civilization across centuries. It is, Al-Omsi says, an encyclopedia through which the poet sought to gather scattered knowledge across the sciences— and one of the most powerful refutations of the claim that Palestine was ever empty of its people.
It no longer exists.
WHAT PRESERVATION MEANS UNDER FIRE What makes the work at the Omari library extraordinary is not only its urgency, but its nature. This is not institutional preservation— not a well-funded digitization project or a state-sponsored conservation program. It is people, armed with paintbrushes and bare hands, choosing to return to the ruins of their city’ s intellectual life and insisting that it still matters.
Al-Omsi is unsparing about the international response— or the lack of it.“ The international community has unfortunately offered Gaza nothing— and particularly the institutions concerned with cultural heritage. We have seen no meaningful response to protect heritage here, as happened in Ukraine. For that reason, we place no hope in them.”
For the museum and heritage community reading these words, this is not a comfortable statement. It is an indictment— and it deserves to be heard.
“ This is my passion and our duty as young people of Gaza,” Al- Omsi says of the work she continues to do— to preserve our cultural heritage, our identity, our history, and our legacy. In that sentence lies both the oldest argument for preservation and its most urgent contemporary expression: that memory is not a luxury, but a condition of identity. And that the people most qualified to protect it are often the ones with the least support to do so.
The books being salvaged from the Omari Mosque library are not museum objects in the conventional sense. They were living parts of a community’ s religious and intellectual practice, consulted, borrowed, annotated. Their survival— even in damaged form— is an act of continuity. And the volunteers who are saving them are, in every meaningful sense, doing the work of curators.
Support Eyes on Heritage Those wishing to support the rescue and preservation efforts of Eyes on Heritage in Gaza City are welcome to reach out to Haneen Al-Omsi or via the foundation’ s Facebook page.
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