“Everything in the amputated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in grey by a sick man,” wrote Ghassan Kanafani describing Gaza almost seven decades ago in a fictional letter to his friend in the diaspora.1 Though his words are tied to another moment in history than that of today, they capture some of the heaviness of the current state of Gaza. Cyclical Israeli aggression, particularly since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, has forced generations of Palestinians to mend the torn pieces of their amputated towns over and over again. Dwelling within these overwhelmingly gray and fractured landscapes, Palestinians continue to enact intimate acts of repair and reconstruction as a method of survivability amid, and against, despair.
In traditional architectural discourse, “repair” is understood as the act of returning a building to an authentic state while prolonging its material life. It is a slow, methodical, and systematic process that involves scientific assessments of the material conditions of a structure, followed by planning concrete interventions to restore its integrity. But in Gaza, the concept of “repair” is lived differently. There, acts of repair emerge in negotiation with ruins, as ongoing, uneven processes of mending scattered pieces of a violently ruptured lifeworld. These acts carve out a space of dwelling within an environment of omnipresent death, embodying a refusal to submit to complete exhaustion and devastation. They are acts of repairing what might be deemed unrepairable in an attempt to sustain a threshold of livability amid genocide. In so doing, these acts invert the meaning of repair, constituting it as a preservation of life instead of materiality.
In Gaza, the mere effort to “repair” amid genocide and mass destruction has itself become an embodiment of human dignity. It has also become a manifestation of the sacred ontology of anti-heroic resistance, one based on the refusal of surrendering to humiliation and instead insisting upon dwelling amid grief and against despair. These acts therefore manifest as antipodes of architectural repair.
Antipodes of Architectural Repair
One antipode of repair in Gaza embodies a process of “homeing,” or returning to and reinhabiting the ruins of one’s own ruined house (or that of another). This involves small yet careful gestures like wrapping the exposed side of a building whose walls have been destroyed with sewn-together pieces of clothing or sheets of plastic to provide a semblance of privacy, as well as shielding from wind, rain, and dust. It can also entail reassembling the fragments of a broken wall using gathered rubble, clearing the rocks, dust, and debris from a half-collapsed staircase to continue using it, or dwelling within the threshold created by a ceiling that has fallen but not fully collapsed. These gestures of dwelling amid ruins do not, by any means, provide a sense of safety or security. They simply carve out a semblance of livability against omnipresent death and devastation.
Another antipode of repair entails inhabiting semi-destroyed structures that were not designed for domestic habitation, like schools, hospitals, universities, and public buildings. The Israeli regime’s systematic targeting and destruction of entire residential blocks in Gaza left extended families and even entire neighborhoods displaced, forcing them to seek refuge in structures that were not intended for inhabitation. Within these spaces, a form of collective life emerges, especially among those who knew each other before the destruction. In such conditions, every aspect of daily existence demands immense labor and cooperation, from procuring and preparing food to caring for children and the elderly and maintaining hygiene. Transcending the materiality of architecture, these acts of repair reconfigure collective living, both spatially and socially. In this sense, survivability is contingent on collective improvisation and mutual care.
For those who have been expelled from their homes and cannot find space in a collective refuge, another antipode of repair manifests in creating structures to inhabit in spaces of exile, on the move, or in landscapes that were never designed to be lived in: storage rooms, football pitches, roundabouts, orchards, the seaside—almost any open space. Most shelters assembled in these types of spaces are not ready-made tents but improvised shelters from whatever material people can get their hands on, such as parachutes used to air-drop aid, torn shirts, old blankets, and discarded wood. Some families assemble thresholds from whatever debris and rubble is around, while others dig them into sand and cover them with fabric to create enclosure.
These improvised structures are strongly reminiscent of the Palestinian refugee camps that have been standing throughout the region ever since the Nakba. Before this genocide, more than 1.5 million Palestinian refugees lived in eight refugee camps around the Gaza Strip. These refugees, who were first displaced back during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, make up over 70 percent of the dense and besieged population of the strip.2 Today, over 90 percent of this very same population has been forcibly displaced again, left to seek refuge in makeshift shelters or performing acts and practices that can provide a fragile semblance of safety and dignity.3 What unfolds is a recurring cycle of violence and destruction of an uprooted people.
These cycles of “amputation” stand as a devastating precedent of a future to come. Yet the nearly eight-decade-old refugee camps remain a haunting reminder that the “tent cities” across Gaza must be temporary, that time cannot be allowed to stand still long enough for those to be absorbed into the cultural memory of Palestine and become yet another layer of refugee heritage. Neither the “tent cities” that dominate Gaza’s geography nor the transformation of buildings into spaces of refuge should belong to the architectural, cultural, or built heritage of Palestine. Failing to recognize that they are immediate reactions to unprecedented violence risks instrumentalizing the immense suffering of the Gazan population, erasing the cultural heritage and memory of Gaza, reducing the subjectivity of Gazans to victims of destruction, and denying their right to home and the dignity of dwelling on their land. What these antipodes of architectural repair do is manifest the inaccessible sacredness of ontological resistance. They are not chosen but imposed reactions that resist erasure and assert livability and dignity against genocide.
Humanitarian aid narratives and state-sponsored developmental frameworks invoke “reconstruction” to envision the future of a Gaza that neither includes Gazans nor ascribes to their subjectivity.4 What seems to be a common illusion shared by these reconstruction plans, proposed by actors such as the United States, Israel, France, and others, is that they frame recovery as a rapid, AI-driven, technical project, devoid of human experience and suffering. Plans such as the “Riviera Plan” are neocolonial structures shaped by the Israeli military and security agendas, aiming at dissolving the Palestinian cause, denying reparations, and emptying Gaza of its inhabitants, stripping them of territorial rights and political agency. None of these external initiatives take into consideration grassroot and local experiences, nor offer reparation frameworks grounded on accountability for the genocidal crimes Israel has committed.
An Atlas of Anti-Ruins
Ghassan Kanafani’s words not only speak to a Gaza that has been inhabited throughout wars, siege, and crises for generations, but also to a culture in Gaza that is capable of fostering antipodes of architectural repair and their anti-heroic ontology of resistance. For what appears gray and sickly in Kanafani’s gray painting is, in fact, saturated with lived experiences, memories, and attachments. Every element within what he describes as being painted by “a sick man” carries weight, significance, and meaning. In the very same letter, he writes:
The stone piled up at the beginning of the Shajiya quarter where we lived had a meaning, and they seemed to have been put there for no other reason but to explain it… It seemed to me just a beginning. I don't know why I thought it was just a beginning. I imagined that the main street that I walked along on the way back home was only the beginning of a long, long road leading to Safad. Everything in this Gaza throbbed with sadness which was not confined to weeping. It was a challenge: more than that it was something like reclamation of the amputated leg!5
Kanafani’s refusal to give up in the face of exhausting sadness or to accept a pile of stones as the final fate of his childhood hometown locates the beginning of reconstruction in a pile of rubble. Though a reclamation of an amputated leg seems impossible, Kanafani sees it as repairable, as achievable, and as the beginning of a long and exhausting process of healing. Kanafani’s stones echo the antipodes of architectural repair performed by Gazans attempting to dwell amid ruins. These acts are modest, fragile, and deeply situated reactions of survivability in an atmosphere saturated by the constant threat of obliteration, violence, and human suffering. They are, in many ways, anti-heroic gestures rooted in the debilitating labor of holding tightly onto a precarious life. Despite their fragility, they emerge as forms of affective affirmation and a declaration of the soon-to-come possibility of relief, as well as an assertion to the right to dwell, to repair, and to reclaim the amputated city.
While these antipodes are embodiments of existential resistance, they too often fall into a romanticized discourses that celebrate the “unwavering resilience” of Palestinians. This rhetoric is, to some extent, oblivious to the ongoing loss and obscures the exhaustion, grief, and pain currently being imposed on Gazans. None of these acts assume effectiveness, stability, or protection. Rather, they are fleeting moments filled with fear and uncertainty. These acts should not be forced to bear the burden of teaching or symbolizing resilience to a morally paralyzed world, nor should they be normalized post-ceasefire.
No external rhetoric of reconstruction can respond to the depth and uniqueness of the strokes in Kanafani’s gray painting, or even begin to account for the layers of pain, grief, and dispossession embedded in the suspended lives and everyday practices of people living in Gaza today. Only who he refers to as a “sick man” has the ability to capture those moments and hold the weight of these precious memories; only he can begin to reclaim that amputated leg. It is only through his gaze that Gaza can be reconstructed as a continuation of the lived experiences of its people. Only he can imagine a repair capable of accounting for the intimacy of loss.
The Atlas of Anti-Ruins represents but a few strokes in that gray painting. The drawings it contains visually translate stories shared by survivors over numerous rounds of interviews, recounting their journeys of building, inhabiting, and repairing their destroyed homes. To some, the structures they depict may appear as simple buildings, even mere shelters. But for those who call them home, they are precious, vibrant traces of a once-experienced life; they are repositories of memory, emotion, and belonging. They bear witness to the intimate bond between families across generations and their homes. They are a testimony to the more than 436,000 homes that have been damaged or destroyed by Israel over the past two years.6
The drawings presented here hint to the life of the Emara family in their home in the Al Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The story of their home unfolds from the first stones laid in 1987, just before the First Intifada, and continues to the present day where their damaged yet seemingly repaired home, wrapped in fabric, stands as their refuge. The passage of time can be traced in the growth of the guava tree in their front yard and in the number of water tanks that once occupied their rooftop, marking the expansion of the family that called this house home. The guava tree, nonetheless, is more than a tracer of time: it has provided the Emara family and their neighbors, the Sha’th family, with a space to socialize and a playful element for the children. It has witnessed countless stories and memories. Yasmin, who is part of the third generation of the Emara family living in the house, recalls her connection to the guava tree:
It was never just a tree.
It embodied a childhood and hosted unforgettable stories, the details of which memory would not dare to let go of.
When we were young, my siblings, my cousins, and I would rush to climb the guava tree the moment its season began. Once it bloomed, we would sneak to it every day, watching its tiny flowers swell into small green fruits, then ripen into a soft, fragrant yellow. Each year, at every stage of its growth, we tasted its fruit as though it were the very first time. I loved it when it was still green and hard enough to hurt my teeth, but irresistibly sweet.
I remember conspiring with my cousin, slipping through her brother’s window that opened directly onto the tree, pocketing whatever we could reach. We did it in secret, of course, because our parents always wanted us to wait. They would say, “Let the fruit grow as it should.”
On that same tree, and because of it, I met my childhood friend Hamada who used to visit his grandfather’s house every Thursday and Friday. It was the Sha’th family house, which was right next to ours, the one the guava branches hung over. At first, Hamada would help us pick the fruit from his side, until eventually, he too climbed the tree to join us. We would spend long hours on its branches, talking about ourselves, about school, and about our shared love for guava.
For years, every Thursday, we climbed that tree, we picked guavas and talked for what felt like endless hours—until the day, seeking a safer place than Gaza, Hamada and his family moved to a European country. From that moment on, he never climbed the guava tree again, nor did I know anything about him.
What I do know is that the tree was uprooted, amputated, and killed on October 24, 2023, when the Sha’th family home, Hamada’s grandfather’s house, was bombed.
In that strike, ten members of the Sha’th family were martyred, as was the guava tree.7
The Atlas of Anti-Ruins maps spaces of intimacy: homes, kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, playgrounds, etc. It currently contains twenty homes in Gaza, tracing their architectural development from when they were first built, through their destruction in Israeli military attacks, to finally envision their futurity together with their families. These spaces are often forgotten in grand narratives of state-defined heritage, but are irreplaceable to those who inhabited them. Gaza’s heritage should not be limited to monumental structures. Instead, it should account for each of the homes of a displaced population that has been surviving a genocide. The Atlas of Anti-Ruins contains architectures of dignity, showing the cultural and architectural heritage of Gaza from its inhabitants’ memory. It is not a record of material loss. Rather, it is a soft gesture of remembering as a method of repair.
Ghassan Kanafani, The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine (London: The Tricontinental Society, 1980), 62, ➝.
Mohammed Haddad, “Nakba Day: What Happened in Palestine in 1948?,” Al Jazeera, January 10, 2024, ➝.
“Crisis in Gaza: What to Know and How to Help,” Crisis in Gaza: What to Know and How to Help, International Rescue Committee, October 24, 2025, ➝.
These plans resemble settler-colonial practices of creating a tabula rasa, which violently clear spaces to impose and enforce an out-of-context model of “modernization” while erasing the local population and denying their agency in shaping their city and its suspended future.
Kanafani, The 1936–39 Revolt in Palestine, 64.
“Gaza: Destruction of Vital Lifting Gear Halts Search for Thousands Buried Under Rubble,” UN News, April 22, 2025, ➝.
Yasmin Emara, testimony sent to the author on November 20, 2025, and translated from Arabic by the author.
