12.30am My sister receives a phone call from her friend who is living abroad. With the poor internet connection, our loved ones are making international calls just to check on us. They talk for almost an hour, both of them crying. Their conversation is mainly about the guilt my sister’s friend is feeling due to being away from her, and my sister telling her how much stronger she feels because of her support.
For the first 15 minutes, I am sympathetic, and grateful my sister has wonderful friends during these times. For the second 15 minutes, I start reflecting on my own experience and the wonderful friends I have. After half an hour of continuous crying, I am praying for this sadness-fest to come to an end. I want to close my eyes and get some sleep.
Once my sister is done, she is still very sad. For no reason, I look up and notice the ceiling light. “This is the ugliest ceiling light I have ever seen in my life,” I say.
My sister starts laughing, and so do I.
6am We have had only minutes of sleep when we hear a huge explosion. A house nearby has been bombed. We wake up, terrified, put the cats into their carriers, and quickly put the bags by the door to leave immediately if we have to.
For the next two hours I do not stop shaking. I am so cold that I cover myself with the heavy blanket the family gave us, which I put aside thinking I wouldn’t use it. I want to vomit, but I try to stay calm and still.
No place is safe, and no one is safe. Yet, minutes after the bombing, the grandmother prepares coffee and tea for us and asks if we need some cookies.
8am The internet connection is really bad. Once every three or four hours, I receive some notifications and WhatsApp messages. Nothing else is opening (Facebook, videos, etc). I see a notification from an application called Anghami (the Arabic version of Spotify) telling me that my weekly mixtape is ready! This is a collection of recommended songs based on the songs you have already played. I smile sarcastically and think that nowadays I am listening to a different soundtrack: bombing.
9am The room my sister and I are sharing is a small living room, with couches and small tables. At night the family bring us a mattress, some pillows and two covers, in case someone would like to sleep on the floor. The room is next to a small balcony that we rarely open: the houses here are so close together that using it would feel like an infringement of their privacy. And of course, sitting on balconies is dangerous.
We do open the balcony door from time to time for ventilation. This morning, the younger cat ran on to the balcony after an insect, before I was able to stop it. Going outside to catch it, I feel the sun on my skin for the first time in a long while.
I am not a summer person. I hate the sun, and for the past three months I have been using sunscreen religiously. Yet, this time I held the cat and tilted my face to enjoy the most of its rays. It felt like a hug.
10am Radwa, the eldest granddaughter, enters the room. I ask her how she is doing and notice that she looks pale. I wonder if she is sick, but she answers, looking at the ground, ashamed: “No, I am afraid.” I immediately respond: “I am afraid, too.” She looks at me, surprised. I am sure that she can tell that the adults around her are afraid, but all of them act as if they are not. I continue: “We are going through a very tough period. It is OK to feel scared.” She smiles at me in what I think is a grateful manner.
I find out later that her grandmother performs something we call “fear-cutting” technique in Arabic, on her grandchildren. Fear cutting is a massage using olive oil done on certain parts of the body where it is believed fear is absorbed. The goal is to get rid of all the knots created due to fear. People of all ages use it.
2pm The youngest child (not grandchild) is 16 years younger than his oldest brother (the father of the three kids). He is a very nice kid. When we first arrived, he heard me talking about reading and started asking me about the books I love to read and whether I could recommend some writers to him.
Earlier today, I noticed that he was anxious and was fully dressed. Usually, in times like these, women wear praying clothes because they are easier to move in, and men stay in their pyjamas. His middle brother was dressed up, too. I asked where they were going and he said: “His school friend is at the hospital. His parents and one of his sisters are dead. My brother is terrified, and he wants to visit his friend.”
When they come back, hours later, the teenager comes and sits quietly in the room. My sister and I try to open a conversation and ask how his friend is feeling. He says: “He is doing very well. He has several wounds but the doctor says that everything will be OK.” I want him to express his feelings, so I share with him that he looks worried. He says: “There is something. He does not know that his parents and sister are dead. The doctor asked us not to share the news with him in order for his medical state not to worsen.”
6pm I am losing track of time. Every now and then, I have to ask someone what day or date it is. Most of the time the other person will have to check their phone before replying. I cannot believe that more than a week has passed since the beginning of the escalation.
One of the sons draws my attention to the fact that I am about to take the same medicine for the third time within two hours.
9pm With our friends and family members living outside Gaza, we exchange long messages and detailed phone calls. However, for friends in Gaza, most of communication is limited to a word or two:
“OK?” – “Yes.”
“Updates plz.” – “We’re fine. You?”
And so on.
In a way, I feel that all we need to know is whether the other person is still alive or not.
Monday 16 October
6am Several Gazan families I know have decided to go back to the north. Some of them couldn’t tolerate staying away from their homes, others couldn’t handle the difficult circumstances they had to live in. We decide to stay; it is not safe. One guy I know decided to leave alone after his family refused to go.
8am My muscles are weak; my knuckles and knees hurt. Sleeping for short periods gives you enough energy to wake up but you remain tired all day long, unable to sleep again or think properly.
10am “Do you need us to send you money?” Since the beginning of the escalation, this is the most frequent question we are asked. Luckily, we do not. What we need is for all this to be over, for us to go to our homes and sleep in our beds. The middle son of the hosting family, who is studying at university, says: “If this is over, I will go the university every day without complaining.”
It makes me realise how fortunate I am. The fact that in these times we don’t need money shows how much of a better position we are in, when so many people cannot afford to get their basic needs.
Noon The situation is relatively calm, so we decide to venture out to get some things for the house. I feel surprised seeing the long queue to buy bread. We do not need bread since the grandmother bakes at home using a mud baker (like an oven, but made from mud). There are no water bottles left in the shops.
On our way back, I see a man holding a cat from the street. I am terrified he might hurt it. He takes the cat to a chair on the pavement where he was sitting, and from a plastic bag he takes out some mortadella and feeds it to the cat. In addition, many shops open their doors for people to charge their phones. I am glad to see these simple acts of kindness.
2pm One of the sons of the host family tells me about a big fight that started in the area. After an airstrike, people went to help get injured people out. They immediately covered any dead body out of respect. One man wanted to uncover the body of a young girl whose head had exploded to take a picture of it. The people fought with him and were about to hit him for what he was doing.
I don’t understand why, when there is bombing, people all go to the site. People should run away, not towards it. Sometimes they might cause more harm than good even if the intention is to help.
Since the escalation, I have done my best not to check the internet. In addition to not having a proper connection, I do not want what little is left of my mental health to be ruined. The images, horrible stories and rumours shared online are just awful. However, no matter how I try, some posts pop up. The ones that break my heart the most are about kids. One post spoke about a mother who was fleeing with her family, she wrote the names and contact information on her children’s hands in case they got lost. The other was about two siblings, less than five years old, who were found lost on their own. I believe that eventually they will be reunited with their family, or at least identified.
Another excruciating thing is people who are abroad while their families are in Gaza. I saw a message from a friend in Germany studying pharmacy. He had been unable to reach his family, who had fled. He was panicking. I told him communication is very difficult, even between people in Gaza – you need to call someone 30 or 40 times for the call to go through. I kept trying until I reached his family, made sure they were fine, and told him.
A woman I know got a scholarship to study in the US. She shared a heartbreaking post about how her mother would calm her down saying it’s not bad, even though the news reports, and everybody she knows, say the area is under heavy bombing.
4pm It is no surprise that every family has lost at least a family member or someone they know. The unusual thing would be for a person to have not lost someone close. On WhatsApp, the best platform to communicate when the internet connection is low, I receive messages about a colleague who has lost her nephew; another who has lost a cousin; and a friend whose brother lost his wife.
The autocomplete feature on a mobile brings up potential words based on what you usually write. Now, there is no need to write a condolences message: all I do is type the first word and then start clicking on the following ones that show up to finish the message.
7pm The whole family join us in the room we are staying in. We are talking, then the middle son, who accompanied me out earlier, says: “I understand that many shops were opened to sell bread and basic needs. But can you imagine that the flower shop was open!”
Everyone smiles. But I think how wonderful it would be if someone gave me a bouquet of flowers. Pink and velvet roses … or even better, tulips! That would be amazing.
Source: theguardian
Author: Ziad in Gaza
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