The man who survived his funeral

Writer: Issa Qaraqe

This is not a literary fiction about the duality of death and life in mythological and existential myths, nor is it merely a narrative event in the style of a black comedy, when a person returns from the grave to life, and death and imprisonment meet in one experience, in a continuous struggle to confront annihilation. It is Gaza and the difficult birth from the abyss, and the production of astonishment from the heart of nothingness.

No one believed that Adham al-Banna, a resident of the town of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, returned from the grave after three years of war of extermination and absence. He survived his funeral and was resurrected from the world of the dead. His family had set up a funeral home, and received mourners with Adham and his martyred brothers, after receiving information that he had been martyred when he went with his brother to search for a bag of flour, in a crowd of death, hunger, and explosions. Adham did not return home, and his fiancée's joy was not complete, as she replaced her white wedding dress with a black dress. She stood in front of the sea for a long time, waiting for Adham to return from the dead, as the sea sometimes responds to the call of the heart and brings the dead back to life.

Three years without a grave, no body, no witness, and no news to stop this mysterious sadness suspended between the earth and the sky. People in Gaza are dying in droves, and souls and body parts are lost. They go out and don't come back. In Gaza, death is no longer a clear biological moment, but has become news, a rumor, a possibility, a missing name, a body that has not arrived, or a disembodied image. Death itself now needs evidence.

Is Adham alive or dead? The family did not find him among the torn corpses that Israel delivered to Gaza, and did not receive any information indicating that he was in prison. Is he a martyr, a prisoner, or a missing person? Is it under the rubble? It is collective torture for his parents, his family, and his loved ones, and the tears have not stopped. There are dead people who are buried once, but in Gaza the living are buried several times. Three years can be enough to create an entire grave in memory; Three years of intermittent sleep, three years of questions, and three years of hope, disappointment, and hope. This is one of the most horrific forms of psychological death in Israel's war on Gaza, when a person loses his influence and the boundaries between death and life become more fragile.

Adham returned from the grave on 7/6/2026, and the living dead appeared with seventeen Palestinian prisoners whom Israel released through the mediation of the International Red Cross. They were transferred from the Abu Salem crossing to Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, and the surprise was: Adham was alive in the prison cemeteries and cells, hidden and buried in the darkness and between the bars.

He was wounded and died twice: once when he fell into a coma that lasted two months, after a bomb knocked him out, and once when his family mourned him and offered condolences to him. Adham returned from the afterlife to this life, witnessing the crime of forced disappearance of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip, and witnessing prisoners who were executed, tortured, and their bodies crushed, whose names were crossed out, their records were closed, and their features were erased from news and reports.

Forced disappearance is not only for a person to disappear, but for his family to be forced to live in his vacuum, and for the tortured soul to have a long-lasting resonance. Adham returned from the death in which he did not die, to witness the death of others who did not return from it, and they are still waiting for someone to open the door to hell.

Adham survived his funeral, and this is not a miracle in the religious sense; It is a moral, political, legal and humanitarian scandal for the international community, which could not enter the prison cemeteries. There are no visits, no supervision, no protection, and no one knows anything about those who were killed in prisons and whose bodies did not arrive, or about those who left bearing traces of torture, diseases, and trauma, or about the pens of beating, humiliation, rape, and the destruction of the human spirit.

How many times does the world need a man to return from his funeral, to realize that there are living people who may not find a way back?

Three years for the truth to triumph over the funeral. Adham returned from a grave that had not been dug, and from a funeral in which he was not dead. His family experienced death without a body, and when he returned, he was no longer alone; The time when his family could not live normally returned with him.

Everyone was confused: how to receive someone who returned from the dead? How do they end the mourning and years of deep pain? Amazement mixed with joy and crying. The people who received him did not say: Adham returned from prison, but rather asked: From what death did he return?