رسالة من غزة...

Letters from Gaza

By: Majeda Al Saqa 

16 November 2012

Dear C,

I don't know what to tell you and how to describe things in Gaza.

I don't know if it's war or what they call a “military operation,” if it's for a long or a short period of time. It’s different from the first war but similar to the first war:

The Israeli strike Gaza Strip almost every hour ... each strike is an exercise in memory that brings back moments of the previous attacks... in 2008 or after or even before. At the end of each air strike, it's the same shit: birds flying away looking for rescue, children crying, mothers looking for their sons and daughters, phone calls and messages in and out, and then there’s the collective discussion and each one talking about how they felt and what they did, jokes about who jumped and who ran and who cried. And the justifications that are even funnier some times.

But we are different today.

You know, I don’t watch the news. I watch the streetsand live with the people there, they are my news and they are who I care about. Did I tell you that I have two small kittens that I adopted two month ago? They also make the atmosphere different...

The kids are four years older now. Wael, my nephew, is more scared than he was in the first war. When I asked him a few months ago if he remembered anything from the last war, he said “no.” But last night he reminded me how he used to come down and sleep next to me the last war; last night he wanted to come and sleep next to me like before.

My niece Deema is 14 now. When she was 10 she didn't cope well with the war... with time she managed to overcome her fear. Last night she was so scared she couldn’t walk and she had to sleep next to her parents again ...

We have a new kid now, Yazan. He’s 4 years old. He knows more than his brothers... He lived the Arab Spring, so he knows Mursi and talks with an Egyptian accent sometimes. He told me today that Mursi was in Gaza to protect us...

During the first war I was not on facebook,

This war I’m on facebook, lots of Egyptian friends. .. I don’t know why I’m comparing the first war and now and don't know why I keep mentioning Egypt ...Unfortunately... some of the revolutionaries in Egypt expressed their fear of supporting Gaza because they think it will be misunderstood as supporting Hamas and that would be misunderstood as supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. I told them on facebook: you were fighting not to mix religion with politics, so don’t mix politics with humanity.

I don't know if I’ve managed to tell you all that’s in my head.

17 November 2012

Good morning,

The weather is very weird today... it's warm and cold at the same time... I didn’t sleep well last night -- not because of the air strike over Khan Younis but because the kids decided to stay over... It was nice and cozy but uncomfortable as we were all sleeping in the same bed and they move a lot... every time they heard the air strikes, they would wake up.

I am worried that my coffee will finish. I don't drink Arabic coffee in the morning; this is not a luxury or me being spoiled. I just need an espresso with tones of caffeine to clear my head.

The schools are closed in the Gaza Strip. I don't think there is a moment or a place that we could call safe in Gaza; the uncertainty and the unknown is what controls life here. I don't think there is any routine in Gaza. If there is a routine it means there is stability right? But I try to create a routine in a way... to wake up, check on my mother and sisters, the kids, the cats ... all at the same time,no categorizinghere ... I try to make it a routine not to listen to the news.

In war, I find that the community becomes one family. .. We become closer and more loving ...everyone shares everything: information, food, water, whatever is needed. Gaza in general and in normal days is like that. But if we are not in war, we call it sneaky, nosiness and maybe curiosity...

Seriously, I don't want you to worry ... I want you to come :)

18 November 2012

Sleepless night... there was bombing everywhere in Gaza.

They’re targeting houses.

You ask me about Hamas... I don't know how people feel about Hamas but to me Hamas is the black and white, the death and the hope, Hamas is one thing and its opposite at the same time...

To me, Hamas is not a movement or an organization. It exists within my culture and my neighborhood, the doctor, the electricity man, the teacher. They are not static. They are humans. But the media made them who they are to lots of people now: just terrorists. I disagree with Hamas about so many things but I agree with them about so many things.

I have been who I want to be in Khan Younis since Hamas came to power. From the first day I was out in the streets, without veil, with short hair. It was not easy in the beginning... but I claimed my rights and I got them.

To me they are a right wing movement that we need to argue with in order to maintain and protect our rights.

How can they target a house?

Sleepless night.

But how can they TARGET a house. 4 children were killed last night.

How on earth is this self-defense?

19 November 2012

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I have no idea what time it is.

We had another sleepless night. An air strike destroyed, a new house in Khan Younis; the kids woke up ill. Yazan and Majed are feeling dizzy, vomiting, they don't want to talk. Arslan and Wael are too hyper and speak too loud. We had to call doctor because Yazan’s vomiting was non-stop.

Wael was asking me: “If I recite the Quran and certain dou'a and ayah from the Quran, the rocket might hit me but I will not die, right? I will just have some blood on my face.”

You were asking me if they understand what’s going on. You know: I don't let them watch the news. If they ask, we answer -- but they don't see images.

Majed was saying: “If they see that we have a new wall, and a beautiful garden and a nice door, they might not hit the house.”

They play, but all they play are war-related games.

They keep asking me: “Who is stronger? Us or them?”

They keep asking me the most horrible question -- why I'm not fighting back. They think I have the power to challenge everything and I am the one who will solve the world’s problems for them...

The kids know that some of the people they know were injured or killed during the air strikes: Ahmed, a taxi driver, who they know because we use a taxi to send the kids to school when the bus doesn’t arrive.Then there’s Hussam, a young boy who was killed who is the son of a woman from our neighborhood, and who I’ve known since I was very young. Did I tell you that I was very young once? And then there is my colleague Murad and his sons and daughters, who I visit with the kids occasionally. They heard me talking to Murad checking on his sister who was hit by a shell -- not sure from a tank or an air strike -- while she was in the garden of her home trying to go to the mud oven to bake bread.

I guess that the kids make the association that if you go to bake, or take a taxi... or go to the mosque, then you are most likely to be killed ... don't you think?

20 November 2012

As the ceasefireis announced and confirmed in the news, I’ve become very anxious about the coming few hours, before the targeted time 00:00, today.

My experience of the last hours before ceasefires is always bloody, the question now becomes personal... will my family survive this. ..
or are we going to be one of the unlucky ones...

will we be added to the 119, 120, 121...

unidentified humans in the eyes of the world and the machine guns...

I don’t want to think like this so I go and tell Arslan, my nephew, a ceasefire is signed... this mess is ending in a few hours ..
Arslan quietly asks me, while looking at the palmof his hand as if he’s reading his future, "Who won?"
I am shocked by his question: "Who won what?"

“This war --who won, who announced the cease fire? US OR THEM?”

Oh my god. I have been fooling myself thinking they don't understand what’s going on...

Then he looks me in the eye and asks,"What's next?"
This is a very good question.

I can escape with him from our reality.

"Next is going to the beach and going to Sharm Park."
I’ve been feeling so guilty about not taking them to Sharm Park during their days off a few weeks ago.
I continue, "Next is fun ... it might be raining soon, and we will go back to the sea and take photos."

23 November 2012

I feel it's so unfair not to update you on the situation in Gaza... Yes, there’s a ceasefire, and some are celebrating in the streets, but many more are still bleeding, waiting forpermission to go to Egypt or Jerusalem to get the right treatment.... like my colleague, who was running from one hospital to another trying to get a referral for his sister – the one I told you about who was targeted while walking through her garden to the mud oven to make bread for her family.

Children were taken from under the rubble today -- one whole family, Al Dalu family.

Driving through Gaza’s streets today, I saw this child on the second floor of a building. He was watching people in the streets celebrate the victory through a window made wider by a rocket. He would look at the streets for a few seconds and then turnhis headto look back at someone -- maybe his brother -- who was cleaning the room of all the stones and broken windows. I was in the car looking up at him, feeling I wanted to go and give him a hug. But the loudspeakers celebrating behind my car and the mass ofcar horns pushed me meter by meter away from him and his street. But he’s rootedin my heart now -- one added love,one more meter of pain to   carry with me.

I saw sad, devastated humans preparing for funerals, others trying to fix or reclaimwhat's left of their homes.

I saw the absence of an apartment building, on the third floor the ghost of an apartment which looked so much like it belonged to a newlywed couple. But just one wall was standing. It wasdecorated with what looked to me like a panoramic image of Jerusalem and Al Aqsa. I can't take the idea that privacy is invaded by “targeting” rockets. A room that was maybe prepared for the honeymoon of two humans left, so public....not just the rooms  invaded, but all those very private belongings nowmaking the rubble I pass by in these targeted places and the smoke  still rising...The eyes of children broke my heart... Resistance and resilience is what I saw. Victory, I did not see,I only heard about it on the loudspeakers..

I have no way to  express my feelings or what I saw today in the streets of the Gaza Strip, in the pharmacy, the bakery, the supermarket. And when I met with my friends. My friend was hunting for a Palestinian flag with both Fateh and Hamas all together, in the hope that this photo might put some pressure for unity.

In the end, what amazed me, what somehow gave me a sense of strength and hope,were the trees in the targeted areas. There they were -- standing up and green... I’m not sure if it's because trees die while standing up or because it’s their way of telling us to overcome and look for tomorrow.

Whatever their reason might be, both are lodged in my heart...

I will not upload photos any more, nor am I going to write...

because photos and words...

how hard they are and whatever dimension they have or take, they are far from reality.