"Near the Tent, Under the Clouds": Baraa Alawoor

Baraa Alawoor grew up surrounded by stories and images, with drawing as her only language of expression. Her childhood world was filled with paper dolls, stitched fabrics, and tiny handmade sketchbooks where she scribbled the fairytales she longed to live. “I never had bedtime stories,” Baraa recalls. “So I used to draw one before going to sleep, and then continue it in my dreams.”

With time, she discovered that children’s books were the magical space where art and storytelling intertwined. She began sketching scenes from her daily life, coloring them with her imagination, and sharing them on Facebook. What began as intimate drawings soon reached publishers’ eyes. Offers started arriving, and her childhood dreams took shape in real books. Today, Baraa is both an illustrator and an author of children’s literature, with more than forty children’s books published, several international awards, and works that have traveled across languages and cultures. “I see my work as my way of building an artistic and human world for children,” she says.

But her journey began in scarcity. Growing up in Gaza, she was a difficult child to please artistically. The books, papers, and colors available to her under siege were never enough to unleash her imagination. She explored the world through the simplest sketchbooks she made with her own hands. Later, when she worked with children in art and writing workshops, she realized how political their imagination had become. “The children I met drew nothing but the flag, a rifle, or the Dome of the Rock. Their imagination was caged by conflict. I wanted to open a small window for them, to let them imagine, innovate, and fly without wings.”

That was when she knew: she wanted to become a children’s book illustrator. To reshape Palestinian childhood culture. To show children not only the gray image of war but also the vibrant palette of their heritage. 

Then the war changed everything. At first, she lost the will to do anything but weep, for her homeland, for the people she loved. “I felt I had no desire to live, only to cry for my country and those who left us,” she says. But what brought her back was the terrified eyes and desperate cries of children. She felt a duty to paint these moments for the world to see, to remind it that Gaza’s children deserve peace.

The first thing she drew was a symbolic painting of her lost home and ruined studio, holding both pain and hope. She went on to draw portraits of the children who were taken, like little Yusuf  (the boy with the curly hair) and Hind Rajab. “Every painting told me: do not stop,” she says.

The hardest moment of her life was a phone call from her family, forced to evacuate under fire, leaving what they thought were final words. She was stranded outside Gaza, powerless to reach them. “They asked for my forgiveness and gave me their last wishes, while I sat helplessly on the other end of the line. That moment broke me, but my mother’s voice still carried me through.”

Continuing this path, she says, is not a luxury but a harsh obligation. “Sometimes I feel I need to collapse, but my responsibility towards my family and the children of Gaza forces me to go on.” Though she admits she has lost some of her capacity for wonder, she strives to keep her inner child alive, searching for small details that restore her passion.

Her talent, however, is undeniable. Her book Mama’s Scent, a tender picture book about the unique bond between mother and child, has been translated into eight languages and adapted into audiobooks. She is now represented by the prestigious Andrea Brown Literary Agency in the United States, a rare recognition for a Palestinian artist.

One of her most recent books, Near the Tent, Under the Cloud, is perhaps her most poignant yet. It tells the story of Gaza’s children, wandering in imagination beyond the confines of their tents. Each child dreams a different escape: one captures a dragon and throws it over Jenin, another fishes from Lake Tiberias, another eats knafeh in Jaffa, one battles a crocodile with his bare fists and sends it flying over Jerusalem, and another wraps himself in the moon’s coat woven in Hebron. “Through their dreams, they reclaim Palestine, city by city, cloud by cloud,” Baraa says.

Her art is not just illustration. It is resistance, memory, and a bridge between pain and possibility. For the children of Gaza, her colors are proof that even amidst destruction, imagination still survives.