Author: admin

Disabled Words

Hossam in Gaza

23 November 2023

What can words do when you feel they are unable to describe, explain, to express a feeling or an event?

It is almost 10 days now without writing anything. There are many things I want to talk about but words are disabled, words will not reflect what I see, what I feel, what I want to tell about.

Yesterday I was at the clinic waiting for my colleagues, the counsellors, to hand over to them their duties and distribute them to the shelter/schools to provide some psychological support for the children.  One of them was not there.  I asked about him.  Someone told me that something happened: 2 people they host were killed in a bombing.  The person we were talking about, I know his uncle.  His uncle is my friend and I know that he took refuge at their home.  I panicked.  I finished with my colleagues and went there fast to see my friend and find out what has happened.  I arrived.  My friend and my colleague were there sitting outside the house.  Their faces were talking. Their faces said everything.  Their faces told me that something terrible had happened.

My friend told me what happened.  His daughter’s husband and his grandson were killed.  They were taking refuge at the same home but yesterday his daughter’s husband went to see his mother in another home with his extended family.  He took his oldest son, Waseem, a six year old boy.

The home, a building of four floors hosting 37 people was bombed.  They died.  They all died; men, women, boys, girls are dead, all of them.

While he was speaking, his daughter, the one I have known since she was 7 years old was not far away.  She was hanging the clothes of her dead child on the laundry line, as if nothing had happened.  She washed the clothes of her dead son and she put them out to dry in the sun so when he came back he could put them on.

I looked at her and I looked for the words that would explain what she feels, what she thinks.  I did not find the words.  What words can describe this? Damn it, where are the words? Why don’t words help? Words are weak. Words are disabled. Words are crippled.  No words can explain what she feels or thinks.  She lost her husband and her 6 year old son.  The son was found and buried, and the husband was still under the rubble with another 14 out of the 37.

I hate words.  It makes me feel helpless, makes me feel stupid even to think of talking with words about this.

And while we talk they mention Mahmoud, Mahmoud, my friend.  He is the uncle of the husband.  He took refuge at the big family home with his wife and children, his brother and wife and children and their parents.  They were all there.  They all died.

No!  Please, no! Not Mahmoud!  No, he can’t be dead.  I can’t accept this.  Mahmoud did not die.  Mahmoud is alive.  Please tell me he is not dead.  Please.

I met him in Nuseirat market 3 days ago.  We hugged, we talked, we laughed.  You can’t meet Mahmoud and not laugh.  He looks so good, so smart, well-dressed, always with shaved face and shaved head, and a big smile never leaves his face for a single minute.  His beautiful smile fills the air with joy and happiness.  He is the one who makes everybody feel good and relaxed.  Mahmoud’s smile opens all the windows for hope and comfort.  His heart is so big, bigger than the world itself.  He can take all the world in his heart.  He is the one who is always available to help, to support, to solve problems, to be beside people, people that he knows or people that he never met before, he is just available for anyone, as if God created him for others.  He can’t die. Oh God, Mahmoud, my friend.  Why? Why? Why?

After writing this about Mahmoud I feel so bad, very bad.  All these words are nothing.  It tells nothing about my friend.  It makes him small and he is much more.

Words are cursed.  Words are weak.  Words are helpless.  No words can tell what I feel now.  Words won’t say what I want to say about Mahmoud.

What to write about?

Hossam in Gaza

Four days without writing my diaries during this war. My head is boiling with things I want to write about, but what to start with? 

About my daily efforts to secure drinking water, household water, food, diapers for my bedridden mother, winter clothes (as we left home with light clothes not thinking it would take this long), my mother’s medicine (which, each time I find some, the price is higher)?

About people’s frustration and anger which turn into fighting and disputes; dispute over a piece of bread, dispute over 20cm of space inside the shelter, dispute over a drop of water, dispute over the waiting line for the bathroom, dispute over a word said or a word not said?

About the hospitals which were bombed and shut down due to absence of operational power systems? About the continuous bombing and killing, and the injured who don’t find help? About hospitals running out of all essential medical supplies so that they now do amputations on injured people without any type of anaesthesia?

About scarcity of food and life’s basic needs, leading to real starvation?

About the destruction of homes which increases every single day?

About my daily struggle to find any source of power to charge my laptop and mobile?

About the garbage filling the streets everywhere as the garbage collection is paralysed. About sewage and water leakage in the streets due to the destruction of the weak infrastructure?

About the world which has no mercy for 2 million civilians?

About the psychosocial support activities we’ve started to provide in some shelters?

About my sister who I can’t help. About the rest of my family, my brothers and sisters and their children in Gaza City and the north who I can’t reach even by phone to know if they are dead or still alive?

About the mothers and fathers who are not able to provide milk for their babies, water and food for their children, shelter or any type of safety?

About the education of the new generation which is frozen, and no one can anticipate when and how it will resume?

About my home in Gaza City, the apartment that I worked 40 years for, to save enough money to buy it so I could call it home?

About the kind of life we will have after all of this destruction and damage to entities, facilities, streets, homes, people and souls?

What to write about – where to start?

I will write about Jonathan Chadwick, Jonathan Daitch, Steven Williams, Sami, Mohammed, Rafat, Emad, Baha’a, Philipe Dumoulin,  Marianne Blume, Brigitte Fosder, Ines Abdelrazeq, Lisa Shultz, Heather Bailey, Gerhard, Eli, Peter Van Lo, Zohra, Inas, Jean Luc Bansard, Jan, Kathleen, Redouan, Marko Torjanak, Sanne and many others whose humanity remains, those who give me hope, strength and the ability to continue, with their words, with their support. Those who make me believe there is humanity somewhere in this world, there is hope, life stronger than death. Their words make me able to defeat the darkness.

My dear friends, I love you all, I wish that I will meet you all again.

Hossam Madhoun in Gaza

Sounds 

Hossam in Gaza

Lay down on the mattress, complete darkness but for the slight light of a poor, small candle. Closing my eyes, hoping to fall asleep, it doesn’t work. 2 days and nights, not a single minute of sleep.

It is amazing how human senses become stronger and more sensitive when you lose one, like people who have no eyesight, their hearing becomes sharper. This is what happens to me while closing my eyes. 

During the day, lots of noise, lots of sounds, mixed sounds of people, chats, speaking, shouting, bombing, explosions, drones, airforce planes cutting the sky in pieces. All mixed so I can’t and don’t concentrate on any one sound. 

In the dark, in the supposedly complete silence, and while laying down with eyes closed, I started to focus more on the sounds surrounding me, the sound of a plastic sheet covering the window which has lost its glass, moving in the night breeze, the breathing and sighs of my mother beside me, my heart beats, the squeak of the field cockroaches, the sound of a bird back late to his nest, or flying out of his nest due to an explosive sound, a little baby crying at the nearby neighbour’s home and his mother cradling him, the swish of branches in the trees, moving slightly, a whoop of an owl coming from the distance, street dogs getting crazy and barking when bombs happen, sounds of some cats fighting. 

All those sounds mean life, mean hope, mean tomorrow will come despite anything. 

Other sounds are coming, over all other sounds, making all other sounds vanish, occupying the air and the atmosphere, invading the silence to say death is coming. The sound of the military drone, the only similar sound is the electric shaving machine doubled a hundred times, filling the space with its annoying noise that no one can ignore even for a moment. Every live creature is obliged to hear it, at all times. Humans, animals, birds, trees, even stones could crack out of the madness the sound causes. It reminds me only of one thing, the Middle Ages’ slow killing by torture. 

The passing military airplanes – F 15 – F 16 – F 32 –  F I don’t know what, cutting the sky like a knife goes through a piece of butter, carrying death wherever they go. 

The sound of the artillery shelling, boom. Each shell makes three sounds, the echo of the sound repeated:  boom, boom, boom, starts huge and echos out three times. 

The sound of the rocket strikes, very loud, very sharp. If you hear it, then you are alive. It is so fast that if it hits you, you won’t hear it. Anyone in Gaza who hears the rocket, immediately knows that it has hit some other people, leaving death and destruction behind it.  We all know that by experience; we learnt the hard way through several wars against Gaza.  

Sitting in the dark, trying to ignore the loud sounds of death and concentrate on the little  life sounds. Not easy, but this is my way to pass the night, hoping to overcome the insomnia for a few hours. 

Hossam Madhoun in Gaza

Number 4, with zeros and without. Part 2 

Today I received a message from my sister, who took refuge at an UNRWA shelter-school in Deir El Balah Camp in the middle area of Gaza Strip, 10 km from my place, as distant as the Earth from the Moon. No way to reach her without risking my life. She and her 4 sons, a little boy 8 years old, a teenager 15 years old, 2 youths 22 and 21 years old, and her mother-in-law, 82 years old, have not eaten for 2 days. Her little son is sick with stomach pain, no doctors, no primary health care unit, only the hospital which prioritises its services for the hundreds of severely injured. I called one of my colleagues who lives in Deir El Balah; he went and provided her with whatever he could. 

I called my brother who has stayed at home in Gaza. He did not leave, he did not want to leave home despite the danger. He told me that he left home 2 days ago and moved to the nearby school. He received an SMS from the Israeli army asking him to evacuate his home because they were going to bomb it. He ran out with his family, his wife, 3 sons of 7, 16 and 17 years old and 2 daughters of 12 and 14 years old. As they were running out, another building not far from them was bombed. A flying stone from the bombing impact hit his little daughter in the leg and broke it. He carried his daughter, brought the family to the school and continued carrying his daughter to the hospital. They treated the girl; they put plaster of paris all over her leg. He decided to return home. He received the warning message two days ago, but he doesn’t want to stay at the school. 

Could not say anything, could not advise him anything, what do I know?

Back to my room, and the image of Block 6 in Jabalia Camp does not leave my head, seeing it at all times, trying to forget about it and continue, but no way. 

Again, in the camp, Block 6….

Past the first home and outside the second home, a man urges his family members to hurry up, asking his sons:

‘The taxi will be here at 4, we need to speed up, did you get everything? 

‘Here are the bags of clothes. Here are the mattresses. Here is the food left at home. Here’s your bag with all the important documents and ID’s. What else?’

‘Where are the others?

‘They’re inside.’

‘What are they doing inside?’ (he asks, frustrated)  ‘The taxi will be here in 10 minutes for God’s sake.’

He goes in. Inside the home, his wife is arguing with her daughter-in-law,.

‘I can’t leave these dresses, they were a gift from my mother when I gave birth to my first child’. 

‘But there’s no space in the bag’.

‘I don’t care, I’m taking them with me’.

‘And you’ (to her son) ‘Do you really need to take 3 pair of shoes?  There’s no space.’

‘These are not shoes, this is my laptop’

‘Shall we take the cooking gas cylinder? They might not have enough’

‘If there’s space in the taxi, we’ll take it’

Sameer and Fatma, the 11 and 12 year olds, arguing over things they want to take; Sameer wants to take his bicycle and Fatma wants to take her school bag and favourite doll.

The father trying to control himself, speaking quietly but sharply: 

‘Is this really what we need to do now? Argue over things to take and not take? Didn’t we agree all that this morning? Are we leaving for good? We’re coming back in a few days, so please stop and all come out now. 3 minutes and the taxi will be here.’

They all go out, the father closes the front door, a next door neighbour comes out and sees all the bags and luggage on the street.

‘What’s up Abu Ahmad? Where are you going?

‘We’re leaving for Rafah, to my brother’s home. The whole family is displaced there; we want to be together. It’s  safer’

‘Are you sure it’s safer in Rafah? They’re  bombing everywhere.’

‘This is what we’ve decided. we’ll all be together, live together or die together, here’s the taxi.’

‘Where?’

‘There it is, at the entrance to the street. 

Tick tock, tick tock, 4 pm.….. Boooom. 

400 people killed and injured .

Hossam Madhoun in Gaza

Number 4, with zeros and without. 

For 2 days I wrote nothing. I don’t know why. Maybe I do! I don’t feel like doing it, it doesn’t help, it doesn’t change anything, waste of time and thinking, exposing myself, my feelings, my pain, my emotions, my privacy, my tears. Why? What for? 

Whatever we do, nothing changes; whatever we don’t do, nothing changes.  The killing machine continues chasing us wherever we go, no place to go, no way to escape, just sit and wait for your turn to be slaughtered. Every day we learn about someone we know who was killed in bed, killed walking in the street, killed taking a shower in his bathroom, killed while cooking for her family, killed while playing at home or in the street. 

But I know that I am not writing to change something. I am not writing to change anything. I am writing for myself. I am writing because I am still alive. I am writing because it makes me feel alive. I will write, until I close my eyes for the last time, or until I won’t be able to write for some other reason. I will keep writing.  

Yesterday, the Israelis bombed a neighbourhood inside Jabalia Camp, a whole block. Block 6. Jabalia Camp, 1 kilometre square, with 115,000 inhabitants, the most densely populated spot on earth. 400 people killed and injured within a blink of an eye, vanished, disappeared, do not exist anymore. 400 people in one shot. Hundreds of injured, no hospital has the capacity to treat them.  More than 40 houses destroyed completely and many people were killed while walking in the streets. It was 4am when they were struck with 6 explosive missiles by the airforce.

400 people of all ages, foetuses in the bellies of their mothers, lactating babies, little children, boys and girls, teenagers and youths, men and women, elderly people and people with disabilities. A whole community. Disappeared. Just like that, because someone in Israel believed that he could do it, so he did it. 

 I was listening to the news on the radio, live, people shouting, screaming, the reporter is speaking loudly to be heard above the noise and chaos around him, one of the reporters  who lives there, screaming that his family members are among the 400.

My family around me were talking all at the same time about it. I was the only one who said nothing. What can be said in such a situation? What words would express what I feel?

I left the family downstairs and went up to my room and my mattress. I laid down, closed my eyes, tears on my cheeks, and suddenly I am there, in that neighbourhood, just a few minutes before the strike….

I am walking in the narrow streets of the camp, lots of children playing, men, women passing by, going out or coming back. I walk and look at these poor houses, houses that were built 71 years ago by UNRWA for the Palestinian refugees, who were obliged to leave their houses in their homeland, in what is now Israel. Low roofs, no space between the homes, the street is  maximum 4 meters wide, some other streets just big enough for cars to pass through slowly with some effort. Windows are at the eye level of an average man. Easy to hear the chat of people inside their homes, on both sides of the walls laundry ropes are hung with children’s clothes. The streets are sandy, sewage leakage every few meters as there is no sewage infrastructure in the camp. People have dug soak-away wells for the sewage, with time they fill and leak into the streets.  

Huge noise coming from the nearby market. 

I stopped. I opened the first door. I entered. I was invisible, people inside the home did not see me, did not feel that I was there. It was a front yard. A woman of around 37 years old besides a small gas cooker with a pot on it, she was cooking, it is cabbage in the pot. Nice smile, 3 children around her playing, a 7 year old girl playing with a doll and 2 older boys running after each other and the mother calling for them to be quiet.  On the other side of the front yard, another woman is washing clothes in three buckets, one with soap and the other two with clean water. Another woman is taking the cleaned clothes and hanging them on a laundry rope hung between a window on the right hand side, all the way across the front yard and then attached to the outside of the home. 

In the corner of the front yard, a small room. The door is opened, it is an outside toilet, a man of 42 years old comes out asking: ‘How long until we eat?’ ’10 minutes’ the woman answers.  ‘Did you get the medicine for your father?’  she asks. ‘I will get it after lunch, it is not 4 yet’. He moves inside the home. I followed him. 

Inside the home, a living room and two small rooms on both sides. In the living room, a line of mattresses right up against each other, an old man lying down, 4 young men in a corner playing cards. The man went out and closed the door. He continued into one of the rooms, inside the room, a cradle with a baby sleeping, the man entered quietly so the baby continued sleeping, he changed his shirt, he put on some deodorant. He moved to the second room, 4 men were asleep, he woke them up, ‘Food will be served in 10 minutes. Get up’. 2 stirred lazily, the other two acted as if they did not hear, the man called again: ‘Get up all of you. It’s 3:55 pm. You can’t keep sleeping’. With a lazy voice, one of the 4 answered: ‘But we only just fell asleep. The bombing and explosions don’t let us sleep. All night, all day, bombing’. He left. The old man in the living room asked him: ‘Did you bring my asthma medicine? I should take it after lunch, not later than 4 o’clock’.  ‘Not yet’ he answered. ‘I’ll go to the pharmacy after lunch, I promise I won’t be later than 4 o’clock, I promise’. 

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock…. 4 pm. Booooom!

Let’s return to 3:45 pm 

I left and went into the next home, … 

To be continued… 

Message from Shouq Alnajjar in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip

Note:  Shouq is working with Az Theatre and Theatre for Everybody on the next phase of our collaboration – AUGUST 9th PROJECT – engaging with young talent in Gaza to create a new production reflecting the concerns of young people and old! The title is the date the Al Mishal Cultural Centre was destroyed by aerial bombardment in 2018. Jonathan Chadwick is Director of Az Theatre in London.

Dear Jonathan, 

I apologize again for missing your calls. I wrote something, I will share it with you now. 

I don’t know where to start. We have been stuck in this nightmare for 26 days now.

Around three weeks ago, the airstrikes devastated our neighbourhood in Gaza city, and like many others, we had to flee, leaving our house. My husband and I started our married life a year ago in that house which now lies in ruins. We could only take essential documents, leaving behind the memories and meaningful gifts that made our house a home. It was heartbreaking to leave everything behind just like that. But shedding tears over this loss seems small compared to the lives that have been taken; families being wiped out; children losing their lives or becoming orphans.

We’re currently in Khan Younis, staying at my family’s place and sharing a space with over 150 relatives and friends, including at least 30 kids. 

Words fail to describe the situation. Daily life is a struggle for essentials, with no running water, electricity, or access to clean water. Local bakeries and stores are overwhelmed, struggling to keep up with the demand for bread and other food supplies.

We are witnessing the unimaginable. Our hearts are broken, souls hurting, and we’re drained, tired, stressed, and frustrated. We barely get any sleep. We’re living in constant fear, and survival feels uncertain. Drones in the air buzzing non-stop like a constant reminder of the danger.

Bombings and airstrikes happen from time to time everywhere. The nights are the scariest and longest as the bombs rain over Gaza continuously. We don’t know when our turn is but we expect to get bombed any minute.

Every bombing sends shivers down our spines, especially the kids who don’t understand why their world has turned into a nightmare. Mums feel helpless, powerless, trying to comfort their little ones. But kids can see the terror in their mothers’ eyes

Around 1.4 million people fled their homes; half of them staying at shelter spaces like UNRWA schools and hospitals, with no access to food, running water, drinking water, medicine, or warm clothes.

No-one and nowhere is safe.. 

Places that were once a safe haven and a sanctuary for those in need, as recognized by international laws, such as hospitals, schools, mosques and churches are constantly threatened and bombed by the Israeli occupation

How many lives need to be lost for the world to stop and hold Israel responsible for its crimes across decades?!

For those that say they can’t believe this is happening in 2023, I would like to say, do not be surprised because the Israeli occupation has been getting away with breaking endless international laws, committing crimes against humanity and countless massacres. 

The suffering of Palestinians extends far beyond the current crisis, reaching back over 75 years of occupation and apartheid. Gaza, in particular, is a stark reminder of this ongoing injustice. The world’s silence on the massacres and genocide happening in Gaza and Palestine is a heartbreaking reminder that, in the eyes of many, the lives lost in Palestine are somehow less significant.

This barbaric Israeli attack is tearing apart our lives, turning my beloved Gaza into ruins and leaving scars that will last a lifetime. Our beloved Gaza is bleeding, and we’re screaming for the world to hear our cries…