Wednesday 25 October
8am Eighteen days have passed. We are still alive, but we haven’t survived yet.
Ahmad, the middle son of our host family, comes to our room and asks if my sister and I would like something specific for lunch. My sister says she doesn’t think she can eat. For the past five days she has eaten almost nothing. I tell him that anything will be OK, and I thank his mother for her delicious cooking.
“So, you think my mother should open a restaurant?”
“Of course.” I say. “But not here in Gaza, all the people have the same style of cooking.”
“I am not talking about here in Gaza,” he says. “If we become refugees in another place again, she can open the restaurant there.” He winks at me.
Even though he is joking, his words send a chill down my spine.
9am I go with Ahmad to buy some necessities. I deliberately walk in the middle of the street so that, in case of a bombing, I will be – relatively – away from the buildings. I find myself humming a Taylor Swift song:
But I keep cruising
Can’t stop, won’t stop moving
It’s like I got this music in my mind
Saying it’s gonna be alright
I see a girl, about 10, holding a gallon drum of water. She walks for two steps and then stops to rest, and so on. It is very clear it is too heavy for her. We are in such a hurry that we do not stop and offer help. In these days, everyone tries to run their errands as fast as possible, and get home before something bad happens. I feel ashamed.
I reach the pharmacy and I’m shocked. Due to a nearby airstrike, all the glass doors are broken. The pharmacy has turned into an open market, yet they are still working.
An old man comes in and asks about his medicine. The pharmacist apologises and tells him that there are no alternatives either. “I still have seven pills left,” the man says. The pharmacist looks at him sympathetically, and answers: “Hopefully the whole situation will end soon, and you will be able to get your medicine again.”
9.30am In another shop, I hear a man talking over the phone, saying he can’t host any new people. “There is no space left. I have my sisters and their families, and two of my cousins with their families. The men are sleeping in the street so women can have a place to sleep upstairs.”
The man also speaks about the scarcity of water. He has even calculated how much water goes with every toilet flush.
I also notice the variety of accents I am hearing. It’s like all areas of Gaza are in the same place. Actually, all the areas of Gaza are in the same place. Gaza is a densely populated area and now half of it has evacuated to the next half. Double the number, half the space.
10am We go to a third shop, and I hear the owner describing a “hot chick from Gaza City” he saw this morning. I feel sick. I have always been against objectifying women, but I cannot imagine what women and girls, who have left their homes, feel when buying necessities for their families while someone is checking them out. It is just disgusting. On the other hand, it is very rare. Every man I meet, except for this individual, has been respectful towards women during these times.
Ahmad tells me he has to go to a friend staying in one of the schools. “He called me crying. He evacuated with his family and now they have no money. I need to go and give him some money and bring him some food.”
Ahmad leaves quickly to help the man and his family. I admire this young man. He and his family are going through the same misery as the rest, yet they are hosting us and helping others as much as they can.
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3pm My friend sends me a text to check on me. We were supposed to have lunch days before the whole situation started. She had to cancel, however, and promised me we would meet the next week.
“When all of this is over, we should go and have that lunch we agreed on,” I write. “See, this is what happens when you cancel your plans.”
“We will have two lunches and three dinners,” she replies. “I just hope this horrible nightmare will be over.”
After some minutes, she sends another message: “I really miss you.”
“Listen, I don’t want to start crying now,” I say. “It will be over, it will be over.”
“I want to cry, too,” she says. “But I cannot cry in front on my children, and there is no place where I can cry alone without anyone hearing or seeing me.”
5pm I am sitting in my room. The children and the neighbour’s children are playing. At first, the neighbour’s children never visited out of fear, but now they come almost every day. I hear them having a “make-believe birthday party”.
It is easy to decide whose birthday it is, and what age, but the toughest conversation is about the cake. After long deliberations, they agree it is going to be a chocolate cake. Very big – five layers – stuffed with chocolate, with figures of superheroes and princesses – made of chocolate as well of course – on top.
I can’t help but smile and wish I could be playing with them so as to convince them to have a vanilla cake instead … or maybe an orange cake.
7pm Lying on the couch, I think about how silly it would be if I survived and then died one day before it was over.
In an attempt to get rid of such negative ideas, I go back to humming Taylor Swift’s song:
I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
Shake it off, shake it off!