Gregor Samsa, the vermin: Reading Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ while Palestinians are killed

I have experienced a bomb blast in close proximity only once. In the wee hours of the morning, an empty room outside our apartment block in Karachi blew up. This was the 1990s, when such blasts were not extraordinary events in the city. While my grandmother and I were insulated from any direct contact with flying objects because our apartment was located at the back of the building, all the glass in the windows of our five-story apartment block was shattered, and the window-frames broke out of their steel welds. I don’t remember what was left of the room where the explosion took place, but whatever was left of it was cleared away in a couple of days. I was seven or eight years old, and somewhere in my heart I still carry the terror of that blast.

As bombs continue to rain down on children and hospitals in Gaza, as the siege continues, I wonder what the bombs do to the small hearts of the children. When these kids and babies look out of the windows and breathe the sulphuric air packed with dust, how do they feel? It’s a terrifying thing to ponder – we all know there is...

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