Just days before Ramadan officially begins under the gaze of the crescent moon, my friend Amjad*, an experienced Gazan nurse and father to eight children, leaves a recorded voice message.
“This is very kind of you.” His voice is gravelly, exhausted. “Thank you. And thank everybody for their concern and love.” It is the first time any of our colleagues have heard from him in 133 days. “So far, we are still alive. But we are very hungry.”
When Amjad last wrote, in late October, the concerns were different. “I am still trying to hang on. We cannot breathe due to the explosions and dust. It is so scary to keep hearing bombs all night.” After that, Amjad stopped messaging.
Usually around this time of year, Facebook and WhatsApp feeds are flooded with vibrant memes. Last March, on International Women’s Day, Amjad sent me an image of a bright-red rose encircling a card with cursive script, “Happy Women’s Day”.
Palestinian colleagues normally mark the commencement of this holy season with e-cards of flowers, coffee cups and medjool dates, and celebratory words such as “Ramadan Mubarak” (blessed Ramadan) or “Ramadan Kareem” (may Ramadan be generous to you). It is a month of deep faith, a time to focus on charity and compassion, and a period of joy.
“Terrible times I am going through,” writes Mahmoud*, a language professor who is a friend and a father to four young children. “It aches me really to see this happening, and for this very long time, six months of non-stop fear, agony, displacement and devastation.”
He sends videos from his extended family home in Gaza, which he has risked his life to return to visit. It has been stormed, ravaged and set fire to by the Israeli army. He can be heard choking back tears behind the camera. “I know this time will pass, but I need all the patience and resilience of the world to withstand this genocidal storm.”
My friend Khamis, a neurorehabilitation and pain medicine doctor, rang this month, the first time I have heard his voice since early October. For weeks, Khamis has had to walk two kilometres through unsafe roads in Gaza to get mobile phone reception after the Israeli army cut the telecommunication lines.
“It now costs US$35 for one kilo of flour. This is not even enough to feed our family one serving of bread. We need three kilos at least.” Our conversation is interrupted briefly by his cough. “We haven’t received a salary all these months to buy flour.”
Khamis was once cheerily busy — deftly moving from hospital work, to university teaching, to running international conferences, to tending to his five children. He has friends all over the world. We FaceTimed during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 as his youngest children bounced and danced on couches and Khamis gently scolded through giggles, attempts at home-schooling and online lectures to his medical students.
As Ramadan breaks across the Middle East, Khamis shares a message on Facebook. “The blessed month of Ramadan … came to our afflicted people in the Gaza Strip, where most of the houses, towers, factories, shops, streets and infrastructure are completely destroyed. How can I say to my people like every year that passed, Happy New Year?”
As army bombs still devastate what is left of homes and snipers are still a threat, attention has turned to the famine. We watch unnerving World War II-like footage of slate-coloured US parachutes crashing aid pallets of packaged food into the Mediterranean Sea. Messages have moved on from seeking safety from war and instead ask, “Have you found anything to eat today?”
Mahmoud’s words are weary. “I will hang on … just keep sending my positive energy travelling through the oceans and landscapes and landing here in this beleaguered land”.
On my 2020 visit to his hospital in Gaza City, Amjad said of Palestinians, “We were not born with a golden teaspoon in our mouths. I was working when I was eight years old, selling biscuits. Our childhood has an important impact on us. I am self-motivated and I try to motivate others. Our background is very rich, one of the major things that keeps people going”.
“I have lost 16 kilograms”, Amjad writes on Ramadan’s eve. “Please give my sincerest regards to my Australian friends…”
*names have been changed to protect identities.
