海角大神

On a Gaza City road strewn with rubble, beside a municipal park now crammed with makeshift tents, stands a small rented apartment that has become an oasis for rescued books.聽

The contrast that greets visitors of the Phoenix Library as they step off the damaged streets is immediate. The floors are freshly carpeted, the walls newly painted with murals of writers and snippets of verse. Patrons sit reading in plush chairs or scan the spines of some of the 6,000 books neatly arranged in shelves along the walls.聽

The library, named for the mythical bird reborn from ashes, emerged from Gaza鈥檚 ashes this April.聽

鈥淲e wanted to create a place where people could sit, read, drink coffee, discuss ideas, and feel human again,鈥� says Omar Hamad, one of the library鈥檚 co-founders. 鈥淭hat itself is a form of resistance.鈥�

An ambulant library

Long before Mr. Hamad had a formal library, he was already a librarian.聽

A pharmacist from Beit Hanoun and a lifelong reader, Mr. Hamad spent years accumulating books. Before the war, friends frequently came by to borrow from his collection of about 400 titles, which ranged from rare volumes of Palestinian history to translated copies of Tolstoy and Shakespeare.聽

And so, when Israel invaded Gaza in October 2023, 鈥渢he first thing I thought about was the books,鈥� Mr. Hamad says.聽

When his family was forced to flee in the early days of the fighting, he took as many as he could. Over the next two years, roughly 120 of his most irreplaceable volumes traveled with him through a dozen more displacements, swaddled in blankets or stuffed in bags as he carried them from city to city. Mr. Hamad built shelves to display them inside the tents where he lived.聽

Meanwhile, during the war鈥檚 brief ceasefires, Mr. Hamad and his friend Ibrahim Massri, a writer and teacher, began venturing into damaged homes, universities, and abandoned libraries to rescue books from the wreckage.聽

The war eventually claimed dozens of libraries and archives. At the Islamic University of Gaza, Mr. Hamad found a storied library and its collection of a quarter million volumes reduced to a crater filled with twisted metal and torn pages. Over two days in early 2025, he carried off hundreds of still-intact books.聽

By then, Gaza residents were starving. At the library, 鈥減eople were taking books to burn them for cooking fires,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 blame them: Bread had become more important than anything else.鈥�

Still, Mr. Hamad says it was 鈥渙ne of the hardest things鈥� he witnessed during the war.聽

At first, the itinerant collector didn鈥檛 have a plan for the books he rescued, only an instinct to save them. He was particularly concerned with texts related to Palestinian history, heritage, and literature.聽

Building from scratch

The idea for a fixed library came after a ceasefire was declared in October 2025. Its architects were Mr. Hamad, Mr. Massri, and Mr. Hamad鈥檚 uncle Hussam Hamad, a scholar of human resources management.聽

To fund their idea, Mr. Hamad and Mr. Massri started a campaign on the crowdfunding site Chuffed. They wrote that they wished to create a home for 鈥渂ooks carried through fire and dreams protected under bombs.鈥�

The campaign raised more than $100,000, which the group used to rent a damaged apartment in Gaza City and rebuild the ruined space almost entirely from scratch. Materials were scarce and expensive due to restrictions on construction supplies entering Gaza.聽

As a result, the project took more than six months to complete. The three men and their team also did all of the electrical work, painting, carpentry, and shelving themselves.

鈥淯nder normal conditions, any library could be set up in two weeks,鈥� Mr. Hamad says. 鈥淏ut we were building under siege.鈥澛�

On one wall of the library is a painting of a phoenix in the four colors of the Palestinian flag 鈥� red, green, black, and white 鈥� with books beneath its wings.聽

Nearby, a Quranic verse is inscribed on the wall: 鈥淩ead in the name of your Lord who created. He taught by the pen.鈥�

The library鈥檚 collection ranges widely. There are books on psychology, religion, economics, medicine, and Palestinian studies. In the literature section, copies of 鈥淒on Quixote,鈥� 鈥淎nimal Farm,鈥� and 鈥淟ove in the Time of Cholera鈥澛爏it alongside the works of the great Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, creating a sense of literature stitched together from many traditions and held in place by the act of reading, rather than the circumstances outside.

About 2,000 volumes on the shelves come from the personal collections of Palestinian academics, researchers, and students killed during the war.聽

Other titles were bought cheaply from improvised wartime secondhand markets, where displaced families and salvagers sold piles of books by weight.聽

A cultural rebirth

Mr. Hamad says the library is especially important for children growing up during the war. Most have lost a year or more of their education, with 97% of Gaza鈥檚 schools damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment, and its education system 鈥渙n the brink of collapse,鈥� according to the United Nations.

鈥淎 child who should be in fifth grade may barely know how to read now,鈥� Mr. Hamad says. 鈥淭heir whole environment has changed.鈥�

The library already contains a collection of children鈥檚 books and intends to open a dedicated children鈥檚 activity room with reading sessions and educational programs.聽

In the meantime, visitors are already traveling long distances to spend time here.聽

Among them are sisters Nunez and Layan Abu Ras, engineering students from Gaza City, who visit multiple times a week.聽

鈥淲hen we heard there was a library, we had to come,鈥� says Nunez. 鈥淚n the middle of all this destruction, finding a place full of books felt beautiful.鈥�

During the war, both sisters found escape in reading. Layan says she finished around 50 novels, many of them mystery novels. Nunez, meanwhile, loved reading about psychology. Now, the library is expanding her tastes. She is currently making her way through 鈥淐rime and Punishment.鈥澛�

鈥淭he smell of books, the atmosphere 鈥� it feels completely different from everything outside,鈥� she says.聽

For Mr. Hamad, the return to reading after months focused only on survival has also been transformative.

鈥淲hen I picked up a book again, I felt human,鈥� he says. 鈥淓verything that had happened before suddenly felt far away.鈥�

Outside the walls of his library, much of Gaza remains in ruins. But inside, as readers quietly turn pages, it feels to him that a cultural rebuilding has begun.