Category: Messages from Gaza Now October 2023

Again separated

In Cairo with my wife Abeer, away from home, away from my mother who is now completely disabled, can’t move, can’t talk, can’t eat or drink, (she is fed via a tube through her nose). This is exactly the time that I want to be beside my mother, to hold her hand and let her know that she is not left alone.

Alone, my daughter Salma left 2 days ago for Lebanon to finish the last three months of her Masters degree. She arrived at a hostel that she rented online. it is apparently a very bad, dirty place. This happens. The last 2 days Salma went through panic attacks several times, not because of the place she lives in, but because of being in Lebanon with all this talk in the news about a possible war on Lebanon, the threat against the airport and the nightmare scenario of being stuck there alone and not being able to leave and get back to Cairo. I am here in Cairo and again this feeling of helplessness. What can I do? Away from home, away from my mother, brothers and sisters, away from my daughter, unable to assure her safety and unable to give her a hug that could calm her and release her panic. What can I do? What can anyone do? Why are we so weak? Why can’t we fly? Maybe then I can go and hold my mother’s hand,  maybe then I can be with my daughter to give her the hug she needs, the hug I need?

Why is this happening to us? 

15 July 2024 

Akram Surani

That’s not right, that’s absolutely not right! What is happening? What is this silence!? Until when? How can this be accepted? Even slaughterhouses take vacations! They stop from time to time, on weekends, on holy days, what the hell is happening? 

Getting used to it!? Has it become normal to see children cut in pieces? Women killed, cities destroyed, men bombed? 2.3 million people hungry?

I am unable to continue writing about this hell, there is no point anymore. 

I see posts from friends from Gaza and I feel that all that I am writing is cheap, is nothing, it doesn’t express anything. I have decided that now, at least for now, to share posts of friends from Gaza.

This is from Akram Sourani, a writer from Gaza: 

“Huge numbers of martyrs, body parts in the trees – as the media reporter said. What is left of my mind can barely follow and bear the news. My heart is with my son Khaled, diagnosed with hepatitis. The name of this disease was enough to spread panic at home among my whole family, but with this judgment day which has started in Gaza, it became a little thing. After war nothing scares us. We injected the needed medication through Khaled’s veins inside the tent; he refused to go to the hospital, and it seemed that he was right, the hospital is exhausting. But we need a large bed, as large as the size of our tent! 

We began Khaled’s treatment protocol according to the doctors’ advice, Google’s advice, and the advice of those who have had the disease before him. The most important of which is to eat honey and dates and juice. There were those who disagreed about watermelon juice, although it is no big deal deal to disagree about watermelon juice because, anyway, there are no watermelons in Gaza. 

Symptoms of frustration, lethargy, and loss of appetite began to appear in Khaled after he heard the news of the martyrdom of professor Wahiba, the English language teacher at the Rosary Sisters School. Professor Wahiba had different tastes for all her students, colleagues and everyone who knew her. The last thing she wrote on her private page on Facebook was, “I wish I had a plate of salad.” Her greatest wish before her death in Gaza was a tomato, a cucumber and a hot green pepper! 

Khaled is sad and weak although his condition is stable. In the coming days he will improve. It is a matter of time. In Gaza, this is how people get sick, and this is how they get well. They get sick from being patient; it kills them sometimes and cures them at other times. Amani also seems to have begun to suffer from the same symptoms. The hepatitis epidemic is devastating Gaza, just like the terrifying bombing. 

Friends of ours, including Amani’s colleagues at Al-Aqsa University, were martyred in the Al-Mawasi massacre. The bodies flew from place to place, scattered, fell, and only quarters or halves of them remained.

One friend, Rami Al-Madhoun, a colleague who was mourned by his male and female colleagues at Al-Aqsa University, was ambitious, loved life, and was an example of toil, patience, and the endurance of suffering. 

He lost his family, his children, his university, and his simple barn in which he toiled until the explosion that turned the earth and buried people alive under the sand and under the tents. We always used to say metaphorically, ‘we are buried alive…’ but never did we imagine that they would actually bury us alive.  

Loss is pain, and sadness clouds our hearts from all directions. The future is behind us, and our ambitions and dreams are in the past. 

We feel pity for ourselves. We are no longer worried about anything except running out of our ability to withstand all this oppression. We die in different forms and from different instruments! We die from the toxic smoke of the firewood and plastic, from the smell of shit, the garbage and sewage surrounding us. We die from the high prices of food and basic needs. We die from the bombing and destruction. We die from the rampage of thugs. We die from cholera, from strange skin rashes, mosquitos, from itching and allergies, from all National Geographic insects that we don’t yet recognize.   

Colic almost never leaves us, as if we are eating sandwiches of abdominal pain and diarrhoea.

In the midst of all this mud, my children ask, ‘Dad! Why is this happening to us?’ 

In the sky there are intense flights of war planes and drones, sounds of explosions, and news about renewing the truce negotiations.”

Akram Sourani: Gaza, Palestine; Khan Younis, Rafah, Mawasi, Deir Elbalah, tents and unknown areas…. 

Note: Akram’s son is 11 years old.

 

The Key 

My grandfather passed away in 1982. All that I remember about him is that he was a very serious man, never smiling, barely talking. To be honest, we did not like him. The opposite of my grandmother who was a very caring person, smiling, showing love and talking a lot. Mostly she talked about her life before 1948 in Almajdal, (so-called Ashkelon today) 25 km from Gaza city to the north. She talked about her big home, the huge land they owned and her work in the fields with her husband, especially in the olive harvest season. 

My grandparents did not communicate much, but I remember one day when my grandmother shouted at my grandfather. It was one of those summer afternoons. My grandfather took a brown leather bag out of the closet, it was a very old bag. He took it out carefully, he opened it and started to take things out of it. There were several papers, old papers almost yellow, full of writing and many stampings at the bottom of each page.  

He put all the papers side by side. He started to take one out after another, look at it, and then put it on the ground in order. There were five or six papers. Then he took a key out of the bag, an old, big key, which would look funny compared to the keys of nowadays. He held the key in his hand and closed his eyes. Out of his closed eyes I could see tears coming out. 

What? My grandfather is crying? This serious, frightening man is crying? As a kid I almost laughed at the image. It was astonishing to see him crying. 

Suddenly my grandmother entered the room shouting at him: ‘Don’t you want to stop? It is not helping any one. It is not helping you. It is not helping me. Stop taking these papers out. Leave this key. Throw it away. We will never go back. Do you understand, we will never go back.’ She said these last words and fell into deep crying like a hungry baby, crying in a way I had never seen a human being crying. My grandfather held her hand, pulled her towards him, hugged her and they were both crying. I was afraid. I could not stay there. I left. 

I have never told this story to anyone before. I don’t know why. My grandparents with their sons and daughter left Almajdalon in 1948. They ran away at the arrival of the Jewish gangs like the Hagana and Stern who committed massacres in many villages in Palestine, massacres in Al-Tantora, in Deir Yaseen, in Kafer Qasem, in Berwa and many others.

In 1948 almost a million Palestinians were expelled, dispossessed and forcibly moved out of their lands, homes, villages, towns and cities, to become refugees in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and many other countries.  

My grandfather with his family took refuge in Gaza, not far from home, holding onto his land ownership documents and his home key, hoping until the last breath of his life to go back. 

He did not. Palestinians forced to leave their homes in 1948 waited and are waiting almost 80 years now, and they did not go back. Before they die, they hand over the documents and the keys to their sons and then to their grandsons. And still keep on hoping.

Today, I am in Egypt, in Cairo, 500 km away from my home. I left home with almost nothing but some clothes and guess what else? The key to my home. This is what I have today, only a key, holding in it all the hopes to go back, to go home.

The Israeli army control the only border with Egypt, no one can get in or out, yesterday they destroyed all the premises at the crossing point. 

Now more than 8 months away from home, my home seems far, far away.  Am I going to wait another 80 years to go back home, like my grandfather? Am I going to lose my ability to smile and then will my grandsons and daughters dislike me? 

Forgive me Grandpa, I am sorry. I was young. I did not understand. I love you. 

10 June 2024

Open Your Eyes, Open Your Heart

Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity. Yes, we all need, from time to time, to question our humanitarian principles.

The 120 Israelis kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by Hamas must go back home, must be with their families. Yes, they must! I really want to see them among their families and their beloved ones as much as I want the same for the more than 13,000 Palestinians kidnapped, captured, and imprisoned by the Israelis. I want to see these thousands at home with their families, with their beloved ones. 

Before 7^th October, Israel had kidnapped and imprisoned more than 4000 Palestinians. Since 7^th October, Israel has kidnapped more than 9000 Palestinians. Thousands are exposed to severe torture; many have died from torture. Yet, no one questions Israel about them, as they are not considered human beings! Open your eyes, open your heart.

In Gaza, street dogs are dying of hunger. They used to live by the leftovers from people; now people have no leftovers, people are starving. Some dogs survive on the Palestinian bodies left in the streets, killed by the Israelis and left in the streets for days and weeks. Some dogs find them a meal. This is not fiction, this is happening in Gaza! Open your eyes, open your heart.

A man who lost a leg stumbles along, leaning on his daughter’s shoulder, and says to her, “I am exhausting you my dear.” 

A mother carries the dead bodies of her 2 children, weeping, “Why have you left me? I can’t bury you. I can’t, it was you who should bury me when you grew up!”

Open your eyes, open your heart. 

A young man wearing a jacket in the hot weather, trying to hide his amputated arm.

A man from Gaza sent a message to those who are not in Gaza, a message of envy:

• I envy you for not being forced to lose weight!
• I envy you for not sleeping and waking up with drones, bombing and shelling sounds 24 hours for 8 months and more!
• I envy you for not hearing the screams of help from people under the rubble, dying and you are unable to help them!
• I envy you that your children do not live day and night in fear and panic!
• I envy you that you can afford a piece of chocolate for your children when they ask for it!
• I envy you for having washing machines and not being obliged to clean your clothes with a quantity of 1, or maximum 2, litres of water!
• I envy you for not being obliged to eat canned food and drink unsafe water for months and months until you become emaciated!
• I envy you that you do not have to build a fire every day for 9 months with bits of wood, papers, plastic and whatever flammables you can find to heat some food for your family, burning your hands and your chest with toxic smoke!
• I envy you that you that you don’t have this feeling of being a burden on others when some relatives or friends take you into their home or their tent!
• I envy you for not worrying about the privacy of your wife and daughter in a non-protective tent or a public latrine!
• I envy you but I don’t want you to be in my place, not for a single day, not for a single minute.

Open your eyes, open your heart, and question your humanity! 

There is no shame, we all need to question our humanitarian principles from time to time. 

Just open up…

9 June 2024

46 Minutes 

How to avoid watching the news? There is no way. It is Saturday, and we are at home, the TV is on Al Jazeera. They are showing a huge bombing, targeting Deir Al Balah, nearby the Al Aqsa hospital. The reporter is at the scene trying to explain what is happening, while around him people are running everywhere! Cars, ambulances, donkey carts arrive carrying dozens of dead and injured people, children, men, women, all ages! Blood fills the screen. Fear fills the screen, and the reporter doesn’t know what is happening. “Why are people suddenly running everywhere?” he asks. Someone approaches him, saying: “The Israeli army are calling to evacuate the hospital, they want to bomb a nearby tent!” The man said this and kept running. Messages come from Basel and other friends on WhatsApp. They are burning the middle area, the bombing is everywhere, Deir Al Balah, Maghazi, Bureij and Nuseirat!

The news becomes clearer; a huge military bombardment at Nuseirat, in the market, and the nearby Al Awda hospital, with dozens of dead. No one is able to reach them to evacuate them, no means of transportation to move them. Hell is in Nuseirat.

Abeer is watching the TV and also watching groups of activists on FB, who share videos and news. Suddenly she screams! “My brother! Oh God, my brother! This is him. I know my brother!” She showed me a fast video of some killed and injured people, among them the dead body of a young man with a beard. She kept screaming, “My brother! Why? Why? We have nothing to do with this dirty war. Why my brother?” The man on the ground really looked like her brother, but I said, “No, it is not him.” I kept arguing with Abeer that it was not him; “Everybody has a beard in Gaza, everyone in Gaza looks alike, they all have beards. They don’t have time to shave. They don’t have water to wash. They barely find water to drink. They all look alike!”

“No, I know my brother. I know his jeans!”

“For God’s sake, look at the people. They are all in miserable shape with beards and old jeans!”

I will call! I began calling Abeer’s brother, sisters, father, the wife of Abeer’s brother. 46 minutes trying to reach someone, without success! And meantime, the news continues. 40 killed in an operation in Nuseirat. I keep trying to call, and the number of dead is increasing, 82 killed. Salma was sitting there unable to move or to talk. She was crying with silent tears. Her body shakes, and a stream of tears rolls down her cheeks. Abeer keeps screaming and calling God, with all the names possible, to protect her family. 46 minutes and the number goes up: 130 killed, more than 150 injured, complete city blocks destroyed.

“My brother is in the market,” Abeer screamed, “They target the market, Oh God, why? Why?”

Whatever I say, whatever I do, cannot help Abeer to calm down.

46 minutes trying to call until finally, my brother-in-law answers! “Mohammed, how are you? How is the family, how is everybody?”

I bombarded him with questions, he was panting because he was running as we spoke. “We are ok, we are all alive. I brought my wife, and my daughters out, and moved them to a school!”

– “What about Abeer’s brother?”

– “He is ok.”

– “Are you sure!?”

– “Yes, I met him, he went home to check on his family.”

Abeer did not believe him. “Please don’t lie to me, please tell me what happened to my brother! Please!” Mohammed kept assuring her that he is ok

– “Can you reach him, please I need to hear his voice!”

– “I will do, give me some time.”

I said, Ok, I will call you in 30 minutes.

Abeer stopped screaming, but kept crying, crying from fear and anger, crying from panic and helplessness. 

Salma suddenly said, “I don’t feel my cheeks, I can’t feel my face!” I panicked. I did not know what to do! Salma was still crying silently, with tears. Abeer asked me to bring some ice and put it in a handkerchief for Salma to put on her face. I did that.

The toll increased to 210 dead and 400 injured. 

I called my brother-in-law. Finally, Abeer’s brother is there, she talked to him crying, thanking God and asking him to take care.

I could not stand what was happening anymore. I hugged my wife and hugged my daughter Salma and went to turn off the TV.

My brother and his family are also in Nuseirat, and I could not reach them, I don’t know if they are alive or….

I later learned that my brother and family are alive and uninjured.

5 June 2024

Here and There, Between Cairo and Gaza

And here I am, sitting in a fancy cafeteria, in a fancy mall in Cairo, with a big delicious molten cake, a very good cup of coffee, and a full pack of cigarettes. Teasing my friend, Basel who is still in Gaza, with his last post on his FB page, which says: “I don’t remember when I smoked my last cigarette, I don’t know when I will smoke my next cigarette, but for sure I will not buy a one cigarette for 35 $US, simply because I can’t afford it!” 

“Here I am smoking cigarette after cigarette, one for me and one for you my friend. I can’t stop smoking. I consider one for you and one for me!” I said this to Basel, and he replied, “Death is around us at all times, yet I feel it is not my turn yet. I feel there is a long line before me. So, hopefully we will meet before it is my turn to die.”

My brother Sofian, who is still in Gaza City with his family, refused to leave. He is in real starvation with his wife and 5 children. Finally, I had indirect contact with him; a colleague of mine who is still in Gaza succeeded in reaching him. I asked my colleague to give him some money. My brother recorded a voice massage for me, which I received via my colleague’s WhatsApp. He said, “My beloved brother, we are still alive. My children and my wife send you their greetings and love, me too. I hope you are doing well with Abeer and Salma. Take care of yourself and your wife and daughter. Don’t worry for us. We love you. We are ok. Thank you for the money.”

My God, my brother, who is starving with his children, and who is under bombardment is ok!! And he is worried for me and wants me to take care of myself and my family!! 

Another friend sent me a photo of the road his tent is on. On one side there is a row of tents and on the other side a row of palm trees in a remote area in Deir Al Balah, in middle Gaza. He said, “This is the road to my tent. It is beautiful. There are no destroyed homes as there are in all other areas of the Gaza Strip.”

A journalist wrote on his FB page, “For whomever has lost a child: there is a dead body of a 6-year-old child at Al Aqsa hospital. He is wearing blue pajamas. Paramedics brought him to the hospital along with 60 other dead people.”   

Another friend said, “One of the most beautiful images is when you look out of your window in the early morning and see children with school uniforms and their school bags on their backs walking toward their schools. The girls with their hair braids and the boys racing to see who is faster. An image that gives you hope. Today, there is no window to look out from. You look out from the cave that is your cold tent, and what do you see? Boys and girls, not well-dressed, carrying jerry cans full of water or empty going to search for some water. Boys and girls of all ages, standing in a row at the last bakery operating in the town, hoping to get some bread after 2, 3 or even 5 hours of waiting. Or a line of people of all ages at the only toilet serving 5000 people, to take a leak or to do what nature asks them to do.” 

I am writing while it is very hot here in Cairo. Although there is an air conditioner, I don’t know why I don’t put it on! I am absolutely masochistic.

I am away from war. I am in Cairo, not in Gaza. I will keep writing. 

 

2 June 2024

Missing Hope 

“No, we don’t believe in it, in fact we don’t want to believe in it. Holding no hope is easier than holding fake hope.” This is what a friend from Gaza told me about his reaction to the announcement of the possible ceasefire deal.

He continues, “Look what happened last time! When Hamas agreed on the deal, we all went out celebrating, dancing in the streets. And what happened? The Israelis invaded Rafah, forced a million people to be displaced again, and bombed everywhere. People were burned alive in their tents. It is better to have no hope, my friend. No hope, no thinking of tomorrow, just try to survive the now, the moment, and what will come will come. We are helpless, we are objects, in fact we are nothing!”

Another friend said to me, “My dear Hossam, don’t worry so much, we are in Gaza, and Gaza is the highway to heaven. This should not be a bad thing.”

My dearest friend, Basel, the artist, keeps saying: “They will not prevent us from living. Don’t get used to the image. Keep fighting! They will not de-humanise us! I must keep myself a sensitive and an awake human being. The war will not steal my humanity!”

Another friend said: “We don’t have the luxury of being defeated. There is no choice between slavery, occupation, and freedom. This is human instinct.”

My sister, my beloved sister, who is caring for her 82-year-old mother-in-law, and her kidney-failure patient husband, and 4 children, and my bedridden mother, told me that she has no more space in her heart for more pain. 

A colleague told me, “It is not easy to work with children here, when every day you realise that one or more of them are not there anymore, when you realise that the smiling child from yesterday is dead, and he will not smile any more.

Why is the world so quiet? Why is the world silent? We should keep quiet and silent when children sleep, not when children are killed! Every child is an entire universe for someone.”

 

28 May 2024

When is it enough?

It is amazing that the last massacre in Rafah finally moved some politicians; even Netanyahu was calling it a catastrophic mistake. Killing 35 people in tents in western Rafah, setting them on fire, decapitating children. Where were they during the last 8 months? Did they not see 36,000 people killed in the same way and even worse? 

They did not see that among these fatalities 15,239 were children and 10,093, women. They did not see that 31 children have died of starvation. They did not see that 493 medical staff have been killed. They did not see the 80,200 injured; thousands of them lost legs, hands, eyes, ears! They did not see that 71 % of these injured are children and women, they did not see that 17,000 children lost one or both of their parents. They did not see the 11,000 patients in need of health treatment which no longer exists in Gaza. They did not see the 10,000 cancer patients facing death without any kind of treatment. They did not see that 1,095,000 people have been infected with water-borne diseases due to unsafe water and lack of hygiene. They did not see… 

They did not see the hundreds killed and buried in hidden collective graves in hospitals. They did not see the 200,000 homes destroyed. They did not see the more than 130 journalists targeted and killed. They did not see 172 humanitarian workers targeted and killed. They did not see the 20,000 people infected with hepatitis. They did not see the 60,000 pregnant women facing danger due to lack of health services. They did not see the 5000 people arrested and facing the most horrifying torture.

They did not see the 2 million people exposed to forced displacement many times in extremely inhuman conditions. They did not see the 421 schools and universities completely or severely damaged. They did not see the 8004 mosques completely or severely damaged. They did not see the 87,000 homes completely destroyed. They did not see the 297,000 housing units severely damaged. They did not see the 3 churches destroyed. 

They did not see the 35 hospitals the Israeli army destroyed and took out of service. They did not see the 55 primary health care units the Israeli army destroyed and took out of service. They did not see the 160 health institutions targeted. They did not see 130 ambulances targeted and destroyed. They did not see 206 architecturally historic sites destroyed. 

They did not see the 77,000 tons of explosions which have and continue to hit Gaza, the 8 months of fear and horror, 8 months of death and blood, 8 months of famine and starvation, 8 months of pain and crying. 8 months! 8 months! 230 days, 5520 hours, 331,200 minutes, 19,872,000 seconds, and believe me every second is counted by the people of Gaza!

When is it enough?