In a column for The New Yorker, a writer describes relocating a family from Gaza to Manhattan and later to Paterson, New Jersey, detailing an ongoing struggle with displacement, sensory shock, and a young child’s profound silence.
The author argues that safety cannot replace lost meaning, noting that the frantic pace of America and the quiet of Paterson offered no real peace or relief from the trauma of war.
After arriving in the United States, the writer found Manhattan to be an utter shock to the senses, describing the fast-paced metropolis as jarring and violent.
Even while buying a coffee on the Upper West Side, the author was still scanning the sky, which was pinched into thin strips between buildings. Everything felt heavy, from the screech of subway cars grinding on metal rails to the smell of exhaust and hot asphalt.
One month later, the family moved to Paterson in the hope that a city known for its deep-rooted Arab American and Palestinian community, with familiar storefronts, culture, and cuisine, would bring some comfort. They rented a one-bedroom ground-floor apartment in a weathered, four-family house with gray vinyl siding and a small patch of crabgrass on a typical American residential grid.
Unlike their home in Gaza, which had been constructed four generations before the author was born out of thick and sunbaked concrete, the apartment felt oddly lightweight and soulless.
The author wanted the life left behind—one that existed outdoors, spilling onto balconies and into narrow alleyways—rather than a street deserted by dusk where neighbors drove two blocks just to buy a gallon of milk. The quiet was absolute, but not peaceful.
The column draws on Viktor Frankl’s 1946 book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” noting that concentration camp survivors, once liberated, experienced not joy or relief but depersonalization—a sense of estrangement from themselves and that the world itself was unreal.
Frankl compared the sensation to a diver destroyed by a sudden release of pressure. The author’s family existed in a similar dreamlike twilight, incapable of convincing their bodies that the calm around them was real.
The author detailed the impact on a young child, Rafik, who remained stunned and silent, incapable of reversing whatever made him stop offering himself to the world. His endless stream of questions had dried up.
When thirsty, he held an empty cup and pressed it against the author’s knee, letting tears ask for him, and when he wanted a hug, he hooked two fingers into the hem of the author’s shirt and stood motionless, staring. He hoarded words until panic breached his defenses and forced a sound from his throat.
On the Fourth of July, 2025, Paterson erupted into celebration as fireworks outside the window tore into the sky and cracked over the roof, sharp and concussive. The festive display pushed Rafik to the edge of his mattress, his body trembling, prompting a heartbreaking question to the author.
“Baba, do we have to leave now?”
