we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
My father’s vegetable plants, grown in plastic containers on a rooftop, are saving us from starvation.
These tomatoes and cabbages are our new crops. But with the continuous violent bombing, we wonder, will we live to eat them or not? Photo: Nour Abo Aisha
I remember how, when I was young, the daliyah (traditional grapevine trellis) used to decorate our roof with grape harvests. It was a scene like in the song “Aateny El Nay We Ghanny” by Fairuz: “Did you sit in the afternoon, like me, between the vineyards?”
However, by the time I was older, the land in northern Gaza bore no grape vines or olive trees. During every ground invasion, Israel bulldozes agricultural lands, and farmers’ efforts to restore them are futile. So rooftop agriculture, which once was a luxury for us, is now a means of our survival.
My father used to feed us healthy food before the war, but after we went through a difficult shift from healthy food to eating harmful weeds, my father decided he would learn agriculture entirely from YouTube, despite the slow internet in the Gaza Strip. He turned our roof, damaged by shell fire that almost burned the entire house (rainwater extinguished it), into a small farm.
This is my personal experience in the famine, as I witnessed its beginnings in the northern Gaza Strip, its spread over the entire Strip due to Israel’s systematic starvation and closure of the crossings, and decisions Gazan families like mine have made to survive by planting inside the villages.
Our first suffering with scarcity in northern Gaza was the bombing of all water stations at the beginning of the war, on Oct. 12, 2023. After that we mainly depended on water from salty wells.
My family was displaced in Mustafa Hafez School in western Gaza. At that time, there were no communications in northern Gaza. We were isolated from the world, thirsty in silence. My sisters were walking long distances until they found drinking water. I could not accept the taste of well water.
One of my dreams at that time was to drink sweet water, even one glass. We used to cook and make tea, even with saltwater, until I remembered its bad taste. These days were the beginning of the nightmare. I did not know that the wish for water would be easier to fulfill than the wish for food.
After that, supplies and flour began to run out in northern Gaza, due to the occupation closing the crossings and establishing an east-west axis (the Netzarim Corridor) that prevented the transfer of aid between the north and the south.
Then the flour massacres began. These massacres were systematic. Israel deliberately stains the flour bags with blood, making the bags of aid carry the marks of those martyred just trying to stay alive. Many young people became such victims.
I remember the nights in January 2024. We only ate one meal a day, after sunset. I could hear the sound of hunger in my stomach.
Children were the group most oppressed by famine. My nephew Kenan, this angel child with blond hair and blue eyes, would wake up at dawn and say, “I want bread. I want rice.”
It used to break our hearts that we were not able to provide him with his most basic rights when he was two years old. We used to search around the entire market in order to provide him with rice, because the hunger of a young child is a sin.
This is Kenan’s favorite little eggplant. He always comes out and checks its growth. Photo: Nour Abo Aisha
Even vegetables began to run out of the markets after the ground invasion of the the Jabalia region in the northern Gaza Strip in February 2024. The lands of Jabalia had been the only source for vegetables in the north, but after the invasion we ran out of vegetables except hibiscus, because it grows everywhere.
People ate grass and animal feed; no one can tolerate the smell after baking. My father absolutely refused to let us eat fodder, so he would grind us nuts and al-qadama (chickpeas) into flour.
Ramadan 2024 was the worst Ramadan we have ever lived through. There was no food, no canned goods, not even a little flour. Neighboring countries made aerial drops, known as broshurat, and many young people were killed by crates crashing down on them as they sought to obtain a kilo of flour or even a kilo of sugar.
On March 16, 2024, my family and I were poisoned after eating a wild plant called al-saliq; our hunger left us no choice but to eat it.
The famine did not end, not even a month later, when Israel finally allowed aid to enter the northern Gaza Strip after eight months of deprivation. I remember the feeling of the first time I ate potatoes and a salad and even the first piece of chicken after being deprived for many months.
Vegetables became available, it is true, but at high prices. For example, a kilo of onions cost $90, garlic $120. Can you imagine?! We used to buy one clove of garlic for no more than a dollar. I remember in September 2024, we bought one chicken for 200 shekels, approximately $60, for my little nephew Kenan.
The onions we planted as an experiment now save us from buying one onion for $15. Photo: Nour Abo Aisha
I had never imagined that we would live in fear, bombing, and hunger all at once, while the whole world watched us die in various forms of death. When I was young, I did not know what famine meant; it was a vague word to me. I used to say, “How can a person go hungry? Except if no one gives him food?”
Now I know the meaning of famine and I have lived it to the letter: You get hungry, your stomach breaks, but in the market there’s simply nothing left to eat.
So after the skyrocketing prices, the closing of the crossing, and the absence of vegetables to buy, my father decided to plant. Baba turned the roof into a small nursery, picked up soil and plastic containers, and began planting. We planted green beans, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, parsley, and even garlic.
Planted with love. Even under a the surface of shrapnel and a sky of missiles, crops grow with love. Photo: Nour Abo Aisha
I remember the first tomato we picked and our joy at that time. I felt as if my father was the king of the world.
Plastic containers are not sufficient; my father’s garden needs land, but Dad is trying; he has been ambitious all his life. Agriculture, even in small quantities, nourishes our bodies, even with a little of what they need.
In the end, all of us in Gaza are exhausted in a way that sometimes makes us powerless to express it to the world. Despite this, we try to survive from bombing and hunger, to create a life at a time when the whole world is conspiring with the policies of imprisoning us in the Gaza box, starving us, and killing us.
