6am I wake up thinking about my tennis session. Tennis, don’t I sound fancy! This year I decided to take care of my mental and physical health. This means no stress, no negative energy and definitely more tennis.
I check my mobile to see what else I have scheduled. A visit to the doctor and some errands. I see a message from my friend telling me it seems we won’t meet for tennis. There is a “situation”. As a Gazan, there is no confusion about what is meant. An escalation. Again.
How many times do we have to go through this? Since 2000, it has been going on, non-stop, leaving more bruises on our souls and taking away big chunks of our lives. Cliched, isn’t it? But that is the only way to describe the impact of what has been happening. Gazans are walking trauma vessels … living in constant fear for their lives and futures.
I wash my face and try to check the news. The internet connection is bad. A thought pops into my head and I start frantically searching the flat. My sister looks confused: “What are you looking for?”
“The apartment ownership contract,” I say. “I need to find it. If our building gets bombed, I need evidence that this apartment belongs to me.”
Having keys to the apartment is not enough – living in this apartment for years is not enough, either. When I find the contract, I relax a bit. It is amazing how accustomed we have gotten to misery. Death and bombs are the first thoughts that come to our minds when “a situation” starts.
I sit on my chair, look at my messages and wonder – what will we lose this time? What part of our soul, if any is left, will be broken? Which one of my friends will lose their lives? Or will it be me? Will it be me?
If I hadn’t been Palestinian, I would have wanted to be Finnish. I read once that Finland is the happiest place on Earth. I want to be happy, where all I care about is my health and my tennis session.
Sunday 8 October
8pm I am thirsty. I can’t find the bottle of water I thought I had in the flat.
I receive a text from a friend. “The night has come. I am terrified. Will we be able to witness another morning?” Gazans are most terrified of the night hours when most of the bombing takes place. My sister reminds me to slightly open the windows because a nearby attack could shatter the glass. I told my friend to stay hopeful. I am a hypocrite – asking people to be optimistic in times where nothing is certain. I keep forgetting to drink water.
11pm I am thirsty, I need something to drink.
We have packed our essentials in case we need to flee. We have the two carriers to put our cats in. “What about the fish?” I say to my sister. As heavy bombing goes on, not knowing where the explosions are coming from, my sister and I started thinking of creative ways to save the fish. Believe it or not, it is a family member, and it has survived a lot with us. If asked to evacuate, we wondered if we could hold the small water tank in our hands, but no, we live on the sixth floor and we will be panicking, running down the stairs. The tank might break. After a lot of deliberation, our tired brains – with no sleep in 36 hours – decide we will use a plastic jar with a lid. We made small holes in the top and filled it with water. We have a plan.
Monday 9 October
1am Complete darkness, no electricity, where did I put the water bottle? I really need something to drink.
I can hear the neighbours outside arguing. Apparently, one of them still has some bread and was offering it to the other, who was too embarrassed to take it, and offered to pay him for it. Gazans are weird. We would offer you the last bit of food we have. Some bakeries are still working, but everyone is terrified of going into the street to buy essentials. No place is safe, no one is safe.
2:30am I find the bottle of water.
A message from a friend abroad asking if I had enough sleep. I tell her that the bombing keeps us awake. She says how sorry she is, and then shares an idea. I am 100% sure she thinks it is helpful. “Why don’t you wear earpieces? You can sleep then.”
People sympathise, but they cannot relate to what you are going through. My friend does not understand that bombing is not about the noises, it is about the possibility of sudden death. Without saying goodbye to our loved ones, before completing the projects we started, before hugging those we care about and asking for their forgiveness. She knows, but definitely doesn’t realise, the severity of the situation. I choose not to respond to the text.
5am We survived another night. Every inch of my body aches – lack of sleep is a torture. My throat is dry. I look at the untouched water bottle … I really need to drink.
Later I’ve had to evacuate my home.
The message came on the building’s WhatsApp group. I stood up calmly and told my sister it was our time. “The whole area needs to evacuate.” No other communication was shared, we knew what to do, we have planned for this.
I went to grab the younger cat, who is easier to catch. I put her in the carrier by the door. My sister went for the bigger one. She caught it after some effort and put it in the other carrier. She took the fish out of the tank and put it in the plastic jar with holes on top. Then we went to the door, grabbed the bags with our legal documents, passports and essentials, and left.
I live in a 14-storey building with four apartments on each level. I have never really interacted with any of the residents. I mostly see people by the elevator and we exchange polite smiles before going behind our own doors.
People were running down the stairs. A man was holding two children while his wife was dragging a small suitcase, and their teenage daughter, tears running down her eyes, was yelling: “I don’t want to leave … I don’t want to leave.”
I asked my sister: “Did you put the fish in the jar?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pick it up?”
“I thought you got it.”
I put the key back in the door, unlocked it and my sister ran inside, got the fish and we left. We did our best to run in between the many people going down. A couple of women were running, yet talking.
“But where will we go?”
“Anywhere, we’ll think about it later.”
We reached the street and everyone started going in different directions. People were getting angry with each other, some were crying, some were confused. We stopped in the middle of the street and started phoning friends.
The first we called was also evacuating. The second welcomed us.
Later still We reach their house, exhausted. They live on the seventh floor and the lift isn’t working because there is no electricity.
Our friends are a family of nine – husband, wife, six children and the grandmother. They are sleep-deprived, you can see how tired and afraid they all are. They welcomed us with weak smiles. They offer us coffee and cookies stuffed with dates.
We all sit there, coffee and sweets untouched, and face the long night ahead.
The mother calls her brother, who lives on our street, where we had just evacuated from. He is heading to another sibling’s house for refuge. She worries that he and his family haven’t arrived there yet, she asks him to call her the minute they do.
Sitting between her youngest children, a boy of four and a girl of six, I wonder about the sad life ahead of them, the many escalations they will witness – if they are lucky enough to survive this one. I ask her: “How are your children doing?”
“They are coping well and they don’t feel afraid when there is bombing, especially Nour.” She says the word especially in a way that I could tell she wasn’t being honest. She asks the children to go inside and then she tells me, in a lowered voice, that her daughter is terrified.
The bombs start; evacuating our block means that we are out of the extreme danger of a targeted area, it does not mean that we are safe.
With the first airstrike the building shakes, the pressure outside is so strong that wind pushes out the curtains. Nour starts screaming, she goes to her mother and holds tight. A series of strikes follow and all of us sit holding on tight to our seats, flinching with every hit. The mother is patting Nour’s shoulder, saying: “Everything is going to be OK.”
Once the bombs stop, she asks her middle daughter to take the children and prepare sandwiches for them. When they disappear, she says: “I am so worried about her, she is very afraid.”
I tell her that I think expressing fear is the healthy thing. The fact that the rest of us, including the four-year-old, remained silent, is unhealthy and shows our trauma. The other children are focused on their phones, checking on their friends.
A couple of hours later, the eldest son comes and says that his uncle’s building, the one who lives near to us, was destroyed. We are in shock. The mother starts calling friends of her brother to find out if he knows or not. She starts crying, while asking them to support him and never leave him alone. She speaks about how hard he worked to buy his apartment and on renovating it.
I feel extremely sorry for his loss and terrified that my building is next. Her husband and the children are sitting around her, all quiet. Then I see Nour pat her mother’s shoulder and tell her: “Everything is going to be OK Mama, everything is going to be OK.”
Tuesday 10 October
I haven’t slept in four days.
It is not for the lack of trying; I did my best to close my eyes and just relax. Then the airstrikes hit, and I find myself jumping off whatever I am sleeping on, a mattress on the floor at our friend’s home, or an uncomfortable chair at the second friend’s home we shifted to after.
The nights are terror, and once the light of dawn comes, the adrenaline of survival kicks in and the new day starts. Watching news, talking to loved ones, complaining about the poor internet connection and no electricity.
“We were told we will get four hours of electricity a day, almost two days have passed and nothing happened,” the lady we are staying with says.
People in Gaza have used many solutions to the electricity problem over the years, including backup batteries for charging phones, LED lights and the internet router. Electricity generators for part-rental became widespread, with people paying eight times the price of normal electricity. This, of course, is only for those with the ability to pay. During the “escalation”, the generator owner provided electricity for a few hours, aware of the shortage of fuel and the possibility of fuel cuts.
Every inch of my body aches, but I am irritated. I have this urge to scream yet I am too exhausted.
“Would you like to shower?” my friend asks me.
Oh my God! I haven’t showered in four days. Another reason I’m irritated. Usually, when you go to other people’s homes for refuge, taking a shower is off the table. It is enough that they are hosting you, feeding you and keeping you “safe”.
The second family we are staying with is an extended one. One lot lives on the second floor, where we are, and the others on the fifth. We all gather on the second floor at night because it is easier to flee if we have to, and – I’m never sure if this is accurate or not – it’s supposedly safer than upstairs.
9pm The bombing has broken the bathroom on the second floor. So I need to shower on the fifth floor. The others are worried – taking a shower at night could be risky.
They all looked at me while I gathered my stuff as if I was an astronaut preparing his equipment to go to outer space (in my case it was boxers, undershirt and a shirt – I wasn’t going to change my shorts because I have only one pair with me). I had lots of advice.
“Stay close to the stairs and avoid the windows.”
“Do it fast, no more than five minutes.”
“Keep your clothes next to you so you can grab them fast if a bombing happens.”
I was less afraid and more excited; a shower!
I took my shower very quickly, dried my body with the towel that smelled of coconut freshener. After finishing, I vowed that I would never, ever buy a coconut freshener so I wouldn’t remember these days.
I go down, feeling better, and despite all the chaos around, I lay my body over a couch and sleep for a couple of hours … it was great.
Wednesday 11 October
I am grateful my mother is dead.
She died last year. Since then, I have been through a journey of healing and self-reflection. It is weird how the loss of your loved ones opens your heart to many truths and realisations.
Now, amid the destruction, memories of my mother keep coming. Some funny and some sad. At the house of the first family we took refuge at, the woman told us how much she loved my mother. They were our nextdoor neighbours for seven years and she would spend many of her days at our house with her young children. Once, she lost count of time and stayed till 7pm.
She said: “I will never forget how my husband knocked on your door, and he looked at me and said, I think you need to pack your bags and go live with them.”
In the past 25 years my mother rarely left home but, somehow, she managed to establish some solid friendships.
4am Awake.
Someone says: “It is better that your mother did not witness these horrible days we are going through.” I believe this. I am grateful that my mother did not have to go through another escalation, to feel the fear and to be evacuated from her home.
My mother’s safety used to be my big worry. She was an elderly, overweight woman who could barely walk. One time there was bombing and everyone in the building evacuated, but we used to live on the fourth floor so there was no time to go down the stairs at her pace. I remember her, sitting on her couch, with me covering her body with mine, telling her that she will be safe.
Is my mother safe now? In the past, a graveyard in Gaza was bombed. Will the graveyard where my mother is buried be bombed? Will I be able to go and cover her grave with my body and tell her she will be safe?
I miss my mother a lot.
Thursday 12 October
“I lost track of my family; it was very dark, and the bombing was everywhere. My daughter and I kept walking, barefoot, until we reached my aunt’s house. The next day I found out that my family were hosted by a family we don’t know. They saw them fleeing and welcomed them into their home.”
My friend Samar is on the phone. Airstrikes had targeted a location near her house.
Samar is everyone’s friend. She is the one you go to when you need guidance or support. She was contacting everyone to check on them and make sure they were fine. She is 44 with a 17-year-old daughter, but looks 25. One time we agreed that her motto in life should be “getting wiser yet looking younger”.
She tells me she wants to go back to her house to collect their things. She had never had to evacuate in the previous escalations, so I find myself giving her guidance for once.
“Here is what you need to take with you …”. As I speak, I I feel the sensation that I am too accustomed to this. It breaks my heart that this good person, who is kind to everyone, is facing this horrible situation.
“Your medicine, take as much as you can. Money, passports. Clothes – pack extra underwear. Tissues. Your house keys – never miss those, I was about to drop mine when we evacuated. Deodorant, toothbrush, your laptop, charger and powerbank …”
I feel silence on the other side, I’m afraid we lost the connection.
“Samar, are you there?”
“Yes. It is just overwhelming.”
Then she says: “There is a small box I keep some precious things in, like my daughter’s first dress and some letters. I will take it. You know what else it has? Do you remember that time when all our group went out to the ice-cream shop? We took a napkin and we all signed our names on? You laughed at us and said this is what teenagers do. I still have it, and I will take it.”
I feel helpless not being able to go help my friend. I thought about why a 17-year-old girl was running barefoot for her life in the middle of the night.
I wish Samar good luck and hang up.
In Gaza, men don’t cry. Since childhood, boys are taught not to cry because they are men and tough. Growing up, they realise that expressing their feelings is rarely welcomed, and if they do, they will be judged and categorised as feminine (never a bad thing!). They become adults acquainted with the habit of bottling their emotions.
During these devastating times, I try to stay in touch with my friends. My female friends share their sadness, fear and all ranges of emotions they have. My male friends exchange few words. “I am fine.” “Good.” “The situation is bad.” “Such and such is expected to happen.” Even when I encourage them to share more, they don’t.
By Gaza standards, I belong to the “soft” side of the masculinity spectrum. I cry and never feel ashamed. This has caused me a lot of problems. However, I have to admit that when we evacuated the first time, I did benefit from the pressure that our society puts on men to never express themselves.
It had been a very long day, with people talking, screaming and crying in the street. The family we went to were worried and they received bad news. There was the non-stop chaos in my head. Late at night, and with the continuous, terrifying bombing, the host wife, her children and mother-in-law decided to go to the basement for more safety; my sister went with them. Upstairs, the husband, the oldest son and I stayed in the apartment.
You could tell that each of us had a lot going on, our eyes said a lot. However, for four hours we barely spoke, it was like a silent pact. We were either following the news, looking at our mobiles, reading something, or looking at the empty space ahead of us. The husband made himself a snack and ate it. The bombing went on, the building we were in was shaking right and left, yet we remained silent. We were tired, consumed with our thoughts and, most importantly, silent. I really needed that.
We have had to move to another house. We finally found a driver who would take us. I begged him to pass by our street to see if our building is still standing. All night we heard nothing but rumours about where the bombing was.
Instead of 10 minutes, it took the taxi driver half an hour to reach our street. The destruction was unbelievable, like being in an end-of-the-world action movie.
The car was moving very slowly on roads filled with destroyed buildings, cables and rocks. Objects, or what was left of them, were appearing in slow motion. I saw one collapsed building with three men standing opposite, looking at it, and heavy tears were falling down their eyes.
Men in Gaza do cry.
When they lose their homes that they spend their whole lives building, they cry.
When they see their dreams and hopes getting destroyed, they cry.
When they realise how scary and uncertain is their future is, they cry.
And because they are human beings, full of feelings and emotions, they cry.
Friday 13 October
It was a sleepless night full of tears and fear. Just after midnight we heard all the people have been asked to go south. We had to move on and go our separate ways from the family we were staying with. We have shelter, no electricity or internet. It feels like 1948.
Source: theguardian
Author: Ziad in Gaza
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