3:17 AM @eid_yara This is @handalhoncafee . The cafe’s name means we will remain here. Let me tell you a bit about this place and this picture in particular. This picture was taken around the same time last year when I went back home for Christmas break to carry out my dissertation research. This cafe was my second home, and where me and my friends spent most of our time. The owners are my beautiful friends Ragheed and his wife Rana. We used to go there almost every day since it opened. The place was small and not many people knew about it so it was like our hidden special spot. Ragheed wanted it to be a cafe for his loved ones and their friends before thinking of expanding it. Ragheed built it under his home and dedicated his time and efforts into making it a home for all those he loved. It was like a small home for a small family. We did everything there. We discussed politics, love, revolutions, planned our futures, drank lots of coffee, ate together and most importantly laughed without any limits. We laughed our hearts out. We also cried at times. This picture is when I was conducting a focus group for my dissertation and my friends brought people I didn’t know however everyone there wanted to help me. It was ironic that the electricity went off just as I started asking them about living under occupation and the challenges they face everyday. That’s why we used candles and we didn’t let it stop us. Behind us, you can see a beautiful painting that we all helped in making. It says Palestine in Arabic alongside the names of our indigenous villages and cities that we were displaced from. This cafe was bombed and completely destroyed in this genocide. Ibrahim my best friend who is also in the picture is gone. Israel has always been threatened by our love, by our poems, by our cafes, by our intellectuals. That’s why they bombed this cafe. That’s why they killed Ibrahim. That’s why they keep targeting our brightest. My dissertation was about the resistance of Palestinian journalists. I never imagined that soon after I finish it, I’d lose more than 100 journalist colleagues, some of whom I wrote about and interviewed in my thesis, and others who are still resisting in their own way! 
