Photo: Eva Abu Mariam

In the house of my relatives, the TV was blaring loudly with unexpected news while we were sitting at the table gathered around the plates of food. Surprise won the race against realization and created bubbles of doubt that filled the salon of my uncle’s house. We followed them with our eyes and wide-open mouths while they landed lightly on the floor before exploding, all of a sudden, on the sharp pins of the truth that the journalist had announced: “War has been declared on the Gaza Strip.”

In almost breathless silence, we ate dinner, each one of us experiencing his own panic, examining his fears while denying what was happening, as if staring at a horizon where a hurricane loomed. I noticed my mother’s suspicious and worried glances at my confused hands as I fumbled with the dishes. Later, looking straight into my empty eyes, she told me they looked like dried–up wells. I knew exactly what her glances meant: My Mom, who is the strongest of us all, didn’t want me to pour anger onto my empty plate. To distract me, she brought the cheese dish and the cooked beans with oil closer to me and poured me a warm tea.

After dinner, I found myself in my cousins’ room, deciding on a place to sleep. I chose a spot that was next to the wall and away from the window. I drifted off then, as drowsiness drowned out my fear and the echoing of melancholic thoughts in my head.

One week passed. A week that only James Bond would live through in one of his movies, except that it wasn’t a movie and I wasn’t James Bond. I was a trembling soul who ran away from the window whenever she had to close the curtains. A trampled soul who ran to the “safe room” whenever she heard the sound of a rocket, and stuck her fingers in her ears in an attempt to block out the sound of loud explosions.

It was a shivering noon, when we were sitting in the “safe room,” the one without windows or mirrors, and I was checking for a phone signal that was often cut off from Gazans at that time. The voice of my cousin reading out a list of the families who were murdered or buried under the rubble was interrupted by a loud explosion. Everything we did back then was spontaneous;we reacted without deep thought. My brother, for example, quickly climbed up the steps and appeared before us with terror robbing the exhaustion from his eyes, my Mom waved us all into her arms without a second thought, as the sound of windows shattering went on and on. We all faced the same risk of getting hurt, but she chose to protect us, as our safety was hers.

That day the loud voices from outside did not quiet till the sun went down, the sounds of moms crying and little children screaming. In my mind, on the other hand, the voices did not subside for two days straight: chasing away my drowsiness and holding it hostage in a cage. That night, my head on the pillow, my tired eyes stared at the bedroom ceiling. I breathed in the intensity of the day. The sound of glass shattering, the explosions and the screaming voices kept circling round and round in my head. It all went silent, as I landed on one specific thought: Will it be my turn tonight? Will this ceiling be the end of me?

Fortunately, that ceiling did not fall and cause my death, and I managed to survive that night and the night after and every night since, making it through to wake up the next morning to the news that did not leave any room for doubt.

“Urgent warning!
To the residents of the northern Gaza Strip and the central governorates.
Gaza province has become a battleground.
You must evacuate immediately and go to the ‘humanitarian’ zone south of the Gaza Valley.”

This was the announcement on every news channel on the radio that day. We left our homes, yet they did not leave us. We were convinced that it wouldn’t last for long, a matter of two weeks only. We were instructed to take nothing but the necessities: a change of clothes, cash, phones, laptops, IDs, passports, and all the important personal documents.

After leaving the north, the minutes passed terribly slowly, and the days were filled with struggles. We had to fight to steady ourselves in this new life situation. Survival strategies took up all our time, as water had dried up in our taps and food prices kept getting higher and higher. We got busy sourcing clean water to drink and comparing the prices of vegetables every day, so when potatoes were the least expensive, mothers were wrapped up in cooking the potatoes boiled one day and fried the next, marinated one day and salted the next, with toast for lunch, while we went without for dinner. And just like that, we carried on.

And on days when the prices of potatoes, vegetables and flour rose together until we could no longer buy any, the plates on Gazans’ tables were empty. We sated our hunger with the anger we ate every day. Raw anger, which changed our features day by day. Months passed as Gaza’s children went to bed on empty stomachs and Gaza’s mothers served up anger for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My mother, on the other hand, could not find food to put on the dishes that she put next to me, so instead we ate anger off our plates as an act of rebellion. Gradually, a rebel was blooming inside each of us.

At my relatives’’ house, on the eighth of October of the year 2023, the TV was blaring loudly with some unexpected news. While each one of us was experiencing his own panic, examining his fears and denying what was happening, Mom was worried that a few months later, she and I would be side to side, eating anger off our empty plates in a house that carried within its walls the sorrow of 24 individuals. She was staring at a horizon where a hurricane loomed. A hurricane we walked through, while holding each other’s hands.