Two friends, Omar Hamad (pharmacist and poet) and Ibrahim Massir (teacher and poet) have achieved the impossible by opening a public library in the middle of hell on earth. The Phoenix Library opened its doors on April 26 of this year, located in an old apartment building on Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, Gaza City, Palestine. The first library opened under a genocide; it defies logic that it exists at all.

Omar began collecting books at a young age after realizing the Israeli occupation was denying him a proper education. By his teens he had acquired a good size collection, which helped him dream “of a world the occupation could never touch.” He entered adulthood with a bedroom library of over 500 books.