Hope & Play 2023 Calendar

Amongst the hardship, the violence, the dispossession and the killing, Palestinians make space for beauty. Whether in poetry, in art, in music or simply in daily resistance, Palestinians love life and love beauty. 

That’s the beauty we are commemorating with this year’s calendar from Hope and Play. It’s a hard-won beauty, a bittersweet beauty, and a beauty that’s often wrought of a pain that shouldn’t be suffered.

But it is beauty.

A beauty captured by Palestine’s de facto national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, in his beautiful poem “And we love life”.

And we love life if we find a way to it.

We dance between martyrs, and between martyrs, we raise minarets for violets and palm trees.

And we love life if we find a way to it.

We steal threads from silkworms to build us a sky and we fence this departure.

We open the garden gate for jasmines to step out into the streets like a beautiful day.

And we love life if we find a way to it.

We plant, wherever we settle, some fast-growing plants, and wherever we settle we harvest the dead.

We play the lute in colors of the far, far away, and we draw a neigh in the sands of our path.

We write our names in stone, O lightning, brighten the night a little

And we love life if we find a way to it…

All profit from the calendar will support Hope and Play's grassroots-delivered trauma therapy projects for children in Gaza. They aim to get to between 400 and 500 children each year. They also train graduates in delivery psychosocial therapy to increase capability within Gaza after our projects are done.