Small delights of a kidnapped people

Today is the 13th of January and I know it’s been a while since I last communicated with you. I feel like there is nothing new to say - the same terrible difficult things keep happening over and over again. There are still bombings and explosions around us everywhere. Rafah is becoming extremely crowded. As each day passes more people come here. The ongoing attacks on the middle area of Gaza, on Al Nusairat, Al Maghazi and Al Bureij make it really hard for people to continue living there and they are still fleeing to Rafah.

The original population of Rafah was around 280,000 people but now there are about 1.8 million people here . When I first came here it was easy to bump into other people who had come from Gaza City and the middle part of the Gaza Strip, but now since it’s so crowded you hardly ever see anyone you know. Now when I need to go out I keep my head down and just try and quickly finish up whatever I need to do and then head straight back home. This is firstly because of the ongoing explosions and the war, and secondly the high density of population makes it hard to go out.

However, the other day I went out and I happened to see an old childhood friend. You know those people who you’re friends with when you’re kids and when you grow up you’re not friends anymore but you still feel like a child again whenever you see them. So they told me that they live here in Al-Junaina in Rafah and I told them I live here as well and then they invited me to visit them. I went and I had a very good day with them. I had access to additional resources like fuel and cooking gas so we had very nice food together and we had a wonderful time. I also smoked sheesha with them which made me realize that I smoked sheesha a lot before the war and now that there is no gas I cannot light the coal anymore so I haven’t smoked it for three months. When I smoked it at their place I felt it was very hard on my lungs and my respiratory system so I was sort of happy that I don’t like it anymore. Although I don’t mind smoking it every once in a while.

They also had another visitor and we all chatted a lot. To my surprise he said that his sister was killed during the war together with her children and her husband and her husband’s family. They were all killed together. But then he told me that he still has not told his mother that her daughter was killed. She keeps asking a lot of questions about her – where she is, why she hasn’t contacted her and then he says that he hasn’t told her because she will not be able to handle the news because of the health issues she has. It was hard to hear this but in spite of this we had such a nice time all together; it was quality time that made my day and the day after.

Recently one of my friends said something to me which I truly believe is right. She said ‘I feel like I have been kidnapped. I’ve been kidnapped from my old life, I’ve been kidnapped from my routine. I forgot that I had a life before the war and I don’t know what kind of life I’ll have after the war.’ This friend of mine was highly professional, she used to travel a lot and she had incorporated very healthy habits into her daily routine, just as I had. She expressed what everyone feels here in such an articulate way. We have been kidnapped; even if we have access to resources every once in a while, even if we meet the people we know but we feel like we are kidnapped. That is so true – everyone agrees with it, every old friend I’ve seen here, everyone in the street feels the same. 

I assure you, it’s as if everyone here is a like a ghost of what they were. Every face I have seen lately is a dull face of someone I knew before. We don’t have the same faces anymore and it’s really hard to see how people are changing. I still do everything I possibly can in order not to become that face, but I am becoming that dull face as well. And still, simple daily delights like having a nice meal once in a while and seeing old friends – that’s ok but there’s something that’s changing inside every one of us. We are not the same people anymore. This war is creating different people in us. I know that there is a wisdom that says ‘this time will pass’ and I know this time will pass and as I said before I don’t want to kill the child within me. I will do my best to return back to who I was like many people are going to do. And like many people who are insisting to be the same good happy people like before this war. But again this war is changing us in an enormous way and let’s hope that we can at least – we know we are resilient but currently we are dying. If we’re not literally dying we’re dying a slow death that is resulting from witnessing and hearing bad news every day.

It’s also resulting from our living circumstances that we have to encounter every day. And then also – we  continue to hear news of our friends and beloved ones. I don’t watch the news so I don’t know what’s happening there but according to eye witnesses everyone who has been kidnapped by the the Israelis is tortured. And the most tortured sector are doctors and people who are working in ambulances, first aid workers, the civil defence people whether they are working in the ambulances – anyone who works in the medical sector is tortured more than any other person, according to eye witnesses. This also includes people who are managing hospitals and others. I also keep hearing about the people who are asked to get naked and even out of their underwear – and that happens at schools. When they get to the school they separate men from women and they ask men to get naked and they put them in a classroom and they start hitting and beating them very hard. 

Today was the first time I heard about women being asked to get naked and walk in the street naked. This is something I’ve never heard before – I don’t know if the news is reporting it or not but I’ve heard it from the people who have come here from the middle part of Gaza. We also hardly have mobile connections so we don’t know the whereabouts of some people we know. The last we heard from them they were trying to leave the middle area because there are attacks there and they are at risk of being killed because they are between two high risk blocks. This is since the Israelis were dividing every camp, village and city into blocks and they asked the people living in certain blocks to evacuate. Now this is happening in the middle, in Khan Younis and we don’t know when our turn will be - we are waiting. So this is the situation right now. 

And yes – we are kidnapped, we are kidnapped from our memories, we are kidnapped from our previous lives – the current life we are living feels like a block by itself that is not linked to whatever happened before and could be something that is not linked to whatever happens after.