On Wednesday, Mustafa the Poet released a new song, “Gaza is Calling,” about a childhood friendship torn apart by state-sanctioned violence that almost sounds too heartbreaking to be based on real events…except for the fact that it very much is.
“Gaza is Calling is about my first experience with heartbreak in friendship. I was 11 when I met this boy from Gaza. We were inseparable,” the Sudanese-Canadian poet, singer-songwriter, and filmmaker wrote in a statement. “With him I shared one of the deepest loves I’ve ever known, he grew up alongside me in a housing project in Toronto. And not even this love was a match for the violence we were up against; the one in our new home, the one that followed him from Gaza like a cold wind. In the end it was all the bloodshed between us that didn’t allow us to see each other without tears appearing, and one of the last notes he sent to me was about how we would continue on in another life.”
In the song, Mustafa sings about mourning the loss of this unnamed friend, fleeting youth, and the distance between now and then. “And Gaza is calling, it’s been years since you been back,” he sings. “Every time I say your name, there’s a war that’s in the way.”
All the more affecting is the short film that features none other than Bella Hadid, who is Palestinian, as a mother who’s found refuge from the ongoing genocide abroad with her son, played by a 15-year-old Gazan rapper, MC Abdul. Alongside this story, a different narrative is portrayed in Gaza as a very real young woman, Israa Ahmed and her younger brother, subsist in a displacement camp in Palestine.
“I reached out to Bella in 2022 about the Gaza is Calling short film,” Mustafa wrote in a second statement. “In it, we follow Bella Hadid and Mc Abdul of Gaza as they journey through their grievances. A parallel story of Israa Ahmed and her younger brother plays out. Israa and her brother engage in the ruins & danger of a refugee camp in Palestine as Bella and Abdul engage with memorabilia & guilt in the western world. Israa and her brother are still in this camp in Jenin, Palestine today.”
“The hope is that this serves as a stark reminder that every path is ours, every child is ours, & every war is ours to answer for & speak against,” he concluded. The song and its accompanying film are shattering depictions of the immeasurable grief not just of anyone who’s been forced to leave their home in search of safety, but of all those forced to stay and helplessly witness the mass murder of their people by the state.
That Hadid continues to be one of the only celebrities to stand firmly for Palestinian liberation should be lost on no one. Since 2017, she’s attended protests, and, as recently as May, she donated one million dollars to children and families in Palestine. Frankly, this should be the bare minimum for anyone with a platform as significant as hers. And yet…sadly, very few are advocating for the liberation of Palestinians like she is.
