Friday 13 October
3am I manage to sleep for a couple of hours. Last night, there was no internet connection; even the mobile data was very bad. With eyes half-open, I check my phone and see many messages from people saying that residents of north Gaza and Gaza City should move south. The adrenaline starts, my heart is beating fast. In no time, my eyes are wide open and I get out of bed.
4am My sister and I sit at the kitchen table with the couple who are hosting us. We need to discuss the situation: should we leave or should we stay? The wife prepares coffee for them and a cup of earl grey for me.
“So, what are our options? Leave and stay at one of the schools? Do you know what happens there? There will be hundreds, if not thousands, of people.”
“We could stay. We are civilians. This is our home – we are not harming anyone.”
“We don’t know what will happen. Leaving is the safe choice.”
“I will not leave my home. I would prefer to die here rather than in a place I don’t belong to.”
“We all have heard about the lack of water, electricity and the basic needs in the shelters. People have fights, and it is just awful.”
The discussion takes hours. We all make a decision: we are not leaving.
8am I don’t believe anyone in Gaza is asleep. By now I have made about 15 phone calls asking friends whether they will leave or stay. No unified answer.
I repack my bag to sort out what is important and what I should leave if we change our minds. Passing a mirror, I see my reflection: my eyes are tired and covered by dark circles. I also realise that I have lost weight.
10am Everyone is leaving, except for us.
People are panicking, and the theories about what might happen are horrifying. We’re discussing all possible scenarios.
“We can leave for a couple of days and see what happens.”
“My friend, who said she wouldn’t leave, called and said that she and her husband changed their minds.”
“I’m afraid if we stay, horrible things will happen.”
Suddenly, the wife stands up and says: “You want me to die in a place I don’t know … to spend the last days of my life humiliated? We can stay here and nothing bad will happen.” Then she stops for a minute, tears falling, and says: “I have a feeling that if I leave, I am never coming back.”
We decided, by a majority of votes, that we are leaving.
11am We are seven people, one car, four suitcases and five backpacks. The car doesn’t fit all of us. We need another car, but there are none available.
My sister, who is very nervous, calls everyone she knows; she does not ask for a car, she demands a car. I calmly try contacting everyone I think can help. Neither of us succeed.
Where to go? Going into a school, hospital or a shelter are not options. The husband starts calling his friends to see if someone has an apartment we could rent or crash in.
Finally, the husband says: “We could go to our land. It is empty, but we can stay there until we figure out what to do.”
Everyone knows that is not a good option. It takes us back to the same old conversation: should we stay or leave?
We decide to stay. Then I start crying. I am afraid, terrified, confused.
Finally, a decision is made: my sister and I decide to leave and the family decide to stay.
My sister finds us a place to stay, and my friends help us to get a taxi driver who gives a ride to two families from Gaza City to Rafah and then comes back for us.
1pm My sister and I hug the family one by one, all of us sobbing. We do not know who has made the right decision.
We say our goodbyes. We ask for each other’s forgiveness.
They ask us to take the suitcase in which we packed the food and water – since we thought we were going together, we put all of it in one suitcase. We refuse to take it and leave it with them.
1.30pm The scene of the cars evacuating is horrifying. It is group migration. There are many people walking while carrying their children and their bags because they couldn’t find a car. Some people are leaving in buses and others in the back of trucks. Whenever they see people walking, they invite them to jump in. It breaks my heart leaving.
3pm We arrive. This is the third family that has hosted us since the beginning of the escalation. A family of 10: husband and wife, three children, the wife and three children of the oldest son, and the great-grandfather. They are very nice, simple people who have opened their doors to us, offered us food.
4pm We hear that the husband of the previous family has found an apartment. They have decided to leave.
The night is approaching and I am scared. When there is bombing at night, Amani, a colleague, always tries to take my mind off the fear. The building will be shaking right and left, and she will send me something like: “What is your favourite book? Which culture do you like the best?”
Sometimes, I play along, pretend I don’t know why she is doing this, and answer her questions. Other times, I just look at the messages and don’t answer.
Saturday 14 October
3am The first day after our third evacuation. The night in the area we are in is calm, but I can’t sleep. I keep waking up with every little sound. I don’t just open my eyes, but raise the top part of my body as well to see if everything is OK. I check my mobile and see the weather app sharing the weather in Berlin. It seems that I clicked on something by mistake. I think about how wonderful it would be if I was there, but I am in Gaza.
6am After some on/off sleep, I wake up and notice that my jaw is hurting. I realise that I’ve been clenching my teeth. I hear the doorknob moving and a little face appears: Laila, the youngest in the family. She wants to see the new people sleeping in her house.
I smile at her and two other heads appear above hers, her older brother and sister, Hamed and Radwa. I invite them in, and they sit next to me on the mattress on the floor, next to the couch where my sister is sleeping. I ask them what they want to be in the future.
“I want to be a nanny,” Laila says.
“I want to be a police officer,” Hamed says.
“I want to be a doctor,” Radwa says.
I am glad to hear their answers. Despite all the horrific things happening around them, they still have hope and dreams for the future. In times like these, hope for a better future is really precious.
8am The grandmother comes to say hello. She is only 43 years old; she tells us she had her first baby at 16. We speak about the situation, and how some people are abusing others. She tells me: “Some family members of mine were fleeing from Gaza to the south. The drivers were asking for more than triple the price to take them. They said they were jeopardising their lives and they deserved it.”
Laila shows up again, and sits in her grandmother’s lap. She asks every morning if she will go to the kindergarten. “She feels sad when I tell her no. She wants to see her friends and play with them.”
For children it is troubling. A friend tells me how her 12-year-old daughter’s best friend was killed. “I cannot imagine what the mother of the girl is feeling,” she says. “My daughter wanted to speak to her, but I asked to let me talk to her first. I thought I would be strong but both of us started crying. The worst thing a mother could go through is losing her child.”
9am The whole family is sitting with us. They are the nicest people, but we are tired, so not the best at conversation. I wonder what my friends who are staying at shelters and schools are feeling in those chaotic, noisy situations with zero privacy. I remind myself: you are privileged.
Over tea and coffee, everyone starts sharing stories. Fadel, the oldest son and father of three, says: “After the 2014 escalation, I was desperate. I decided to go on one of the illegal boats to reach Europe.
“My parents forced me not to, but my friend went. The boat never made it and till this moment, we know nothing about him.”
Ahmad, the middle son, doesn’t stop taking phone calls. He tells us so many friends and acquaintances have reached out to him to find them places to rent or stay. “There are no spaces left,” he says.
“Within the last 24 hours, some families found themselves hosting more than 50 people. It is either this, or going to the schools and shelter areas.”
The grandmother shares the story of a Palestinian family that has been living in a foreign country for more than 20 years, but decided to come to Gaza for a long holiday. Now, they are stuck.
10am Ahmad asks me if I want to charge my mobile. I am ecstatic, because I knew for sure they had no water, no electricity and no internet. But there are two things I learn: they are cooperative and they are problem-solvers.
For the internet, they asked a neighbour to share his password. We can barely “catch” the network, but having some internet connection is better than none. As for the electricity, another family at the end of the street have installed solar panels and all the houses in the street are going to them for charging. We give him our mobile phones, power banks, laptops and a tablet. It takes a long time to manage all the devices, but waiting for a couple of hours without electronic devices is better than being without them the whole time.
As for the water, they had a well, but needed a generator to bring the water up. The whole neighbourhood started searching until they found an old, broken one that they brought to someone to fix It took him two days. Now, they have water.
Noon One of my cats is next to me. I rub her head and tell her that I’m very sorry they have to go through this with us.
My sister looks at me and says: “I have been thinking about the same topic, but not about the cats, about us. Why had our father never thought about raising us abroad when we had the chance. He wanted us to be in Gaza … the dream! Now, he is dead and we are suffering.”
The fish we brought from home in the plastic container has died.
3pm We hear horrible stories from friends about what is happening in shelters and school areas, where there are thousands of people with no other place to go. We hear about the fights; the lack of food, water and mattresses; how some people are stealing from others; and about harassment.
We start thinking about what to do if we have to evacuate for a fourth time. Just thinking about it stresses me out to the maximum. I receive a phone call from a friend who fled yesterday but is now looking for a new place. “We are more than 70 people at my aunt’s house, and new members are coming soon,” he says. “Some of the guys decided to leave to give a chance to the newcomers to find a place.”
I try my best to help, asking our host family to ask around and sharing with him the information I get back … but nothing works.
5pm My friend, a social worker who had her first baby three weeks ago, cries on the phone to me. “I never think we will be able to get over this at all,” she says. “I cannot believe that I fled with my husband and child to one place while my mother and siblings are in another. Will we tell our story or will other people share it after we are gone?”
I say to her firmly: “Listen to me, you are going to get out of it. Not because of you, but because of your child. He needs his mother to be there with him in every stage of his life, and there are many great memories to come.”
7pm The weather goes from cool in the morning to really hot during the day and then it becomes really cool in the evening. My sister says: “Thank God this escalation did not happen in midsummer. We would have suffered way more.”
I look at her and say: “I wonder what the weather in Berlin is like now.”
Sunday 15 October
3am I have time to think. To count my blessings. I have been blessed enough to have a good paying job. This had made my life during these times easier, or to be more accurate, less difficult. On day one, I withdrew some cash and kept it with me.
At the beginning, paying extra money did the trick when the shops were emptied of most products, and we were able to get delivery men to bring food. Also, we were able to pay for water. When we moved to the second house, their UPS battery (used for basic lighting and internet router charging) stopped working, so we got a new one within two days.
Those without money suffered more. Losing electricity meant that fridges stopped working and stored food was damaged. It meant no air conditioning nor fans in the heat. And for the water, it goes without saying: washing, cleaning and showering are off the table.
The price of vegetables has doubled. What do people do? The price of power packs went up 70%. We bought them and so were able to have access to phones. For others, it’s hit and miss.
Hamdi, the janitor at the second house we evacuated to, had good relations with the janitor in the next building, which had an internal generator, so he was able to get an electricity line to charge the UPS battery. Residents went down to his room at night to charge their phones.
Being the gatekeeper to the source of electricity, Hamdi became a boss. He started giving orders, expressing clear annoyance when someone asked to charge their phone. He started dealing with less respect with the others.
It is true that all Gazans are suffering, but it is important to recognise the blessings we have during these tough times.
“I can never imagine my naked dead body lying in the street,” Ruba, one member of the second family we stayed with, answered when I asked her why she sleeps fully clothed and wearing a headscarf.
Her brother told me that the night before we joined them, they were told a nearby building would be bombed, so all the residents started running to leave. Ruba took about five extra minutes to get fully clothed.
I couldn’t understand how someone can care about what they are wearing in times like these, and I told her the story behind an Arabic proverb: “Those who were shy are dead.” In the past, a huge fire started in a hammam [a public Turkish bath]. Those who did not mind running out naked survived, while the ones who were shy died.
All Gazans are suffering, but for women, the situation is worse. As people flee their houses for friends or relatives, women find themselves obliged to wear full scarves and coverings at all times in the presence of male visitors, while also having to prepare food, be good hosts and deal with the children crying out of fear, or wanting to play when they cannot go out.
Women are not only facing the horrible situation, but are also the glue that holds families together.
7pm I read the messages from Rola and Ayham, two of my friends abroad. If I miss a text, they panic. I keep reminding them that we don’t have access to the internet all the time.
Sometimes, they send me audio messages crying, telling me that they feel useless for not being able to take me out of this situation; sometimes they send me jokes and hopeful notes. One time, they started sending messages, back to back, about what we will do together when all of this is over.
Ayham: “We will travel together. I will take you to Italy.”
Rola: “I will invite you to our house to eat my mother’s delicious food.”
Ayham: “We will go bowling, and just like the last time, I will win.”
Rola: “We will go together to all the bookshops in the world.”
I read their messages, smiling and crying. I prepare for another dark night.
