A Year of This Life That Doesn’t Resemble My Own
Courtesy of Etimad Abu Jalala and Noor Abu Mariam
It’s been a full year since the war on Gaza began. With the onset of winter nearing, and after the first rain—the “Salb al-Salib” (“Cross Rain”) that signals the arrival of fall and the olive harvest season—I begin to shake the dust off my weary soul. I step out of my tent in the Without Tears humanitarian camp and walk through Khan Yunis, the city I fled to for the eleventh time after being forcibly displaced.
I wander the streets of al-Qarara, carrying my crushed and broken heart over what we’ve become. My gaze shifts to every corner, every angle, and every meter, as I breathe heavily, feeling suffocated. This place no longer resembles what I remember it to be. In our tent built on top of sand, water seeps through and soaks everything inside when it rains.
Courtesy of Etimad Abu Jalala and Noor Abu Mariam
My heart breaks as I walk past destroyed and burnt houses, where beautiful memories and the toil of a lifetime have been lost forever. These impassable roads are blocked by debris. Streets are cluttered with the rubble of homes, schools, mosques, and bombed hospitals—buildings once erected with their inhabitants’ blood, sweat, and patient labor.
The most horrifying sight is the destruction of infrastructure, with sewage water spreading and attracting insects. It fills the air with an invasive stench—a constant reminder of the uninhabitability of the place.
Courtesy of Etimad Abu Jalala and Noor Abu Mariam
Everywhere I go, I see crowds. There are queues at bakeries, queues for water, and queues at medical facilities. People line up for food—what we call “Takiya queues”—as well as for aid, and there are queues for using the bathroom or taking a shower. Even public transportation has become carts pulled by animals or trailers towed by cars. There is congestion in the markets as people search for necessities at affordable prices. I see countless tents in various shapes, colors, and designs spread across high and low lands. I look around. A reality meets the eye that none in Gaza ever imagined we’d one day live in.
In the evenings, I’ve been taking walks to unwind. I head to Qarara Beach, passing by a high hill along Al-Tina Street. I watch as the new residents in scattered tents perform their daily tasks. I call these “backbreaking tasks” performed by Gaza’s families who live as if in the Middle Ages. Entire families live a primitive life in every sense of the word—a life resembling those before electricity and oil were discovered.
Courtesy of Etimad Abu Jalala and Noor Abu Mariam
Before the war, household chores used to take less than an hour, but now they consume the entire day. Cooking is done over wood, which needs to be bought, chopped, and endured while sitting in front of rising smoke. The smell of fire clings to our clothes. Washing is done manually using locally made soap, which bears no resemblance to the detergents we used to know. Bread is baked in a clay oven, fueled by wood or sometimes rotten flour, to hasten the baking process. As for water, families must walk for hours, standing in line to fill water jugs or cans, which they then carry a long distance daily, a challenge to their physical strength, causing them to lose weight. To get medicine or receive treatment, one must leave the tent early after sunrise to be first in line, especially since the medical supplies entering Gaza are very limited and sold at inordinate prices.
I see children and adults alike carrying empty food containers, standing in long queues in front of soup kitchens to get a meal to stave off their hunger, as vegetable prices soar and supplies dwindle in the markets. All the details of daily life have drifted far from the usual routine.
Courtesy of Etimad Abu Jalala and Noor Abu Mariam
I reach the seashore, sensing the suffering of those at the beach. They are not there for leisure or enjoyment, but because they’ve been displaced again and again. This suffering is beyond words. Amid fuel shortages, it now costs over $400 just to move from the east of the city to its west—a distance of only two kilometers. Displacement also means higher costs for building bathrooms in new areas, dismantling tents, and reassembling them. We might receive a sudden evacuation order, leaving us to walk on foot without carrying anything, moving to an unknown place where we sleep under the sky without shelter, clothes, or food.
For Gazans, the fear of displacement has become a haunting ghost, forcing us to quickly adapt to every new area we flee to. It has instilled in the displaced feelings of chaos, instability, and fear.
Despite all the suffering and hardships endured by the displaced—the pain, loss, deprivation, hunger, poverty, exhaustion, and lack of peace of mind for a year—there remains a distant light, signaling that Gaza will rise again, and we will live the life that we deserve and the life that reflects who we truly are.
Translated by Noor Abu Mariam
Edited by Xuezhu Jenny Wang