ZIAD IN GAZA

 

Our friends are a family of nine – husband, wife, six children and the grandmother. They are sleep-deprived, you can see how tired and afraid they all are. They welcomed us with weak smiles. They offer us coffee and cookies stuffed with dates.

 

We all sit there, coffee and sweets untouched, and face the long night ahead.

The mother calls her brother, who lives on our street, where we had just evacuated from. He is heading to another sibling’s house for refuge. She worries that he and his family haven’t arrived there yet, she asks him to call her the minute they do.

 

Sitting between her youngest children, a boy of four and a girl of six, I wonder about the sad life ahead of them, the many escalations they will witness – if they are lucky enough to survive this one. I ask her: “How are your children doing?”

 

“They are coping well and they don’t feel afraid when there is bombing, especially Nour.” She says the word especially in a way that I could tell she wasn’t being honest. She asks the children to go inside and then she tells me, in a lowered voice, that her daughter is terrified.

 

The bombs start; evacuating our block means that we are out of the extreme danger of a targeted area, it does not mean that we are safe.

 

With the first airstrike the building shakes, the pressure outside is so strong that wind pushes out the curtains. Nour starts screaming, she goes to her mother and holds tight. A series of strikes follow and all of us sit holding on tight to our seats, flinching with every hit. The mother is patting Nour’s shoulder, saying: “Everything is going to be OK.”

 

Once the bombs stop, she asks her middle daughter to take the children and prepare sandwiches for them. When they disappear, she says: “I am so worried about her, she is very afraid.”

 

I tell her that I think expressing fear is the healthy thing. The fact that the rest of us, including the four-year-old, remained silent, is unhealthy and shows our trauma. The other children are focused on their phones, checking on their friends.

 

A couple of hours later, the eldest son comes and says that his uncle’s building, the one who lives near to us, was destroyed. We are in shock. The mother starts calling friends of her brother to find out if he knows or not. She starts crying, while asking them to support him and never leave him alone. She speaks about how hard he worked to buy his apartment and on renovating it.

 

I feel extremely sorry for his loss and terrified that my building is next. Her husband and the children are sitting around her, all quiet. Then I see Nour pat her mother’s shoulder and tell her: “Everything is going to be OK Mama, everything is going to be OK.”