The clock is ticking

Today is the 19th of February. In addition to all the feelings of anger, depression, sadness, agony and worst of all feeling like I’ve had to get used to things I would normally never accept in my daily life, I now also feel the clock constantly ticking. The clock is ticking all the time. We are under pressure to do everything in a hurry in order leave Rafah as quickly as possible before it is attacked. I don’t even know what my reaction is going to be like when they attack because as I mentioned earlier I have a very heavy burden on my shoulders and I need to be prepared to carry it. 

I have been putting a lot of effort into getting my car fixed, trying to get it filled up with gas before it’s too late, in case we need to escape. There is so much effort involved in trying to leave Gaza. Even trying to get an explanation of how one can leave is extremely difficult but from all the research we have done and from what I can tell there are three possible ways to do it. I’m not happy talking about the different ways to leave as it’s not something I ever wanted to do but this is the reality facing us now.

Firstly, if you are injured you have the privilege to leave and, even if this is the case, not everyone gets to go. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are injured but they cannot leave Gaza for a number of reasons including the tightening of restrictions at the border. There are also a lot of people taking advantage of this option, for example people who had disabilities prior to the war who say they are injured in order for other family members to leave with them. There are hundreds of people like this who are being used as a way to get their families out of Gaza. 

The second way to leave is through Ya Hala, the only credible company which was illegal and became official now. It used to involve bribing the Egyptian intelligence with money to get across the border. There are a lot of people abroad trying to support Palestinians to leave through fundraising to help them with the costs of it. Even though civilians have the right to leave under all international conventions, this is the time when some people try to make business out of the vulnerable people and at the end of the day it’s the privileged few who can afford it. 

And the third way is to get to know people who are working under officials who are high up in the Egyptian intelligence. These people are paid tons of money and they manage to get people’s names onto the lists of those who can leave. However, there are very few people who manage to leave this way.

There is a list of names published every in the news via WhatsApp groups and every night we look at the lists published in the news for who is going to get the chance to leave. The names are categorized according to whether they’re on the list of people injured, whether they are accompanying the injured or whether they are leaving through Ya Hala company or through contacts in the Egyptian intelligence. 

Also some embassies call their countries' citizens and their relatives as well as their families in order to leave.

In order to leave via Ya Hala it costs 5,000 USD for each person and you have to have an immediate family member in Egypt to register your name. Many Palestinians are now running from one place to another in order to register their immediate family members at Ya Hala and then they wait. Ya Hala only opens once a week and thousands of people register on that day. The queues are massive and they take a long time.  I know a lady for example who waited from 4 am until 11pm when she finally got her name registered. According to their statistics 160,000 people are registered with them and this is another problem because you don’t get to register and leave the next day. It usually takes around one or two weeks before you get to leave. 

Sometimes they have to close their doors when people are still waiting there. The whole process is chaotic and it’s bad and it’s dehumanizing and it’s not really the best way. For everyone who thinks we are betraying our cause if we leave that’s not the case. I want to go back home and I have done my best to get cope with the situation here even though I know we are going to die. If they attack while we are in Rafah we’ll either end up being killed or living in a tent somewhere. This situation has made me realize how much human beings want to control the way they die. It’s only if you are very close to death that you will understand what that means. 

You want to control what you are wearing, what you say and what people’s image is of you. It’s your last moment on earth so anyone would want their friends and relatives to remember them well. The idea of death doesn’t just come to me when I’m eating or when I’m sleeping, it comes to me even when I’m working out because when I hear the airplanes I think if the moment comes and I die now I want to be dressed properly and that will not be the case and my mind becomes filled with those thoughts so I try to just finish as quickly as possible and get it done. 

Once I finish the workout and get changed I feel more relaxed because if I die I will be dressed properly. It’s not just me – this explains why so many people are now wearing their prayer clothes all the time. Women especially are wearing their prayer clothes when they go out and it’s simply because they want to die in their prayer clothes.  We are waiting for our names to appear on the lists now and every day that we don’t read our names makes us sad and depressed and angry and now more than ever I understand why we see youth sitting by the outdoor gates of their homes and staring into space doing nothing. It’s because this moment of hopelessness and helplessness makes a lot of people silent and just stare into space like they are crazy or have taken drugs. I was sitting with relatives and my in-laws yesterday and we didn’t say a word to each other. We were just sitting together and we did not utter any word about the situation or anything. We just said the bare minimum to each other but otherwise we just sat in silence and didn’t say anything. This has become regular for a lot of people. 

Also we are exhausted with having to plan for different scenarios. I do plan for different scenarios and I believe I’m a good planner but then I’m exhausted with having to plan for so many different situations – what if I stay in Gaza alone? What if my father had to travel and leave me? What if my pets were not allowed to travel and I have to go in by myself? What if my sister left before me? What if we left with my father and then my sister stayed here in Gaza? What if my in-laws left us here alone and because we spend so much time together and what’s going to happen? What if my brother was able to leave with them and I stayed alone with my father?

And this is only about leaving but the same goes for everything else too – what if I buy a gas heater to make me warm? Am I just going to use it for one day? Then what will I do with it in case my name appears on the list and I’m able to leave Gaza? Should I wash the clothes that I swear to God I’ll never wear again once I leave Gaza? I’ll never wear them again because those are not my own type of clothes and I feel disgusted with having to wear them again because I wore them in very difficult hygienic situations. I have left my clothes without being washed in the hope that I will not need to wash them for example. But then I wash them thinking that maybe I’d have to leave them for someone so they have to be given to someone clean. But then now they are there and I believe I’m going to take another difficult shower in this cold weather in Gaza because I’m staying here longer.

The same goes for so many things in life. I mean it is so difficult to plan for different scenarios for every situation. Every week I’ve had to arrange my luggage based on different scenarios. Maybe we’ll end up leaving tomorrow so I arrange my luggage for this scenario. But then maybe I’ll stay for another week and I arrange my luggage differently. And if I’m to remain here for another month I need to arrange my luggage differently. So this is the case now and we just don’t know – it feels really unstable and this morning I was looking at my luggage and it reminded me of other situations I was in before. Life sometimes repeats itself because my luggage is ready to leave again and I don’t when I’m going to leave. This is the same situation which I had previously in my life during a different war.

This is the situation I’m in now – sometimes you have to approach people for help to leave but I’m also this type who is trying to help myself in order to leave. It’s just that some people who are trying to help you end up getting upset that you’re trying to sort things out yourself and then you end up in a situation in which you have to explain to them why you chose to try and help yourself. We are literally doing everything possible at the same time hoping that something works to get us out of here. This is taking a lot of my energy and my time and my conversations and this is also the reason why sometimes there is a distance between the times I am able to write my diary. I’m so busy with other things. 

We are not betraying anyone – this is a right guaranteed in the international human rights conventions because we are civilians, we have nothing to do with any party. I don’t want to die like I have never existed on earth. I hope to die in my bed quiet and not in this way in which I don’t know what is going to happen to me. It’s a really difficult situation and we are hoping to survive. Apart from the above, ‘regular’ life in a war zone goes on…