ZIAD IN GAZA

I see a child crying in the middle of the street. His mother was doing her best to calm him down, but she looked worn out. I sympathise with her and all parents. I remembered a phone call I had with a friend of mine recently. She and her family are now staying in a home with almost 50 other people. The men sleep downstairs and the women upstairs. When she heard that my sister and I are staying in a separate room, she jokes and says: “Wow! A private room is like a five-star suite.”

Like all Gazans, they are exhausted by the challenge of securing water. She tells me: “Last night, my seven-year-old son was sleeping downstairs with the men. My husband told me that he woke up in the middle of the night to use the toilet. He came back and woke his father up, he was crying and he started screaming, not caring about the other people trying to sleep. He told his father that there is no water, no tissues and the toilet is not clean.”

I listen and then I tell her that her son did what all of us wanted to do at some point. He woke up in the middle of the night and cried because he couldn’t fulfil one of his basic needs, which is using a clean bathroom.

My friend has lost her house, too. She did not cry, but all she said was: “The future ahead of us is very scary.”

 Lying on the couch, thinking about how there are no signs this nightmare will end any time soon, my sister asks me again about the name I chose for the cat.

“It is just a name, I don’t know why on earth I chose it, but I did.”

“What is it?”

“Hope.”