°®Âţµş

"If I must die,
let it bring hope,
let it be a tale."

These heart-aching lines conclude the poem If I Must Die, written by Palestinian poet, professor, and activist Refaat Alareer just five weeks before an Israeli airstrike killed him in his home city of Gaza on 6 December 2023.

With these words hauntingly foreshadowing the end of his life, the poem has since been widely translated around the world, capturing the unimaginable horror and tragedy unfolding in Gaza.

Currently, Refaat’s words are spreading further through the (RML), a traveling liberation library based in Atlanta, Georgia, that promotes political education for Palestinian liberation and addresses the urgent needs of Palestinians most affected by the events in Gaza.

One of RML's organisers, Fiza Pirani, explained to °®Âţµş how the library was created, tracing its origins back to the pro-Palestine protests on American university campuses in April and May, when thousands of students rallied in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel's war on Gaza.

Fiza added that the seeds of the library were planted in an Atlanta-based online chat group, where long-time and new organisers, united by their commitment to Palestinian liberation and resistance, could share their grief, take action, and preserve Palestinian culture, experience, and truth through the library.

“It was clear our students were suffering at the hands of the police, and many of us were itching to do whatever we could to show up for the students in solidarity,” Fiza says.

Inspired by the makeshift Gaza solidarity libraries that students had created to build community and make political education more accessible, Fiza also said there was a desire to create a library that would travel from campus to campus — an idea that resonated with others and gained support.

“We knew we wanted to begin on a campus, and Emory University had faced the most violence and retaliation so far,” Fiza elaborates.

Encouraging local and global solidarity

Starting with a folding shelf and ten books that Fiza and other volunteers brought to the teach-in, the library has now expanded to a collection of 500 books, over 50 volunteers, and has travelled to numerous community spaces in Atlanta.

According to Fiza, the idea of a traveling library arose from reflecting on the destruction of libraries in Gaza.

Some of the questions Fiza says came to mind were: How could a resource for cultural preservation be created with minimal risk of physical destruction, as the police had done with students’ tents and makeshift communities? (The teach-ins often addressed how the removal of encampment tents paralleled the destruction of houseless communities’ makeshift homes and the displacement of Palestinian families’ tents.) How could such a resource address multiple communities? And how could one encourage local and global solidarity through literature?

That being said, Fiza emphasises that they are not the first to name a library after Refaat, explaining that they drew inspiration from existing university encampments and their DIY libraries dedicated to his memory.

“His death was a turning point for many — his legacy undeniable, his words lingering forever,” she says.

Fiza also reiterates the parallels between police violence in Atlanta and Israel, which Refaat was acutely aware of.

“He visited a few times, had close friends here, and spoke at Charis Books, an independent feminist bookshop and the library’s official bookstore partner,” she adds.

Honouring Palestinian culture

An entirely volunteer-run organisation, the team has now established a committee focused on decision-making, event coordination, printing, bookstore and publisher relations, and more.

“We make decisions as a collective and there is a group of us — that make up the Core Committee where we discuss ideas before bringing it to the larger group,” Fiza says.

In terms of collaborations, the committee has been working closely with Refaat's family and friends to honour his legacy and ensure the preservation of Palestinian culture with due diligence.

“We are fortunate to be in touch with Refaat’s close family friend who has especially been helpful when faced with questions regarding the preservation of Refaat’s writings,” Fiza mentions.

Upon reflection, Fiza and the organising committee did not anticipate that the library would endure as long as it has.

“We started with some free books from publishers and some books of our own, bringing 10-20 books to college campuses, Palestine solidarity events, and social justice- and community-oriented gatherings,” she says.

The library wagon being the mode of conveyance and transporting roughly sixty books at a time to and from these spaces of community engagements, the catalogue features Palestinian and anti-Zionist literature along with those on Black liberation, Indigenous resistance, prison abolition, colonialism, as well as children’s literature and poetry.

Beyond its success, Fiza has also thought about how those challenging or opposed to disseminating political education about Palestine have responded to the library thus far.

“Though we have an occasional Zionist visitor and these interactions aren’t exactly fruitful, we’ve had more solidarity than anything else, and beautiful discussions and connections have emerged at library events,” says Fiza, emphasising that the most affirming aspect of the library is “the people we get to share literature with.”

Fiza adds that the library’s journeys have led to a multitude of exchanges: public school teachers borrowing books to teach their classes, high school and college students newly learning about Palestine, Jewish community members raised in Zionism and trying to unlearn, young Palestinian parents in the diaspora seeking children’s books, and Palestinian authors themselves.

“The nature of the mobile library means that to return a book, you typically come to another library event, which means we get to see repeat visitors often, building our own little community of readers, curious thinkers, cultural preservationists, and resisters,” Fiza says.

Spreading hopeĚý

At present, the library is expanding rapidly, with plenty of interest from potential future volunteers and city organisations who feel strongly about Palestinian liberation and self-determination.

“Many other communities from different states in the US and abroad have reached out with interest in replicating the library model,” Fiza says, having recently held workshops on .

Looking towards the future, one of the library’s chief missions is to connect solidarity struggles, encompassing a larger anti-imperialist movement.

Fiza says, “There is real strength in numbers and collective solidarity. Once your eyes are opened to one liberation struggle, you begin to notice the threads connecting them all. If you care for Palestinians’ right to self-determination, for example, you must care for the indigenous struggles within Sudan, Congo, Turtle Island, Puerto Rico and beyond,” Fiza states, emphasising nonetheless that “it’s not just about knowing; we must also be showing up.”

That said, RML recently joined a teach-in on the occupation of Sudan at Spelman College, for example, and set up the library and a small fundraiser for Sudan.

To conclude, Fiza says that while Refaat's poem came from a place of horror and despair, it still inspired hope.

Fiza adds that, like other forms of global resistance for Palestine, RML is a caravan of hope, with books as seeds that we hope will grow into a fairer, more just, and peaceful world of ideas and people.

Priyanka SachetiĚýis an independent writer and poet based in Bangalore, India

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