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.