|
Letters from Gaza (16)
...Gaza under fire
The air is very heavy in Gaza, full of all
the anger, grief and sadness that encompasses human
understanding. The sound of the Israeli airplanes and the
vibrations of its missiles make the air even heavier. On a
single day, over 280 people are killed, many more injured and
more yet are still missing. This is Gaza on the first day of
the Israeli air assault.
It is funny how things in Gaza change so
quickly and how the destiny of my people depends on a dirty
political game. Suffering from a blockade for the past 18
months, scores of injured will not receive adequate medical
treatment due to the lack of the most basic supplies. They will
lose their lives, unneccesarily. This, it seems, is not enough
to stop the game and to start treating us like humans.
Before Israel started this most brutal
operation in Gaza, I was watching TV with my children. They
refused to go to sleep as they hadn’t had a chance to watch TV
due to long periods of electricity cuts. We were watching “The
Sound of Music”, set in the Austrian Alps near Salzburg. Ahmed,
with his honest comments, said, "I wish I could break the glass
of the TV and join these kids in their lives. They seem to enjoy
everything." He asks his brother Mustafa, "do you think that
they have electricity cuts?"; a childish but honest question
that tells volumes.
The following day was the first day of
their mid-term exams and the first day of the Israeli operation
in Gaza. I was home with my baby and my one-year-old daughter,
Salma. Ahmed had just come home from school when the bombing
started. It was so sudden and so continuous. Every thing was
shaking: the windows, the walls, everything, even my children.
Salma collapsed crying and asking for her father, while Ahmed
sat on the floor and started to scream, asking for his brother
Mustafa who was still at school. Even my baby, four-month-old
Mohammed, broke into a crying fit. I felt helpless. I could not
do anything and was wondering what was going on. “Is this the
Day of Judgment? Are we going to die?”
The electricity cut off; there were no
phones, no Jawwal networks, nothing. I tried to call my
husband, to call the school, but there is no way. Then the news
announced that Israel was bombing all the military compounds,
that there were hundreds of casualties - total destruction.
Words cannot describe what happened. I am
not talking about my personal feelings only, but about the
feelings of other mothers, families under Israeli fire. Again we
are targeted, in an inhuman, evil way. Again Israel is
defending itself against our evil.
I cannot sleep. We are terrified. My
children refuse to sleep in our flat which is on the fourth
floor because they say it shakes whenever there is an Israeli
bombing raid. I took them to their grandfather’s house. My
little daughter is clinging to me; she doesn’t want me to leave
her. She screams and cries whenever she hears a loud voice and,
as she describes it in her simple words, "I get scared. The
plane is dumb, it goes boom.” What can I say, what can I do?
The electricity came back on at ten o'clock
and finally I can see the news, the terrifying images of dead
bodies lying on the ground, one, two, ten, twenty. I cannot
continue counting, hundreds. Oh God, what is going on ? Are we
so cheap that nobody cares?!
I am writing this now as the sound of the
Israeli planes makes me so nervous that I lose my thoughts. I
cannot stop thinking of my children, my family, my friends and
my neighbors and wonder whose name will be added to the list of
the dead. No one knows. |
