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 approach, the truth that greeted us was harsh and unfamiliar. I realised how a lot of a stranger I had change into in my very own metropolis, the place I had spent practically 30 years of my life.
I wandered by streets I might not recognise, misplaced amid the overwhelming destruction. I struggled to search out my approach from my household’s ruined dwelling to my in-laws’ home, which, although nonetheless standing, bore the deep scars of battle. 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 changed into a nightmare – wreck and devastation was wherever I turned.
Numb, I roamed by the shattered remnants of household properties. My aim 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 photos.
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.
Houses will be rebuilt
One in every of 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 previous garments.
However I discovered nothing. My condominium had been on the primary ground, buried beneath layers upon layers of particles.
My colleague, the photographer Abdelhakim Abu Riash, arrived. I instructed him that I felt no shock, not even any emotion. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grieving, however reasonably that I had entered a state of emotional numbness – a self-imposed anaesthesia, maybe a survival mechanism my thoughts had adopted to defend me from insanity.
My husband, alternatively, was visibly enraged, although silent.
We determined to depart and, as I turned my again on my destroyed dwelling, a deep ache gripped my coronary heart. There isn’t a shelter now, no place to name our personal.
However what stored us from breaking down was realizing we weren’t alone – a whole metropolis stood in ruins.
“Not less than we survived, and we’re all protected,” I instructed my husband, attempting to consolation him. After which, horrific reminiscences of the previous 15 months – spent wandering by 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 kids are protected, we’re protected. Houses will be rebuilt.”
We are saying this usually in Gaza, and it’s true. Nevertheless it doesn’t erase the load of dropping 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 instructed it was nonetheless standing however as we approached by scenes of devastation, we couldn’t recognise the constructing.
This was the place we might now stay, in what remained: two rooms, a toilet and a kitchen.
However as soon as once more, there was no area for shock right here. Survival demanded adaptation, regardless of how little we had. That was the rule of battle.
Inside, we discovered a semblance of reduction. My husband’s brother had arrived forward of us, cleaned a little bit 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 might consider nothing however water – simply water.
The home’s sewage system was destroyed. Partitions have been torn open by shelling. The bottom and first flooring have been utterly 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 might see – too huge, too overwhelming to permit escape from the trauma.
My good friend who had stayed within the north had instructed me usually: “The north is totally destroyed. It’s unliveable.” Now I believed her.
My mom’s attire
The subsequent morning, I went to my mother or father’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 fireplace.
The Israeli military had stayed in it for a while earlier than setting it on fireplace as they withdrew, we have been instructed.
We even discovered a video on TikTok, a soldier who had filmed himself consuming a McDonald’s sandwich in my newlywed brother’s lounge whereas watching the neighbouring homes burn.
I wandered by 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 fireplace hadn’t touched it.
I stepped into my mom’s room. I misplaced my mum on Could 7, through the battle.
Her garments nonetheless hung within the closet, embroidered attire untouched by flames. Her belongings, her Quran, her prayer chair – all the things remained, solely coated in heavy mud and shattered glass.
All the pieces 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 marriage ceremony,” I whispered to myself. “And this one… for Moataz’s marriage ceremony.”
I grabbed my telephone and known 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 change into right here – rubble in all places, and but we rejoice over any fragment, any thread that connects us to the previous.
Think about, then, what it means to search out the one tangible traces of our most treasured loss – my beloved mom.
Not the Gaza I knew
Two days later, after sifting by 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 fulfill fellow journalists, regain some sense of self and try to work on new tales.
I walked for a very long time, unable to search out transportation. My garments have 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 have been clearing the wreckage of their properties. Stones rained down from collapsed higher flooring as women and men shovelled rubble, mud billowing by the air, swallowing complete streets.
A lady stopped me and requested the place she might recharge her telephone 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 search out the most effective truffles, probably the most elegant garments, the branches of telecom firms, 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 match it with what as soon as was.
North and south
Lastly, I discovered a automotive heading my approach. The motive force gestured for me to sit down beside a girl within the entrance seat. Within the again, 5 different girls and a toddler have been squeezed collectively.
Alongside the way in which, the motive force picked up yet one more passenger, cramming him into the final out there area.
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 grew to become journalists’ solely refuge – the one locations with electrical energy and web for the reason that battle started.
This time, the faces have been totally different, and it was obvious that the journalists from the north had skilled this battle very in a different way from how we had within the south.
I moved hesitantly by the corridors, every time we encountered a journalist, I whispered to Abdelhakim: “Is that this particular person from the north? Or have been they with us within the south?”
It was a real query. Conversations, familiarity, the load of phrases – all of them felt totally different, relying on the place we had endured the battle.
Sure, there was dying and destruction within the south, Israel had not spared Rafah, Deir el-Balah or Khan Younis. Nevertheless it was totally 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 ended, keen to speak, sharing tales of the unattainable journey alongside al-Rashid Street, asking about their first glimpse of town, concerning the second they noticed their household properties.
That was after I really understood: We felt like strangers in our personal metropolis.
The battle to belong once more
Israel’s battle had not solely reshaped Gaza’s panorama but in addition the folks inside it. It had fashioned new identities underneath fireplace, dividing us in methods we by no means imagined.
A bitter, aching fact – we misplaced Gaza, again 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 have been known 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 selection did now we have?
And now, we feature 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 top of the battle however, wandering the devastated streets, I realised: I’m nonetheless ready for that finish, the second after we can say: “This chapter of bloodshed is over.”
I lengthy to place the ultimate interval, so we would start once more – even when the start is painful. However there isn’t any interval. No closure. No finish.
I drag myself ahead, mud clinging to my garments that I don’t hassle to shake off. Tears combine with the rubble, and I don’t wipe them away.
The fact is that we’ve been deserted to an open-ended destiny, a street with no course: We’re misplaced. We have now no power left to rebuild. No vitality to begin once more.
We have now misplaced this metropolis, my buddies.
The Gaza we liked and knew has died – defeated, severed and alone.
However regardless of all the things, it nonetheless lives on inside us.
