Amid massive Israeli shillings and constant explosions in 2009, my family and I were forced to evacuate our home in Gaza. This evacuation saga would repeat itself later, as Israel’s attacks on Gaza became frequent.
We hastily gathered near a dusty road trying to hide in a basement.
I was barely nine years old at the time. My parents would claim the bombing was a game we played to distract us from the harsh reality we lived in.
Many children my age played this “game.”
During the 2008 offensive on Gaza, Israel killed 1,410 Palestinians, including 355 children and 240 women. At least 5,380 Palestinians, including 1,872 children, were injured.
The trauma from that experience has never been erased from my memory.
I am 23 years old, and every loud sound, even the sound of a moving truck, terrifies me.
“Two out of 3 adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and some young children cannot sleep due to nightmares,” according to a report by Islamic Relief.
Early suffering
Being a nine-year-old child in Gaza deprived me of the liberty to enjoy my childhood, even when I tried to do so.
Amid Israel’s savage aggression in 2008-9, we tried to cling to what remained of our innocence as children.
When the morning dawned, we would run from one door to another trying to make an endless circle around my grandmother, who toasted bread for us for breakfast. When one of us would fall, our laughter would quickly rise.
Israel has its techniques and methods of eliminating every joyful moment, every form of innocence and all laughter in Gaza.
In a blink of an eye, this innocent joy was turned to pain when my father came in with teary eyes and announced that Israel had bombed our home.
The prevalent silence, except for my mother’s muffled crying, made me angry and frustrated at the silence of the rest of the world.
I realized then that I must endure my fate: the fate of living in fear; the fate of not being allowed to be a child anymore; the fate of dealing with the difficulty of life under Israel’s destructive war machine in Gaza, which had rendered my family homeless.
A six-year-long journey started then, moving from one house to another until our home was rebuilt.
Is our new home safe?
No, no place is safe in Gaza.
Gaza’s vicious circle of violence
On any day, our mornings in Gaza can start with the sounds of intense Israeli bombings, explosions, and missiles.
On May 10, 2021, we were celebrating the arrival of Eid Al-Fitr, the three-day-long Muslim holiday after a month of fasting, making traditional kaak (cookies) with our neighbors.
Our joy was enough to make us forget about Israeli aggressions.
The unfolding news had been so horrifying that we were not able to gather for the last meal in Ramadan, leaving our home in fear, which had become a permanent fixture in our lives.
The day after, at 8:00 am, I was standing on the balcony, looking apprehensively at the serene cloudless sky which gave me a sense of assurance that everything would be fine.
Then, the buzzing sound of Israeli drones infiltrated my space, making me keenly aware that something painful was soon to happen.
Like a kid who is lost, I ran towards my mother and the comfort of her lap, trying to convince myself that all this was just a delusion.
Then, someone knocked at the door.
“Evacuate your home now”
“Evacuate your home now,” someone screamed.
They were no longer delusions: I had experienced this dark reality before.
I went to my dad, who had barely had any sleep, tapping on his shoulder to wake him up.
I felt sorry for him: I didn’t want him to live the same spiraling depression of losing his home again.
He woke up terrified, not knowing what to pick up and what to leave behind.
He took our five-war-old black bag, which we call the “bag of memories.”
My mother had been putting my certificates in there since I was in elementary school.
We left our home yet again.
Every time we do so, I feel that it is doomsday.
My family and our neighbors were standing at the very end of the road, waiting for Israel to bomb our homes.
With bitter tears, I observed my room, its purple curtains, and our photos hanging on the walls.
I wished I were Alaa, my seven-year-old youngest sister, who was being hugged by my mother.
A taxi picked us up and drove us to my uncle’s house. We spent one week there. My body was there, but not my mind.
We heard that Israel had bombed an apartment in the same residential building where we lived. The apartment belonged to a Palestinian journalist who had recently got married.
Eid with the taste of bloodshed
In the 2021 war on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH), Israel killed 232 Palestinians, including 65 children and 39 women, and injured at least 1,900 others, including 350 children.
After Israel agreed to a ceasefire, I returned home with my father and three sisters. Everything was covered in dust from the bombings.
Even Eid was weird to celebrate considering yet another Palestinian bloodshed.
Life in Gaza will always stubbornly repeat itself and no one will ever get used to it. We are just taking a short break between continuous Israeli attacks.
Now, I am a 5-war-old Palestinian, and I don’t know how many Israeli wars are waiting for me yet.
Source: Politics Today
Written by: Samah Zaher Zaqout , a Palestinian living in Gaza. Currently, she works as a translator, a writer, a tutor, and a freelancer and she is a staff member at Days of Palestine.
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