From Melancholy to ‘Fagadaan’: Naming the Pain of Gaza

By Haidar Eid  

It’s not romantic melancholy or existential questioning that you may see on the streets of Gaza. Rather, it’s a unique condition: Fagadaan, Loss.

In his memoir, Istanbul, Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk devotes an entire chapter to the concept of melancholy and its relationship to the city he loved and grew up in. He addresses the centrality of melancholy in Istanbul’s culture, in…