Two quick notes before Ahmed Masoud’s Yet Still I Run.

First, we’re still seeking new runners. Please invite folks who may be interested. I’ll pitch the Iqraa program to any church, mosque, temple, or civic association you point to.

  • Thanks to Jo for arranging for me to talk with members of her church, Saints Peter & Paul, last Sunday.  What a beautiful church!
  • Thank you to Miko for agreeing to host an info session at Palestine House of Freedom on May 22 (Friday) at 3:30 pm. The address is 650 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Suite 50, Washington DC 20003.
  • The link to register for the training program (choose $30/Iqraa): MCC training
  • Please help get the word out by posting the attached flier on your social media.

 The nave at Saints Peter & Paul

Second, Iqraa is hosting 8 training runs again this year we’re looking for volunteers to host by providing food. I’ll bring water and Gatorade and host the first run on May 16. The dates after that: Jun 27, Jul 25, Aug 1, Aug 22, Aug 29, Oct 3, Oct 17. Let me know if you can help.

Finally, here’s Ahmed Masoud’s poem, transcribed from a video in which he addressed the UN’s Palestinian Rights Committee in June 2025 (mistakes in punctuation etc. are mine). Yet Still I Run captures so much of Gaza’s heartbreak, including the bitter irony that, as Masoud said, he wrote it after the “ceasefire” when he was “jubilant about the idea that the war might finally end.”

Yet still I run

I run to you from Khan Younis to Jabalia

Steps entangled with 300,000 other feet

All hurrying, longing, dreaming

A unified mass, a human avalanche from south to north.

Inhale, exhale, parched mouth, smelly breath

But the sea breeze washed them away.

Only I had you waiting on the finishing line

Only I am composing lyrics in my mind.

I can’t make them rhyme, or put in neat words

I’m thinking of metaphors

But the tents in al-Mawasi kept my imagination.

I run and think

Will you kiss my sweaty face?

Will you remember my eyes?

Rubble was everywhere. Dust.

From Wadi Gaza to Abu Mazen roundabout

My nose is pinched, my heart is squeezed.

Yet still I run

Past Yasser Arafat’s compound, past Al-Shalihat

Where you and I once swum and kissed for the first time.

Rubble carpets everything. Past al-Azhar University

Where young lovers once stood, dreamy faces of peace

Where you and I once led a demonstration.

Nothing is left of it there,

No beautiful people, no grumpy lecturers.

No more noisy street sellers, hassling taxi drivers,

Falafel smell, donkey carts.

Yet still I run

To Al-Faluja in Jabalia Camp

Where they told me you would be.

Nothing is familiar. I’m losing my sense of direction.

Yet still I run

Headstones, broken olive trees, tanks, marks on the ground.

Everything is dark. The flowers in my hand look sad.

I count. Two, three, four graves. Yours is the last grave on the right corner, they said.

Yet still I run

To the far corner.

I imagine you sitting under a tree, smiling,

Asking me, why I was late, 15 months late?

Yet still I run,

Yet still I hope to find your body one day. 

~Ahmed Masoud

Friends, last Saturday we ran at Peirce Mill (photo) and this Saturday at 0800 we’re again in the grand green of Rock Creek Park, this time at Candy Cane City.

Peirce Mill (also present, Shobila and Najwa)

Yet still we run.