This genocide has displaced me so many times, with the first three displacements bringing me closer to death. But this latest and fourth displacement invited death into my home and was the worst I have faced. The day I left my home on Tuesday July 9, 2024, death not only loomed in my shadow but jumped on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes.
The bombing began at 8 a.m. after a fitful night interrupted by constant explosive pounding of shells whose blasts could be heard inside our home. We were hiding in a corner with few windows where the shattered glass could not stab us. A quiet hour had passed and everyone except my father had gone to bed. His eyes were weighing shut with fatigue despite his insomnia. When I finally went to sleep, grateful to be huddled in my sheets at 3 am, I was unprepared for the violent jolt out of my long-awaited slumber. I woke up suddenly to the screams of women in our neighborhood. They were yelling that their homes were targeted as shells and bombs pelted down upon them with the sole and vicious intent to inflict death and destruction.
I fell from my bed when the sound of bombs reverberated loudly through our walls; I tumbled to my knees with such force that they became bruised and painful. Crawling as best I could, I dragged my legs to the door, navigating between the shattered glass by the windows and not yet aware what part of me was intact. I was groggy with sleep as the scene played out like a dream. When I finally reached the door of my room, I could hear the shells grow closer. My neighbors’ homes had been targeted and turned into rubble with lightning speed. My older brother’s car became a pile of mangled metal as we huddled in the corners of the home. It was then that the reality of the nightmare sunk in.
A horrible journey of displacement
A voice broke the trance and I heard someone yell in panic, “Go and prepare your bag. Get dressed; we will be displaced again.” The pounding of the bombs grew louder and closer as I moved mechanically to the commands of my father. His distraught orders came at us in rapid succession. My older brother Mohammed and his wife and three children scrambled to prepare their bags and evacuate as the shelling kept up its intensity. Within a few minutes, all the windows of the house were shattered, littering the floors with shards like knives. Grabbing my hijab and wrapping it haphazardly over my head, still in my pajamas with my thobe over them, I made my way to safety, wondering if this was my last day alive. The water barrels above the home were pierced and spewed our drinking water wastefully on the pavement fragments below. We had painstakingly saved and paid for this water and we looked on in horror as the barrels emptied out, despite our efforts to save whatever we could.
The shells finally stopped, and my father and two brothers prepared to take our three bicycles to seek another place to stay. We piled our belongings high on the bicycle and rode them as far as we could. My younger sister Siham and I rode with my brother Ahmad, while my father rode with my elder sister Soha. Isa, my brother, took my mother. The ride felt endless and we stopped a few times exhausted and shaken, all the while glancing behind us to make sure we were all still together. Above all, we were determined to keep the family united.
The sun had risen and now beat down on us as we trekked to safety. We walked without knowing where to go. Most of my relatives’ houses were in the “red” area, the dangerous zone. Our throats were parched from thirst and dust. I kept asking my brother if we were near our destination, but his responses became predictable in their negativity. I could feel my body fail me and my legs weighed me down. Dehydration amplified the paralysis that was creeping into my bones. Unable to hold myself up, I collapsed only to hear my sister pull me up and assure me that we were almost there. “Stay strong! We have nearly arrived at our relative’s neighbors’ house.” Hope and life had betrayed me in those moments, but the verses of our holy Qur’an were still infusing strength into my soul.
The scenes before me as we walked the final leg of our journey haunt me today. Corpses from Israel’s massacres linger uncomfortably inside my head. In the neighborhood from which we had so narrowly escaped, we passed a girl who was clutching her cat with such ferocity that I wondered if it was all that remained of her family. Everyone was asking the same question, “From where are you displaced?” We were all a mass of homeless humanity with the same options and the same experiences of repeated trauma. And we all had no place to go or feel safe.
Finding sanctuary with strangers
With our bags slipping from us, so that we repeatedly had to pick them up again, we kept walking until we finally, at noon, reached our destination at the house of my relative’s neighbors. It had been nearly nine hours since the start of the ordeal. My older brother had arrived there first and we had lumbered slowly behind him, my sister and I holding on to the back of the bicycle with my other brother behind us with my mother.
“Alhumdullah, you are safe,” the wife of my relative said when she saw the first group to arrive. My clothes were drenched with sweat from hours of walking in the blazing heat. I lay on the sofa and waited for the rest of my family to arrive. A tray of tea and a dish of biscuits greeted us, but no sooner had I sipped some tea and eaten one biscuit than I fell into a deep sleep on the sofa. At long last, I could change my clothes and wear a thobe in which to pray.
At my relative’s neighbor’s house, my parents, two sisters, and two brothers slept in one room on mattresses on the floor. My elder brother and his family slept on floor in the hallway, and I slept on the sofa nearby.
It was a blessing from Allah that the weather was hot, because we only had three short blankets: one for me, one for Siham, and the last for my parents. The rest of the adult slept without blankets while the children were covered with our prayer skirts.
My relative’s neighbors were kind to us. They shared their food with us and brought us tea in the evening after sunset every day, and the matriarch would come with her two daughters to sit and talk and play games like solitaire with us. Though we were displaced and strangers to them, they treated as if we were part of their family. These wonderful moments made us forget the tension and set us at ease. The sisterhood we felt only grew when she made us manakish, a traditional dish of bread doused with thyme and oil and then baked in the oven. For a little while, under their care, we no longer felt displaced.
I can’t forget when my father would go every day to buy loaves of bread from the bakery. We would get food from Takaya, where free food was distributed to people. Some days, we had only the canned food we had saved from before becoming displaced.
Returned to our destroyed home
We returned to our home after eight days only to witness a massive hole in the walls of my room. The floor tiles were all cracked and some fragments had been propelled against the mirrors, which were also shattered. Sand filled the empty cavities under the tile and my younger sister’s bed was smashed into two pieces. In the ensuing days, my elder and younger sisters all slept on the floor in my parents’ room and I slept on the big sofa in the hall.
Being back in a destroyed home was better than being guests in anyone’s home. The walls were pockmarked, and the water barrels on our home were destroyed. The bedroom of my older brother had gaping holes and the rooms were covered in dust making, our eyes and skin itch. Battling our newly triggered allergies and fatigue, we began to clean up our rooms and reset order to our home.
Many outside Gaza think that all Gazans live in tents, but that is not accurate. Some are also living inside destroyed buildings. Some buildings are half destroyed and their owner lives inside. Some homes are empty because the owners were displaced to the south. In some cases, their relatives may reside inside. In other cases, displaced Gazans who have no home to live in and no relatives to shelter with, end up living inside schools. Or, they move to an empty plot and erect their tents. This is the vicious cycle Gazans are presently enduring .
The anxiety of evacuating again follows me every day and I wonder if the next displacement will bring me even closer to death. But no one seems able to stop this genocide and I am asking myself every day when will be my next encounter with death.
