A long journey

Today is the 3rd of March and I’ve had a very good morning today. I had the chance to go through some YouTube videos like I used to do before October 7th. I came across a video of a boy who was saying goodbye to his father’s body because he was being taken from him to be buried. His father had gone out to get flour from Al-Nabulsi roundabout where more than 170 people were killed as they waited to collect flour. Before he left he said to his son, “I’ll be back soon, wait for me.” In the video his son was sobbing as he tried to wake his father up. He kept saying “May your soul rest in peace” to his father’s body, which reminded me of the movie Braveheart, when at the beginning William Wallace was saying goodbye to his father before he was taken to be buried. That lit a spark in him which created a new hero who would end up liberating Scotland. 

There is a lot of criticism of this movie but I consider it one of the best movies I’ve ever seen because it touches my own life and the lives of all Palestinians. I saw exactly the same spark in the child saying goodbye to his father’s dead body. I was only able to watch the video because I’m not in Gaza anymore. Yes, I’ve managed to leave Gaza and I’m in Egypt. It was a very hard and tiring trip moving between the different borders with no fixed procedures for us to follow. I left with my father and my three cats. The crossing is not well equipped for elderly people and the procedures are extremely slow. 

We had to wait from 8am until 7pm when finally we were able to leave the Egyptian border. My father had real difficulties in moving because he can’t walk well. In spite of it all, we managed to leave. A lot of other people who were traveling at the same time as us saw me with the cats and they approached me to ask how I managed to take them out. I explained that I got all their vaccines done before we left and I had all their paperwork and certificates ready with me so whenever I was asked for them I could pull them out of my handbag immediately. Most of the time the police just said, “It’s ok, keep them, we don’t need to see them.” A few of the people who witnessed this started making phone calls to their family members still in Gaza to tell them they can leave with their pets if they have all the paperwork ready. It was a smooth process but it was also so stressful because cats get really stressed when you take them out of the places they are used to. I now know at least one or two people who have taken the decision to take their pets out of Gaza because they saw me leaving with mine. 

It was hard to say goodbye to our host family in Rafah who accompanied us to their house gate in tears of affection. I left children and parents as well as grandparents with no idea of what the next day will hold for them. We arrived in Egypt at night and I felt glad. It took us a lot of time to reach our destination as I found out it was in a much further location than where I was hoping to go. But it feels good to have somewhere to go, a furnished  apartment I can call home for now. Now that I’m here I feel that I need some time for a break. While I was in Gaza I was unable to watch any of the videos or reels about Gaza because we had such limited access to internet. I’ve started to see some of them now and when I watched them I couldn’t help but break down and cry my eyes out. It’s partly because I’ve just lived through many of the experiences I’m now watching on the screen but also I still can’t imagine the losses people are experiencing and what people are facing in Gaza. It’s just unfathomable to lose a child or a parent or a family member, let alone many of them at once. And when they say people are numbers everyone should take it seriously because behind every single person there is a story of poverty, someone trying to make a living, someone trying to support their families. I know that once the bombardment on Gaza stops there will be so many stories beyond human imagination and so many details that people will need to go and pick up and reflect on as they will end up being the basis of great art works that will appear in the near future. 

At the moment I’m just trying to relax a little and seeing a memory of something I’ve been through so recently is not easy. But at least whenever I go out and see that life is going on, I feel it’s safe and I feel there is something behind everything that we’ve been through that we can look up to. Right now I’m trying to find my way. I will never forget that child who kept on repeating, “I’m going to get revenge for your murder,” to his father’s dead body. The war on Gaza is creating a circle of violence which will never end.