“The operator takes his thumb off the button. He isn’t sweating anymore, and his eyes no longer sting. As he directs the drone north, he gets out his mobile phone with his left hand, and starts to look at possible destinations for his upcoming holiday. Tuscany is meant to be beautiful. He has never been there before.”

Nayrouz Qarmout’s collection of short stories depicting the brutality of life on the Gaza Strip is, sadly, even more relevant than it was when I first read it back in 2020. This story, ‘White Lilies’, is one of the shortest of what is already a very short collection of stories, but it packs a punch which belies its brevity.

The story begins with the seemingly irrelevant anecdote of a young French immigrant to Israel in 1997 purchasing a bunch of lilies for his mother on Mother’s Day. His interaction with the Palestinian florist is pleasant, and they part on friendly terms. Later, the florist, a young seventeen-year-old orphan named Ali, arrives home to the al-Shatea Camp to find that his neighbour has joyful news. He has just had a daughter and will name her Zahra.

Years later, in 2008, Zahra is like a daughter to Ali and, upon learning that the lilies have bloomed and are ready to sell, he decides to bring one for her at school as he associates the flower with her birth. Meanwhile in Israel, he is being watched by drones operated by the young Frenchman he sold that very flower to so long ago. Interpreting a phone call saying that the lilies are blooming as a coded Hamas message, the Frenchman drops a bomb from the drone killing him and blowing the innocent Zahra, who runs to meet him, off of her feet.

The brutality of the Israeli regime is exposed in Qarmout’s taut prose, and her attention to the small details, that of white lilly petals spotted with blood, and of the Frenchman turning from his drone screen to look at destinations on his phone for his upcoming holiday, are what make it especially horrifying. In its exploration of racism, apartheid and murder, it pairs well with Baldwin’s ‘Going to Meet the Man’. This whole collection is not to be missed.

First collected in English in The Sea Cloak & Other Stories, Comma Press, 2019