Oct. 24, 2023
On a small patch of land, in the southwest of the Asian continent, in the southern part of the eastern Mediterranean, on the coast between bordering cities that are also not seen or heard from.…
Injustice, darker and heavier than anything the world has ever known, has erupted for two consecutive weeks, systematically imprisoning more than two and a half million people within 360 square kilometers — killing aimed at annihilating the Palestinian presence in it.
No one has done anything to stop it, and no one will do anything.
At the end of the summer of 2023, a number of my friends and I were planning to rent a beach chalet to enjoy ourselves. Work obligations had prevented us from doing so at the beginning of the summer, and we rescheduled our holiday to October.
Oct. 6 – a day of sunshine and vitamin D. It was a day for preparing a lot of things, like packing swimming clothes, drawing up a menu of meals, and getting the groceries for our trip. I decided to sleep at my best friend’s house near Sea Street, so we could go there together. We sorted our shopping into separate bags, so fixated on the task that we didn’t finish until late at night.
She danced to the song “Substance,” and I laughed and laughed, finally falling asleep to dance videos.
At 6:30 a.m on Oct. 7, my friend’s sister entered the room shouting, “Wake up, wake up!” We looked at her foolishly, not understanding what was going on. It was not what we had imagined for this Saturday morning. We didn’t expect the Day of Judgment.
Then there were many rocket bursts, more than we had ever seen before. After realizing that our vacation plans were ruined, my friend insisted that we share breakfast in the morning sun. We ate under the rockets. Then my brother came to take me home before attacks got worse.
I tried to convince myself that this was nothing more than one of the successive escalations we had become accustomed to over the years, but something made this time different from the previous ones.
War. That big word. How terrifying war was at the beginning. The first, second, third, and fourth aggressions that have occurred in my short lifetime, and the escalations between them. How much they took our humanity. How much they made killing another easy, desirable and, in many cases, even a duty.
On the morning of Oct. 13, uncharacteristically, I decided to sleep with my brothers and other relatives in the same room, because somehow, I felt there was danger coming. My instinct was not wrong.
My grandmother had been through the Israeli aggression of 2008 and the aggression of 2012, and whenever the “machine of terror” struck fear in our hearts, my brothers and I would be comforted by her chanting, “O protector of the house. Protect the house and me in it.”
My grandmother died in 2013, and I inherited her voice. Her prayer became the first thing I said that morning: ”O Protector of the House. Protect all houses and the people in them.”
The previous night had begun with random shelling throughout the Gaza Strip, and a concentrated attack in the Al-Karama area in the northern Gaza Strip. I tried to contact one of my cousins who lives in that area, and after midnight she was able to respond to me with a short message that included, “The situation is terrible. A short while ago, the Red Cross got us out of here.”
At 2 a.m., a message was circulated through UNRWA and the Red Cross, in which the occupying forces asked the inhabitants of Gaza — I am referring here to the north of the Wadi Gaza — to proceed immediately, within a few hours, to the governorates of the south. For the first time it appeared to be a serious matter and not a rumor intended by the occupation forces to spread fear and terror in the hearts of Gazans.
I did not wait for the morning light to break through. I started to pack what I could. I sat on the bed and looked at the closet and realized that very little of significance could be carried in a single bag.
The family separated. Some rode in an ambulance and others took my father’s car and another car. My little sister cried for fear that one of us would be bombed and the other would be left to live alone. One tear fell from my eye before my eyes dried again.
The distance from my home to the south is not far. The journey should take at most half an hour, but the horror we experienced caused this half hour to double again and again.
As I write this, on the seventeenth day of the war, I, like many others, know that I will not survive the remaining days of the war if it continues like this. I declare that if I have the right to speak on behalf of most of my generation who witnessed this massacre, I can say that for all the days of our lives we will feel nothing, neither sorrow nor joy, neither in the days of war nor in the days of peace. Emotionally, none of us are alive, and we await our physical death, which I hope is imminent.
We are not strong enough to endure this death again.
