WORD: Jamila & The Other Heroes - HIJARNA
Jamila of Jamila & The Other Heroes talks about ‘Hijarna', memory, and the long road to collective liberation.
For Jamila & The Other Heroes, 'Hijarna' is a song about carrying weight. Taking its name from the Arabic word for 'our stones', the track reflects on the heaviness that has accumulated since October 2023 and the start of the ongoing devastation in Gaza.
On this episode of Word, Jamila walks through what the song is built to hold. It opens as an act of memory, for everyone killed in Gaza and across the region, but the band resists picturing that loss as simply loss. Instead, the martyred are imagined mid-flight, fearless, building a fully free Palestine somewhere beyond this world, while the living stay behind to return to their destroyed homes and rebuild them. The stones shift meaning in that moment: the same weight that's been our burden becomes the material we rebuild with.
Jamila also honours the global solidarity the world has shown Palestinians, still visible in the streets as people continue carrying their stones alongside them. She frames the moment without despair: not a sprint but a marathon, a long road toward collective liberation, and "Hijarna" hopes to offer fuel for that road.
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