Northern Gaza, Palestine – We had no dwelling to return to. And the Gaza Metropolis we knew was no extra. However we returned.
Why? Perhaps it was nostalgia for our former lives – earlier than October 2023. Perhaps the feelings we had left behind earlier than our displacement to the south had remained, ready to welcome us again.
Both means, the truth that greeted us was harsh and unfamiliar. I realised how a lot of a stranger I had turn out to be in my very own metropolis, the place I had spent almost 30 years of my life.
I wandered via streets I may not recognise, misplaced amid the overwhelming destruction. I struggled to seek out my means from my household’s ruined dwelling to my in-laws’ home, which, although nonetheless standing, bore the deep scars of warfare. I walked down one road, into one other – with no acquainted landmarks to information me.
No communication networks, no web, no electrical energy, no transportation – not even water. My pleasure for returning had was a nightmare – break and devastation was wherever I turned.
Numb, I roamed via the shattered remnants of household properties. My objective was to succeed in the place the place my dwelling as soon as stood. I already knew that it was no extra – I had seen footage.
However standing there, in entrance of the rubble of the seven-storey constructing the place I had made so many reminiscences with my household, I used to be silent.
Properties may be rebuilt
One among my neighbours, additionally getting back from displacement within the south, arrived. We exchanged damaged smiles as we gazed on the wreckage of our life’s labour. She was luckier than me – she managed to salvage a number of belongings, some outdated garments.
However I discovered nothing. My condominium had been on the primary flooring, buried beneath layers upon layers of particles.
My colleague, the photographer Abdelhakim Abu Riash, arrived. I informed him that I felt no shock, not even any emotion. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grieving, however relatively that I had entered a state of emotional numbness – a self-imposed anaesthesia, maybe a survival mechanism my thoughts had adopted to protect me from insanity.
My husband, alternatively, was visibly enraged, although silent.
We determined to go away and, as I turned my again on my destroyed dwelling, a deep ache gripped my coronary heart. There isn’t any shelter now, no place to name our personal.
However what stored us from breaking down was understanding we weren’t alone – a whole metropolis stood in ruins.
“At the least we survived, and we’re all secure,” I informed my husband, attempting to consolation him. After which, horrific reminiscences of the previous 15 months – spent wandering via hospitals and refugee camps – rushed again. I reminded him: “We’re higher off than those that misplaced their complete households, higher off than the little ladies who misplaced their limbs. Our youngsters are secure, we’re secure. Properties may be rebuilt.”
We are saying this typically in Gaza, and it’s true. However it doesn’t erase the burden of shedding one’s dwelling.
‘Watch out with the water’
Unable to stroll any additional, we made our strategy to my in-laws’ home. We had been informed it was nonetheless standing however as we approached via scenes of devastation, we couldn’t recognise the constructing.
This was the place we might now stay, in what remained: two rooms, a rest room and a kitchen.
However as soon as once more, there was no house for shock right here. Survival demanded adaptation, irrespective of how little we had. That was the rule of warfare.
Inside, we discovered a semblance of aid. My husband’s brother had arrived forward of us, cleaned slightly and secured some water. His solely warning: “Watch out with the water. There’s none left in your entire space.”
That single sentence was sufficient to empty the final ounce of hope from me. I felt a crushing mixture of despair, nausea and exhaustion. I may consider nothing however water – simply water.
The home’s sewage system was destroyed. Partitions had been torn open by shelling. The bottom and first flooring had been fully flattened. Life right here is barren and completely bleak.
And what made it worse was the renewed shock of searching the balcony at devastation so far as the attention may see – too huge, too overwhelming to permit escape from the trauma.
My good friend who had stayed within the north had informed me typically: “The north is totally destroyed. It’s unliveable.” Now I believed her.
My mom’s attire
The subsequent morning, I went to my guardian’s dwelling in Sheikh Radwan, braced for what I’d discover as a result of I knew, our neighbours had already despatched us photographs – the home was nonetheless there, however gutted by hearth.
The Israeli military had stayed in it for a while earlier than setting it on hearth as they withdrew, we had been informed.
We even discovered a video on TikTok, a soldier who had filmed himself consuming a McDonald’s sandwich in my newlywed brother’s front room whereas watching the neighbouring homes burn.
I wandered via the home, overwhelmed by a flood of reminiscences that had been lowered to ash and rubble. Just one room had survived the hearth: my dad and mom’ bed room. The hearth hadn’t touched it.
I stepped into my mom’s room. I misplaced my mum on Might 7, in the course of the warfare.
Her garments nonetheless hung within the closet, embroidered attire untouched by flames. Her belongings, her Quran, her prayer chair – all the pieces remained, solely coated in heavy mud and shattered glass.
Every thing paled compared to the second I stood earlier than my late mom’s wardrobe, tears welling as I gently retrieved her attire, disregarding the mud.
“That is the costume she wore for my brother Mohammed’s wedding ceremony,” I whispered to myself. “And this one… for Moataz’s wedding ceremony.”
I grabbed my cellphone and referred to as my sister, nonetheless within the south, my voice trembling between sobs and pleasure: “I discovered Mama’s embroidered attire. I discovered her garments! They didn’t burn!”
She gasped with happiness, instantly asserting that she would run to the north the subsequent morning to see our mom’s belongings.
That is what life has turn out to be right here – rubble all over the place, and but we rejoice over any fragment, any thread that connects us to the previous.
Think about, then, what it means to seek out the one tangible traces of our most valuable loss – my beloved mom.
Not the Gaza I knew
Two days later, after sifting via wreckage and reminiscences, I compelled myself to step exterior of my grief.
I made a decision to go to the Baptist Hospital within the morning, hoping to satisfy fellow journalists, regain some sense of self and try and work on new tales.
I walked for a very long time, unable to seek out transportation. My garments had been quickly lined in mud – all that remained after buildings had been pulverised by Israel’s bombs.
Each passer-by was the identical, coated in layers of gray from head to toe, eyelashes weighed down by particles.
Round me, folks had been clearing the wreckage of their properties. Stones rained down from collapsed higher flooring as women and men shovelled rubble, mud billowing via the air, swallowing complete streets.
A girl stopped me and requested the place she may recharge her cellphone credit score. I hesitated, then blurted out: “I’m sorry, Auntie, I’m new right here… I don’t know.”
I walked away, shocked at my response. My unconscious had accepted it – this was not the Gaza I knew.
I used to know Gaza by coronary heart. Each road – al-Jalaa, Shati Camp, Sheikh Radwan, Remal, al-Jundi. I knew all of the again roads, each market, each well-known bakery, each restaurant, each café. I knew precisely the place to seek out one of the best truffles, probably the most elegant garments, the branches of telecom corporations, the web service suppliers.
However now?
Now, there have been no landmarks left. No road indicators. No factors of reference. Does this matter anymore?
I continued strolling down al-Jalaa Avenue, struggling to position the previous upon the ruins. Generally I succeeded, typically I took an image to check later, to check it with what as soon as was.
North and south
Lastly, I discovered a automotive heading my means. The motive force gestured for me to take a seat beside a girl within the entrance seat. Within the again, 5 different girls and a baby had been squeezed collectively.
Alongside the way in which, the motive force picked up yet one more passenger, cramming him into the final out there house.
Each second felt like an error – a system overload in my thoughts.
On the hospital, my reminiscences jolted again to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah the place hospitals turned journalists’ solely refuge – the one locations with electrical energy and web for the reason that warfare started.
This time, the faces had been completely different, and it was obvious that the journalists from the north had skilled this warfare very otherwise from how we had within the south.
I moved hesitantly via the corridors, each time we encountered a journalist, I whispered to Abdelhakim: “Is that this individual from the north? Or had been they with us within the south?”
It was a real query. Conversations, familiarity, the burden of phrases – all of them felt completely different, relying on the place we had endured the warfare.
Sure, there was dying and destruction within the south, Israel had not spared Rafah, Deir el-Balah or Khan Younis. However it was completely different in Gaza Metropolis and northern Gaza – folks right here had endured ache to a level that we merely had not.
Every time I recognised a colleague from the south, my face lit up and I finished, keen to speak, sharing tales of the unattainable journey alongside al-Rashid Highway, asking about their first glimpse of town, concerning the second they noticed their household properties.
That was once I really understood: We felt like strangers in our personal metropolis.
The battle to belong once more
Israel’s warfare had not solely reshaped Gaza’s panorama but additionally the folks inside it. It had fashioned new identities below hearth, dividing us in methods we by no means imagined.
A bitter, aching fact – we misplaced Gaza, time and again, its folks, its spirit, ourselves.
For 15 months, we thought the best nightmare was displacement – that exile was the cruellest destiny. Individuals wept for dwelling, dreaming solely of return.
However now, return appears way more cruel. Within the south, we had been referred to as “displaced”. Within the north, we are actually “returnees”, the individuals who stayed blaming us for leaving when the evacuation orders got here.
Generally, we blame ourselves too. However what alternative did we’ve got?
And now, we supply a quiet disgrace – a small, unstated mark that has lived in our hearts for the reason that day we left, and that we see mirrored within the eyes of those that remained.
I had imagined the day we returned north would mark the tip of the warfare however, wandering the devastated streets, I realised: I’m nonetheless ready for that finish, the second once we can say: “This chapter of bloodshed is over.”
I lengthy to place the ultimate interval, so we’d start once more – even when the start is painful. However there isn’t a interval. No closure. No finish.
I drag myself ahead, mud clinging to my garments that I don’t trouble to shake off. Tears combine with the rubble, and I don’t wipe them away.
The truth is that we’ve been deserted to an open-ended destiny, a street with no route: We’re misplaced. We’ve got no energy left to rebuild. No power to start out once more.
We’ve got misplaced this metropolis, my buddies.
The Gaza we beloved and knew has died – defeated, severed and alone.
However regardless of all the pieces, it nonetheless lives on inside us.
