Where should we go after the last frontiers,

where should the birds fly after the last sky?
— Mahmoud Darwish

The sky, once boundless, promising vision, now bears witness to the claustrophobia of war. There is no space left for birds to fly, nor for humans to breathe. Yet here we are, forced to navigate this collapsing world, struggling to articulate a resistance that is more than a scream, more than an elegy. 

***

Writing becomes fraught. Each sentence feels labored and inadequate, each thought interrupted by the latest news alert signaling more loss, more devastation. 

***

There’s something unspeakably tragical in watching the sky become a graveyard for dreams. Mahmoud Darwish’s question swirls like a cloud of smoke over war-torn landscapes, a line that lingers in the throat, echoing long after it is uttered. This is the question of exile—not merely the exile of bodies but of minds, of futures. It is the kind of question that unravels the very fabric of hope, one thread at a time, until all that remains is a thin, trembling thread that still insists on holding the weight of everything that has been lost.

***

Yet, I persist, because to write is to resist suffocation—to carve out a space where we can breathe, reflect, and imagine another future. For me, this space is not merely about mourning but about imagining another way forward—one where care and resistance intertwine, offering both a response to violence and a perspective for imagining future possibilities.

***

In such moments, the feminist politics of care emerges, not as comfort, but as an uncompromising demand for a different kind of future. It is the insistence that in a world that constantly seeks to fragment and silence, our connections can be the most radical acts of defiance. To care is not simply to nurture but to resist the forces that seek to destroy, insisting on life in the face of systems designed to deny it.

For Palestinian women, the fight against occupation is not only a struggle for land but for existence itself. They are forced to navigate the dual oppressions of colonialism and patriarchy, resisting both the physical seizure of their homeland and the ideological control of their bodies and identities. Scholars like Nahla Abdo and Islah Jad have shown us how this resistance takes many forms—whether in the streets or in the intimate spaces of daily life. Women, in their acts of care, turn the domestic into the political, challenging the structures that attempt to define and confine them.

Reclaiming Narratives 

Nahla Abdo’s (2014) work on Palestinian women in Israeli prisons captures how care becomes a form of rebellion within the most oppressive conditions. In these prisons, where every attempt is made to strip women of their political power, their very survival becomes a statement of resistance. Through acts of solidarity and shared care, these women build a form of resilience that the prison walls cannot contain. It is here that the politics of care become not just a necessity but a refusal—refusal to let the violence of occupation sever the bonds of community and resistance.

Care, in this sense, is far from passive. It is an active, radical force that refuses to submit to the fragmentation imposed by colonial violence. Joan Tronto’s (2013) theory of a “caring democracy” emphasizes that care must extend beyond personal relationships to the political arena, where the well-being of entire communities must be defended. In Gaza and the West Bank, where state structures fail to protect or even acknowledge the rights of their people, care becomes a collective act of survival, where women form networks that sustain life amid destruction.

Wars are often framed in terms of power, victory and loss, with little attention paid to those who survive its impact in quieter, less visible ways. The language of war is overwhelmingly masculine, glorifying battles and erasing the lived experiences of women and marginalized communities. Feminist scholars have long insisted that this erasure is itself a form of violence, obscuring the ways in which women are affected by and respond to conflict.

In Palestine, they are not merely survivors of war; they are active agents in shaping resistance. They organize, educate, and build the structures that hold their communities together. For Palestinians, the act of caring for their communities, of ensuring that they survive in the face of genocide, is a form of political warfare.

These acts are not celebrated in the grand narratives of conflict, but they are no less powerful. Lila Abu-Lughod (2013), in her critique of Western feminism’s tendency to overlook the specificity of women’s experiences in colonized nations, reminds us that we must listen to the voices of those living under occupation on their own terms. The siege on Gaza is not just a military operation; it is a form of cultural and social suffocation that denies people the right to imagine a different world. 

Therefore, their resistance is not just about enduring war but about creating a future in the shadow of it. Their care is not just about survival; it is about imagining a different future. Their resistance is about preserving not only life but memory, culture, and identity—ensuring that even in the face of violence, something vital survives.

Breaking the War Drum 

War does not only manifest in the destruction of homes and infrastructure. It seeps into the environment and the mind, a slow violence that poisons the land, air, and water, leaving long-lasting scars. The ecological devastation caused by bombings and blockades adds yet another layer of suffocation, as even the earth itself seems to betray the people who rely on it.

Frantz Fanon’s (1963) analysis of colonialism’s psychological impact resonates deeply here. The violence inflicted on the colonized is not just physical; it is a systematic assault on the mind, an attempt to break the spirit of an entire people. The constant surveillance, the checkpoints, the looming threat of death—they create a world where breathing freely feels like a luxury. In Palestine, this psychological suffocation compounds the physical destruction, making survival an act of profound resistance.

Yet, despite this, the feminist politics of care insists on the possibility of healing, of survival beyond mere endurance. Palestinian people, in tending to their families and communities, offer a form of resistance that reclaims agency from the grasp of despair. Through small acts of care—whether planting gardens amid rubble or holding spaces for grief—they refuse to let the occupation define the limits of their lives.

To live under occupation is to live in a world where the future is constantly in question. José Esteban Muñoz, in Cruising Utopia (2009), speaks of hope as a political act, a refusal to accept the present as the only possible reality. For Palestinians, to imagine a future beyond the last sky is itself a form of defiance, an insistence that the violence of today will not foreclose the possibilities of tomorrow.

This kind of hope is not easy. It requires a radical reimagining of what freedom might look like and what justice might mean. It requires us to envision a world where care and solidarity replace violence and fragmentation, where the skies are not filled with drones but with birds, and where children can dream without fear.

Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad, in her poem What I Will, captures the essence of this refusal to be complicit in violence:

I will not dance to your war drum…
I will not kill for you.
Especially, I will not die for you.

Her words are a declaration that, even in the face of overwhelming forces, there is space for resistance. Not through the perpetuation of violence, but through the insistence on life—on preserving, nurturing, and imagining a future that defies the logic of war.

World Hold On: The Sky Has Fallen 

As writers, academics, journalists, politicians, artists, activists and humans we are tasked with more than bearing witness; we must also imagine and create new possibilities. Edward Said’s (1994) call for intellectuals to speak truth to power is not just about critiquing the present but about shaping the discourse that will guide the future. This means centering the voices of those who are too often left out of the narrative—those whose care for their communities is a form of resistance, as vital as any protest or armed struggle.

Returning to Darwish’s question—”Where should the birds fly after the last sky?”—we realize that the answer lies in the act of imagining. To care and to resist is to envision a world where even the most devastated spaces can be rebuilt, where the sky, no longer a cage, becomes a place of flight once again. 

***

The feminist politics of care and antimilitarism offer us this vision, where survival is not merely about enduring violence but about creating a future where the last sky is no longer the final frontier, but the horizon of something yet to be realized and… lived for.

The essay is also available in Macedonian on the link.

Bibliography:

Abdo, N. (2014). Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System. Pluto Press.

Abu-Lughod, L. (2013). Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press.

Darwish, M. (2003). Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché, University of California Press.

Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.

Hammad, S. (2010). Born Palestinian, Born Black: & The Gaza Suite. UpSet Press.

Muñoz, J. Е. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press.

Said, E.W. (1996). Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. New York: Vintage Books, A Division Of Random House, Inc.

Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York University Press.

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Liri Kuçi (she/her) is an Albanian feminist scholar and activist who co-founded Shota.al, an intersectional feminist magazine available in both Albanian and English. With a Master’s in Transnational Politics from SOAS University of London, she focuses her work on deconstructing how underlayers of systemic violence intersect. Liri’s work interrogates the state’s complicity in femicide, labor exploitation, and socio-economic marginalization. Her activism demands structural change and situates local feminist struggles within a broader transnational framework for transformative justice.