A sense of familiarity greets me when I arrive at Norwich station; years ago, I would regularly run documentary workshops at UEA. I’d spend a week teaching students the basics of camerawork and editing, so that they could make short portraits of their local area and learn how documenting is also the process of putting a frame around reality. It was a wonderful way to encounter pockets of Norfolk — from local businesses, musicians and artists, to fisherman and the art of crab dressing. We’d end these weeks of intense film production with a nice meal — the most memorable remains a dish of sea bass, baked with spring onions, hazelnuts and orange peel. It is the memory of this delicate flavour combination that reels me in on my first wander through the streets of Norwich, and I find The Bicycle Shop shortly after setting my bags down (sadly the sea bass is no longer on the menu!)

I have come prepared, food-wise, so that I am not further distracted. Through the week, I’ve been slowly working my way through my hamper of homemade provisions — ribollita, labneh, stuffed cabbage, scones and marmalade — while pondering the translation of a text that reflects on food, seasonality, time and memory. The rain has helped keep me focused, but on Tuesday the sun dazzled and I went out in search of persimmon, one of late autumn’s seasonal delights. I found some in the lively central market, along with a wonderful range of fresh and local produce. The taste of persimmon conjures my grandmother’s giggle and her majestic tree in Tehran, which will be heavy with fruit by this time of year. The fleeting juxtaposition of worlds always moves me.

On Thursday 7th December, I wake up to the terrible news that wonderful poet Benjamin Zephaniah has died. Amid the many memories, sparkling TV appearances and beloved poems being shared online, one friend tells me that she is looking for something that had made a huge impression on her as a child: Benjamin Zephaniah reading a poem on a children’s TV show. She doesn’t remember the poem but the show was called WHAM BAM STRAWBERRY JAM.

Serendipitously, the passage I am translating relates to strawberries as a quintessential summer fruit — to desire one in winter could be read as a wish to stay alive. I marvel at such a name for a children’s programme — jam being a preserve of time, as much as it is of taste. And I think, inevitably, of Gaza, and its strawberries. This week marks two months since the relentless bombing of the strip began and on Friday 8th December, it is the towering poet and academic Refaat Alareer whose shocking death we mourn; he was targeted and assassinated by Israeli forces. In remembering his friend, the Gazan poet Mosa Abu Tohab shares that they used to pick strawberries together.

And so, come Saturday, there is only one thing to do — I’ve spent every weekend of the past two months walking through London, where I live, with friends — marching, calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide taking place in plain sight in Gaza. I note that there is no organised campaign in Norwich and so instead I follow the haphazard map of writings on the wall and comb the streets for a sign of solidarity. Eventually, I find a small tag on Kings Street: Free Palestine — one of the two things Benjamin Zephaniah always said he wanted to see in his lifetime, along with a free South Africa. He was a trustee of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Somewhere beyond the seasons, I hope that he and Refaat are sharing strawberries. As for the rest of us, we must keep marching. To stay alive to the bitter reality of these times, so that we can walk towards the promise of sweeter days, towards the taste of strawberries in Gaza.

Elhum Shakerifar is a writer and translator, most recently of PEN Award-winning, Warwick Prize-nominated Negative of a Group Photograph by Azita Ghahreman, translated alongside poet Maura Dooley (Bloodaxe Books, 2018). She is currently one of Writerz & Scribez’ inaugural poetry Griots. Elhum is also a BAFTA-nominated producer and curator working through her London-based company Hakawati (‘storyteller’ in Arabic).

This Dragon Hall Cottage Visible Communities residency is generously supported by the Francis W Reckitt Arts Trust.

Header image (c) Mosab Abu Toha