we are not numbers

emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights

A blue tent in muddy surroundings.

Life in a displacement camp

Hadeel has been forced to move multiple times, each time to a new camp, new tent, and new neighbors she does not know.
Hadeel Awad in a medical clinic setting.
Hadeel Awad
  • Gaza Strip
A blue tent in muddy surroundings.
Tents in the rain. Photo: Hadeel Awad

On our second day in the new displacement camp, I went for a short walk and saw many children. I saw them playing and running among the tents — happy children who did not think about anything. Even their fear of bombings did not overshadow their love of playing, nor the sound of their laughter, or their love for life.

But this is not the life they are supposed to live. Every now and then, when you look at them, you see that they have become children who lack so much. They should be going to their schools to receive education so that each of them can become whatever they dream; now, they have been torn apart by war at the beginning of their lives, the age of young flowers. This is their second year with no school.

I am Hadeel, a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip. I have been displaced more times than I can count, every time in a new camp and a new tent, surrounded by people I do not know. It is a very primitive life. There is no water or electricity, no basic necessities of life.

On our first night in this new camp, we spent all day under the sun waiting for our tent to be ready. When evening came, we went to the tent to rest. It had no roof. I sat looking at the sky, full of grief and praying to God, “Oh God, end this war.” We are full of sadness and fatigue, and we die a thousand times a day.

I do not know how I was able to sleep that night; perhaps the intensity of fatigue and crying brought me to sleep.

The next morning, the sun’s rays woke us. As time went on, it started to get hotter, with no good shelter from the sun. I couldn’t stop crying. What can we do? The sun is so hot; the feeling of oppression grew and my crying increased day after day.

People walking between tents in very muddy lanes.
This is not the life children are supposed to live. People are walking, their faces pale and tired, their bodies exhausted. Photo: Hadeel Awad

The sounds of planes and violent bombing surround us from every direction. There are no safe places, as the occupier claims. Every place is threatened by bombing, and everyone, including women, children and other young people, are besieged, constantly threatened with death. At any moment, any one of our stories may end. And even then, we might not have the dignity of a grave.

As I walked around the streets, I saw tens of thousands of people, their faces pale and tired, their bodies exhausted, sleeping on the edges of the roads, without covers, tents, or anything. This is a war of extermination and starvation, and a war whose goal is clear, which is the killing and displacement of the Palestinian people, and the whole world knows this.

After several days, a new family came to the camp. They, too, had been displaced several times. They were displaced to escape death, but this war insists on making them taste bitterness and pain repeatedly. They received the news that their house had been bombed, one son martyred and others injured. The mother almost lost her mind. She cannot process this news that her heart and her mind reject.

Here in my city, in the morning, you wave your hand to your displaced neighbor in the tent opposite you, and then between the blink of an eye and the next, you find yourself waving to him, bidding him farewell as a martyr; he had been displaced to “escape” death, but it caught up with him. There was an innocent girl whose smile did not leave her face, a generous girl. Twice she escaped death. Her father left her alone for not more than a second, during which he was killed. Her mother cries all the time, unable to make sense of the loss.

I believe in fate and tribulations, and that everything from God is good for us. But what happened to this girl and her mother was too cruel to come to terms with.

Everyone who lives in the Gaza Strip, this city whose wars never end, lives this way now. The destruction never ends in our city, a city that was beautiful, that took pride in its colors; now it has become ashes from which all the hues of happiness and joy have been stolen, and nothing remains but shades of sadness and pain.

We are familiar with the same scene and it is familiar with us. Death passes between us. We see it and it does not see us. In life, we are besieged by death.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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