Monday 25 December
8am Little Hope, the new cat that I found shivering next to a trash pile a while ago, is getting much better. He is eating, growing up and playing. After the last visit to the vet, it was confirmed that he has a hernia. We were told to feed him the bare minimum. It really hurts seeing him meowing and asking to eat, yet not getting any food. What is worse is that the other cats have access to dry food and more meals than him. But it is all for his own health.
I took him to the balcony to let the other cats eat. I thought about Gazans right now who don’t have access to food while others do. A friend of mine told me that every morning, two young boys who evacuated with their families from the north of Gaza, would knock on their door. They don’t ask for money or any material. All they ask for is two pieces of bread for them to eat. “It breaks my heart,” my friend told me. “Even when I asked them if they want thyme or cheese with it, they said plain bread would be fine. They come to our house every morning and I give them any leftovers we have.”
Back to cats, our room is becoming a haven for strays. A new cat found her way to us. She is huge. She is white with black legs, black hair round her eyes in the shape of a mask, and a huge black spot on her back. I decided to call her Sunshine. Sunshine finds her way to the apartment every morning; she gets in and stands by our door and starts meowing. She has the thinnest voice ever. We open the door for her, she goes directly to the food bowl, eats, and then leaves. Manara does the same these days, with the addition of staying the night as well. She waits for me to lay on the couch and curls next to my feet.
But even the cats’ food is scarce. The place we buy from told us that there is not a lot left. And if the quantity ends, there wouldn’t be any cat food available.
My sister and I are among the lucky ones who do have access to some food. Every time I eat something – anything – I thank God for the blessing I have, yet I feel guilty. How come I have food while there is another displaced child with no access to it? How come? What kind of a world are we living in?
10am New areas were asked to evacuate. People who have evacuated once or several times before and “settled” in new places, were asked, again, to leave. But there are no spaces left. Last week, a new family joined us, and this week another one did. The situation is getting worse and worse.
My sister’s friend and her two daughters come to visit. They have been staying in a school for more than two months now. But after the evacuation announcement to their new area, most families there left, and they had no place to go to. They asked if it is possible to stay with us. But the hosting family apologised, simply because two new families are staying with us. The woman’s eyes were full of tears when she was explaining how scared she was for her, and her two daughters’ lives. Finding an apartment is impossible right now. But we contacted everyone we knew to search for available places for them to put a tent.
I feel awful about them and am very worried for their safety. I talk to Ahmad and he promises me he will do his best to help them. On his way out of the room, I hear him talking to himself: “Today is their turn, in a few days, it will be ours.”
The misery continues. A guy I know is staying with his family in a friend’s apartment. When they had to evacuate, the apartment was empty. But with the new evacuation process, the hosting family itself had to move in as well. “We offered to leave immediately, but the hosting family members started crying and begged us not to. Now, there are 60 people in a three-room apartment.”
I just cannot believe that our utmost hope became finding a space for a tent. This is inhumane.
2pm I go to check on my friend who has been hosted by the family of a friend of his. They welcome me and invite me inside. I sit down with my friend, his friend and the family.
Fifteen minutes into the conversation, at which we discussed the usual (the lack of food, our safety, our fear of the future, etc), the father, a 73-year-old man, started crying.
“This is not the Gaza that I know. This is not how I wanted to spend the final years of my life. There are tents everywhere. People are begging for money. We are terrified for our lives. This is the biggest test we have ever had.
“If I die”, he says, “will I have a place to be buried in?”
His wife tells me about her neighbour, a cancer patient who hasn’t had her medicine in a long while. Such stories are no longer surprising. Her son looks at her and says: “Aren’t we all dying, slowly?”
On my way out, the father, whom I have met for the first time, asks if he could hug me. I couldn’t be happier. He felt like a father to me. I am grateful for his hug. I needed it.
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5pm The youngest brother of the hosting family comes into the room my sister and I are staying in.
“I have bad news,” he says.
I jump off the couch. “What? Do we need to evacuate again?” I ask.
“No, no,” he says, while doing a movement with his hand that means calm down. “It is something else. It is about charging.”
Every morning, he would take the batteries, flashlights and power banks to charge at the neighbour’s house who has solar power. He would take our mobiles and laptops as well, but after one mobile went missing, we stopped sending them.
He explains: “By mistake, someone took out the cable that had all our devices connected to it. As a result, nothing was charged.”
My sister and I remain silent. Another night in complete darkness.
9pm It is Christmas today. In another country, far away from ours, there is a family celebrating. Their house is full of light, they are smiling, hugging each other out of love, sharing gifts and hoping for the best future.
Here, there is no Christmas. Instead, there are families living in complete darkness, sad, hugging each other out of fear, sharing prayers, and hoping they will get out of this nightmare alive.