Cheating death in Gaza

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is a Palestinian poet, short story writer and essayist from Gaza

During this war, whenever one discovers that a friend, colleague or “old” neighbour is staying in a place nearby, a feeling of relief presents itself.

On Thursday, while shopping for candies for my children and those of my siblings, I run into three of my workmates. “How much is this charger?” Nasser asks me about the phone charger I’m holding tight in my hand. We hug each other, as if one of us had just returned from a long trip. Nasser and his family have left their house in the western part of Jabalia refugee camp and now are staying with their relatives in the middle of it.

Just a few minutes later, I see another workmate, Mohammad, and his three children. He is surprised to see me and tells me how he and his family survived death. Mohammad’s cousin, Hani, along with Hani’s wife and children, died under the rubble of their house on October 20.

A few hours later, my younger brother, Hamza, calls me from the hospital, asking if I have an internet connection in my area. I give him the directions so he can meet me at the souk of the camp, where I have recently been spending a few hours every day to charge my phone and laptop, along with my wife’s phone and the children’s iPad.

There is no electricity in Gaza. If it wasn’t for store-owned generators, which are about to stop working due to lack of fuel, and a handful of solar power systems, people in Gaza would be cut off from their families, friends and the outside world.

Hamza arrives pale-faced. He tells me about the horrible situation at the Indonesia Hospital in north Gaza. “Imad Hijazi! He’s critically wounded and is in hospital.”

Imad has been forced to leave his family home with his wife and child due to the heavy Israeli bombardment of Beit Lahia in north Gaza. On Tuesday, he tells Hamza that once the war ended he will apply for a passport for his five-year-old son, Tayyem, and send him to live abroad. “Enough with what he experienced!”

From time to time, Hamza returns to spend time with a group of his friends in a school in Beit Lahia. Visiting on Wednesday evening, he comes across a destroyed house, smoke still rising from it. The building opposite it is damaged too. Hamza remembers that Imad and his family are staying there. He calls Imad, but his phone is turned off. He then tries calling Imad’s brother, Jehad, who tells Hamza that Imad is in the hospital.

Hamza rushes to the hospital, to find a screaming Imad lying on the floor, a doctor stitching a large wound in the back of his head. “Imad is lucky because a doctor is tending to his injuries,” Hamza tells me. Other wounded people lie on the hospital floor waiting for a doctor or a nurse to dress their wounds. There are not enough hospital beds, doctors or nurses, nor enough medicine or anaesthetic. The majority of the wounded Hamza encounters would be operated on without anaesthetic.

Hamza sits next to me and starts writing a post on his Facebook page. I look around, while my phone and laptop are charging. Most of the people at the charging spot, which is in the street, are those I see every day. They come between noon and 4.30 in the afternoon to charge their phones, laptops, power banks and flashlights. A young man asks me to find a socket to charge his electronic scale. “I have to go back to my vegetable cart,” he says. “Please keep an eye on the scale until I return.”

Passers-by often ask if we are selling phones and chargers. When we tell them what we’re doing, they usually come back the next day to charge their own devices. It is as if we are attending the same class together, with more students enrolling each day. But the class instructor is fear, and the school principal is death.

“Poor Imad. He does not know that his son was killed in the air strike,” Hamza says, tears in his eyes. A series of explosions shakes the souk, shaking us. Everyone snatches their devices and runs away. Some forget their chargers.

I stuff everything into my backpack, grab my son Yazzan’s hand and jump on my bike to return home. But Hamza does not shake. He continues with his Facebook post, mourning Tayyem.