Letters from Palestine (43 page)

But her notes soon began to reflect the
signs of a serious depression and even a loss of spirit whereas
before and during the attacks her writing had been vigorous and
strong. I wrote several times over the next few weeks, but received
no reply. (I never had her cell phone number, so I was unable to
try to reach her that way.) Then, finally, I heard from Safa
again:

First of all, I would like to apologize to
you for not writing earlier, and second of all, I’d like to thank
you with all my heart for the thoughts and the concern. I’m really
sorry that I had you (and other friends) worried about me. I’ve
been missing in action for the past few weeks.

I don’t know what to say, except that it’s
beyond my ability to control what’s happening, both inside and
outside of myself. The situation over here is that we’ve gone back
to square one, so much was lost for nothing.

As for me, every time something happens, it
gets harder and harder to regain focus and control once it’s over.
Gazans are the strongest people I’ve ever seen, but I think that
I’m not as good as everyone else at being strong. I’ve just started
a new job, but I’m not being productive. I feel like I’ve lost the
most important part of who I am—passion and enthusiasm.

I’m sorry for venting. I hope I’m not
depressing you. It’s not easy to put these feelings into words, but
somehow it just came out. I’m trying to get over this and praying
that I’ll wake up with some hope tomorrow . . .

There were a few more notes after that, but
no real change in their tone. The last time I heard from her—after
sending several more email messages of increasing concern about
her—she had been spending nights at the home of a sick older
brother, hardly getting any sleep herself. After that, there has
been only silence.

I wrote one last time about two weeks ago.
Nothing.

Has Safa become a psychological casualty of
this latest attack on Gaza by Israel? Was the trauma too much for
her? Or perhaps just the daily ordeal of trying to live in Gaza
these days has overwhelmed her? Or maybe she doesn’t have the
energy or the interest to write any longer? Or is she ill
herself?

I can’t know. I can only wonder.

I used to pray for her and her family during
the attacks. I am still praying for Safa, and I miss her, too.

December 27, 2008

I’ve never seen anything like this. It all
happened so fast, but the amount of death and destruction is
inconceivable, even to me, and I’m in the middle of it, and a few
hours have already passed. I think fifteen locations were hit
during the air raid on Gaza. The images are probably not broadcast
in U.S. media. There are piles and piles of bodies in the locations
that were hit. As you look at them, you can see that a few of the
young men are still alive: someone lifts a hand here, and another
raises his head there. They probably died within moments because
their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts
hanging out, and they’re all lying in pools of blood.

Outside my home (which is close to the
universities), a bomb fell on a large group of young men,
university students. They’d been warned not to stand in groups, it
makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take
them home. This was about three hours ago. Seven were killed, four
students and three of our neighbors’ kids, teenagers who were from
the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I’m writing this,
I heard a funeral procession go by outside. I looked out the
window, and it was the three Rayes boys. They spent all their time
together when they were alive, and now [they’re] sharing the same
funeral together. Nothing could stop my fourteen-year-old brother
from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends lying in the
street after they were killed. He hasn’t spoken a word since.

A little further down the street, about an
hour earlier, three girls happened to be passing by one of the
locations when a bomb fell. The girls’ bodies were torn into pieces
and covered the street from one side to the other.

These are just a few of the images that I’ve
witnessed. In all the locations, people are going through the dead,
terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The city is in
a state of alarm, panic, and confusion; cell phones aren’t working;
hospitals and morgues are backed up; and some of the dead are still
lying in the streets with their families gathered around them,
kissing their faces, holding onto them. Outside the destroyed
buildings, old men are kneeling on the floor weeping. Their slim
hopes of finding their sons still alive vanished after taking one
look at what had become of their office buildings.

One hundred and sixty people dead in today’s
air raid. That means 160 funeral processions, a few today, most of
them tomorrow probably. To think that yesterday these families were
worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point, I think
they—actually all of us—would gladly have Hamas sign off every last
basic right we’ve been calling for the last few months forever if
it could have stopped this from ever having happened.

The bombing was very close to my home. Most
of my extended family live in the area. My family is okay, but two
of my uncles’ homes were damaged, and another relative was
injured.

I don’t know why I’m sending this email. It
doesn’t even begin to tell the story on any level. Just flashes of
things that happened today that are going through my head . . .

December 28, 2008

It’s 1:30 a.m., but it feels like the sun
should be up already. For the past few hours there’s been heavy
aerial bombardment of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip
simultaneously. It feels like the longest night of my life. In my
area, it started with the bombing of workshops (usually located in
the ground floor of private/family residential buildings), garages,
and warehouses in one of the most highly condensed areas in Gaza
city, “Askoola.” About an hour ago, they bombed the Islamic
University, destroying the laboratory building.

As I mentioned in an earlier account, my
home is close to the university. We heard the first explosion, the
windows shook, the walls shook, and my heart felt like it would
literally jump out of my mouth. My parents, siblings, and cousins
who have been staying with us since their home was damaged the
first day of the air raids had been trying to get some sleep. We
all rushed to the side of the house that was farthest. Hala, my
eleven-year-old sister, stood motionless and had to be dragged to
the other room. I still have marks on my shoulder from when Aya, my
thirteen-year-old cousin, held onto me during the next four
explosions, each one as violent and heart-stopping as the next.
Looking out of the window moments later, the night sky had turned
to a dirty navy-gray from the smoke.

Israeli warships rocketed Gaza’s only port
only moments ago. Fifteen missiles exploded, destroying boats and
parts of the port. These are just initial reports over the radio.
We don’t know what the extent of the damage is. We do know that the
fishing industry that thousands of families depend on, either
directly or indirectly, didn’t pose a threat on Israeli security.
The radio reporter started counting the explosions; I think he lost
count after six. At this moment we heard three more blasts. “I’m
mostly scared of the whoosh,” I told my sister, referring to the
sound a missile makes before it hits. Those moments of wondering
where it’s going to fall are agonizing. Once the whooshes and hits
were over, the radio reporter announced that the fish market
(vacant of course) had been bombed.

We just heard that four sisters from the
family of “Ba’lousha” have been killed in an attack that targeted
the mosque near their home in the northern Gaza Strip.

You know what bothers me more than the bangs
and the blasts, the smoke, the ambulance sirens, and the whooshes?
The constant, ominous, maddening droning sound of the Apaches
overhead that’s been buzzing in my head day and night. It’s like
I’m hearing things, which I’m not, but I am.

January 1, 2009

It’s interesting how, at the most terrifying
and horrific of times, we still manage to make light of the events,
and even enjoy a dark sense of humor that surprisingly comes out
not inappropriately and even the more amusing given the constant
state of tenseness and apprehension.

My ten-year-old cousin was eating a
sandwich, when my younger brother, twelve, looked at him and,
quoting a line from one of his favorite video games in his dead-on
imitation of the character’s voice, while being extremely amused by
the fear in the younger boy’s eyes, said, “Enjoy it; it could be
your last!” I looked at him for a second and began laughing almost
hysterically.

On another occasion, we looked around for my
twelve-year-old and fourteen-year-old brothers during an intense
bout of air strikes and realized that they had snuck back to the
living room, the room directly in front of the area being bombed,
and were watching a sports channel. “But we had to see the scores,”
they retorted, after being severely reproached. They’re becoming
desensitized, I thought. I went through this before while living in
Ramallah in 2002. I laughed so hard; they had become totally
oblivious!

I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate, the
last few days, and looking at my siblings, I wonder how the rest of
the world envisions the people who occupy the most despondent and
unruly military zones in the world.

My younger brothers spend their free time
out with their friends or playing basketball and soccer at youth
clubs. They are passionate about sports, PlayStation, and music.
They play the guitar and are exceptional students. My brother who’s
in college is obsessed with computers and gadgets; he’s an
engineering student who comes up with the most ingenious projects
for his classes. He listens to music and plays the guitar and prays
regularly. He’s an honor student who has big goals and big
dreams.

So please understand why I am infuriated
when I see how we are portrayed on television. Hordes of bearded,
teeth-gnashing, stone-throwing, bloodthirsty savages in rags and
tatters. And please don’t blame me for feeling utter rage against
the state of Israel that has been intentionally targeting the
unwary, guiltless, promising children and youth of the Gaza Strip
in its vicious attacks over the past five days. Already, between
forty and fifty children are dead while hundreds lie in the
hospitals, seriously injured or disabled for life.

The people of Gaza have been suffering for
decades under systematic and tyrannical oppression by Israel. The
latest of its measures has been the siege and closures imposed on
the Strip that have completely devastated the livelihoods of Gaza
residents and caused the economy to fall into an unprecedented and
crippling depression. The people of Gaza have long been denied the
means that have been afforded to the residents of countries with
the same, possibly fewer, resources. And yet the amount of
resourcefulness and zeal we demonstrate is a testimony to the
potential of progress and advancement that lies within us.

To the rest of the world, Israel represents
the democratic, civilized, patriotic, western state whose
representatives are well groomed, clad in smart suits and silk
ties, and talking all sorts of political correctness, stringed with
terms such as “self-defense,” “civilian population,” “Palestinian
terrorists,” and “Middle East peace.”

And so after Israel launched its military
offensive against Gaza five days ago, claiming that offensive was a
retaliation against Hamas’s firing rockets into Israel following
the cessation of the period of calm, to many, the Israeli attacks
were justified. Never mind that Israel failed to at least ease the
siege that has been slowly killing us over the past year (to be
more precise, over the last three years). Never mind that Israel
continued its incursions into the Strip and its murder of innocent
civilians throughout the truce. Never mind that compared to Israeli
gunships, war planes, tanks, and other weaponry, Hamas rockets seem
like toys. Never mind that our children are robbed of anything that
resembles a normal life and future.

And yet we are continuously accused of being
on equal terms with one of the strongest military forces in the
world.

So while being cooped up in the house,
watching local news stations when we have electricity, still in a
state of disbelief, I wonder if the rest of the world would be so
harsh in its judgments if they had the opportunity to understand. I
wonder if people would as easily accept the unsubstantiated claims
that the engineering faculty building of the Islamic University,
which has been flattened during the attacks, was a workshop that
produced Qassams, if they had seen my brother’s reaction. When he
came back from a walk to the university building the next day, his
face was white as a sheet, and he had tears in his eyes. “It’s all
gone,” he said. “Even the project (electric car) we’ve been working
on all semester.” We’d seen pictures; I didn’t know whether to
laugh or cry. Did he seriously have any hope that the car had
survived?

A few hours ago, the home of one of Hamas’s
senior leaders, Nizar Rayan, was struck by four missiles. Not only
was the entire building flattened, killing all who were in it, but
several other buildings surrounding it looked like they were about
ready to collapse. It is said that there were over nineteen deaths,
most of them women and children, and scores of injuries. The entire
street was littered with debris and rubble. We saw the images on
TV: children being lifted from beneath the rubble, headless corpses
loaded into plastic body bags, the whole works. We sent a taxi to
pick up my aunt, whose home lies one hundred meters away from the
Rayan building and had caved in due to the attack. She and her
children arrived, shaken, but all in one piece.