HOSSAM MADHOUN’S MESSAGES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCES DURING THE ISRAELI ATTACK ON GAZA IN 2014
21 July 2014
After a few days of not hearing from Hossam in Gaza I received the messages below. I am posting them on this blog in the order I received them and indicating the different means of communication used.
Az Theatre is in partnership with Theatre for Everybody in Gaza and our latest project can be read about here. We intended this blog to be about the process we are going through to organise an event in London on Sunday 14th September which will link via live video with the work in Gaza on Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. When the current military violence escalated we devoted the blog to the messages from our friends and partners there in Gaza.
We are carrying on the organisation of the event at Rich Mix. We are building our team, contacting performers, receiving short scripts from writers who are involved in the project. Hassan Abdulrazzak and Haifa Zangana have written short pieces. Caryl Churchill has agreed to a brand new Arabic translation of SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN which Hossam Madhoun in Gaza and Hassan Abdulrazzak are working together on.
Note by Jonathan Chadwick
Help meeeeeeeeeee! I want to cry, but I can’t find my tears!
After receiving this we sent Hossam a message begging him to write, tell me about the photo, tell me how his family was coping. We had this SMS exchange:
Me: Please write more if this at all possible. Love Jonathan
Hossam: It’s too hard my dear, it is beyond words. Families are slaughtered in Gaza every day, babies, children, mothers, homes. Trees, life, every alive thing is a target, it is beyond words.
Me: How are you, Abir and Salma coping?? How are you managing? Love j
Then this email arrived:
The photo is of a mother and his boy running out of Shijaiya the day after the massacre, the Israelis kept shelling at them until they kill both the mother and the son, my cousin, working for a human rights association, (Almizan) was near by. He was injured slightly. He saw part of the massacre.
Massacres are every day, every hour , every minute, many families killed inside their house without being warned and without having any so-called target, shelling, bombing, sky strikes every moment everywhere, more than 100.000 people took refuge in schools, more than 100.000 took refuge at relatives or friends. They ran out with nothing, no food, no clothes, no shelter, no safety, and no one has the capacity to assist them, neither UNRWA, nor the Red Cross. All emergency preparedness plans and capacity of all the UN agencies and Red Cross and INGOs is to help 50.000 people for 2 weeks with shelter and food and non-food items, now the needy people is more than double. There is no electricity most of the time, that means there is no water most of the time, (no electricity to operate the water wells and the water pumps to houses) no electricity to operate the sewage pumps and the sewage treatment plants, so sewage floods.
More than 560 people killed, at least 150 among them children under 15 years old, more than 100 women among them, bodies arriving to hospitals in pieces without heads, without arms, without legs, Oooh my God Ohh my God, what you want me to write about, Jonathan, about more than 3000 houses destroyed totally and more than 1000 destroyed partially in a city were cement is not allowed in and so people won’t be ab;e to rebuild their homes. I can only cry and cry helplessly, my ultimate fear is to face the moment that I won’t be able to help or protect my daughter and my wife, I am unable to think further than that. I have no space to think about my mother sisters, brothers, friends. We are slaughtered here and the world understands the Israelis need to defend themselves. Why is no-one trying to understand that we too need to defend ourselves, to live! For more than 7 years we live under blockade like rabbits in a cage, not allowed to travel, not allowed to build, not allowed to plan for the future, not allowed to progress, just living with the world assisting to help us survive, just to survive but not allowed to live or practice human life, why??????????
Do you want me to write about those orphans children who don’t know why they are suddenly living with strangers….sorry my friend . Allow me, I …..I cant…….maybe tomorrow I will be able to write you something.
Then this email arrived minutes later
Do you understand what I mean my friend? There are many like this boy. Can any one imagine what is waiting for them?
At this moment while writing to you, my dear, heavy bombing near my home, yesterday they bombed a flat in a building 50 meters from my home.
Now I am writing to you, I can not promise you to be alive to write again, we will see tomorrow
love,
Hossam – Abeer – Salma
Then much later in the night he sent this SMS:
What to write? About the man who lives in the fourth Floor finding the body of a 2 year old boy in his bedroom thrown from the opposite building? Would you believe? Would anyone believe it happened in Gaza not in an American action movie.
So very hard dying everyday a million times. Gliders in the sky. Bombing heard every three seconds. Unable to sleep for days.
I first met Theatre for Everybody in 2000 in Gaza and we first worked together at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania in 2002. Hossam and Jamal are my colleagues, they and their families are my friends. This is why I am posting what they have to say. Note by Jonathan Chadwick.
Read Hossam’s messages from Gaza. Next