It's Ruba from Gaza

Today is the 29th of December and I’m going to speak about an experience I had at the hospital and some other experiences shared by people I met while there. A few days ago one of my friends told me that she was going to take a shower in the hospital. It sounded very weird to me and I said I’d join her. I was curious what it was like to take a shower at the hospital. We agreed to go there at 6.30 in the morning. Once there we headed to the kidney department which was in the basement. I thought we’d be the earliest to get there but it turned out that there was already a queue of about 12 women waiting for their turn to take a shower. There was a man waiting outside the bathroom who basically lives in the hospital because he gets dialysis every day. He goes to see his family just once a week. So everyone knows him and he had taken on the role of arranging the queue of women waiting for a shower. He was very supportive but he also complained that all the hot water had finished because som...

Today is the 24th of December and I want to write about the rising number of people attempting to leave the Gaza Strip. In every war there are so many civilians who get caught in the crossfire and people in Gaza are no exception. There are people who are trying to leave by any means possible and everyone is using whatever contacts they have - relatives, co-workers, previous colleagues, friends, anyone - in order to try and facilitate the process of them leaving Gaza for the time being. How can we blame them as more and more innocent civilians are losing their homes and their lives every day.  For me, I have brothers in Canada who I can go to and rely on. However, I still love my home and I like being in Gaza. It’s going to be a hard decision for me to leave because, like many others here, this is the place where I was born, where I’ve been working, where I made friends, where I went to school, where I’ve lived most of my life, and so I have loyalty to this place.  There are al...

Today is the 23rd of December and the war is still going on. I believe that the Security Council should be discussing how to ensure there is a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the news says that the Security Council has passed a resolution to increase ‘assistance’ (as you know, I don’t refer to it as humanitarian ‘assistance’ but humanitarian rights) to the people in Gaza and this is not acceptable. In my opinion, the UN as a body has started to lose its credibility. For us the UN is not an organization to rely on when it comes to humanitarian ‘assistance’ because it’s all in the hands of Israel. The next few days will show that.  Today I woke up again with mixed feelings. I realized that I haven’t had coffee for over a week and I’m fine with that - does this mean that I’ve stopped being addicted to coffee? I don’t know. When I look at the pictures of the singers from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 90s in my room, sometimes I find myself singing old songs that I learned a long time ago. Then sud...

Today is the 21st of December and this blog is going to be a hard one to read. I am warning you now that if you cannot listen to shocking, terrifying and disgusting details then this blog is not for you. Living through this war is like living through a horror movie and you will see why when you read these stories. Of course, nothing  is more dramatic and sad than being forced to flee your home, to move from one place to another and to end up being displaced. For me I came immediately to Rafah because I knew people here but that's not the case for everyone. There are people who left from Gaza City to Deir El Balah to a school, and then to Khan Younis and then to Rafah so they have had to flee 4 or 5 times. This war has made us be away from our homes for over two months now, forcing another family to host us, and there are others living in schools or in the streets or in tents. There’s nothing worse than not knowing where your relatives are or what they’re doing or even losing them -...

Today is the 18th of December and for almost 3 days we have been completely cut off from the outside world as we had no internet or phone connection. In today’s blog post I’ll be explaining what it means to be living through a war with no communication at all, including mobiles, telephones or the internet.  We have had zero contact with anyone for quite a few days. For us this meant that a massacre was going to happen and it turned out to be true. A few massacres happened and in all of them people died but for us the worst one of all was the killing of people in Kamal Adwan Hospital in the North. Tanks and tractors entered into the hospital courtyard and started running over and crushing  anything in their way. Many tents were knocked over with the people inside them and the tanks were just crushing them.  A lot of people were unable to escape and people who were still alive ended up being buried with those who were already dead in the sand together. This was a nightmare ...

Today is the 14th of December and the last couple of days have been exhausting. I had completely different plans for what I was going to speak about in my next diary entries but then all these things happened to me and my family and I wanted to share this information with you all. During times of war there are always people who abuse others, either because they are taking advantage or they are desperate - they could be thieves, they could be people who inflate the prices in the market or do other things which harm people.  People’s problems are more than tripled when things like this happen to them during war time. Yesterday I received confirmed information that the entire tower where I used to live was looted. 200 people entered the tower and stole everything. They had experience with opening multi-lock doors and anything that could be taken was stolen. I mean everything , including the sink, the light switches, the shelves, the electrical appliances - anything that you can think ...

Today is the 11th of December. We have been experiencing very difficult nights. The drones are above us all day and during the nights we hear explosions, airstrikes and bombardments so it’s difficult to sleep. I want to explain what it means to be hosted by a family and how this affects your life. There’s a big difference between Arabic culture and Western Culture. Over here, being hosted doesn’t mean that you feel like you’re at home. Being hosted means that the family ‘serves’ you what you need and as guests you remain in a couple of particular places within the house. This is to show that you’re being polite - you’re not just wondering around their house all the time.  So we remain in our two rooms (the room I share with my father during the day and I share the other room with our in laws during the night). If I need something I go to the kitchen and then go back to my room. Because we are confined to these spaces in the house, we don’t share a lot in the host family’s daily lif...