ZIAD IN GAZA

  I go to the tailor to fix a jacket that belongs to a member of our host family. An old man comes in and gives the tailor a pair of boxer shorts. He wants him to make an “inner pocket”. He says: “I am staying in a tent, and I cannot guarantee the safety of any money, no matter how little I have. So I want it to put the money in it.”

Next to me is a man who shares his story with all of us: he had a shop in Gaza City but now finds himself displaced with his family, with no money left. “I am trying my best to earn some,” he says. “One day, I go cut some wood to sell for people to burn for cooking and warmth. If we get some flour, I take some of it and make pastries to sell.

“Sometimes I and my children take the water gallons of people and go to a far place to fill them, and they will pay us. We have no option. It is about day-to-day survival.”

He brought two of his children with him. I ask the first one: “What is your favourite colour?”

“White.”

“And your favourite food?”

His eyes brighten: “Shawarma! I haven’t had shawarma in a very long time.”

We talk for a while about all the kinds of food we haven’t had in almost three months, then I ask his younger brother: “What do you want to be in the future?”

“I want to be in school.”

His father tells me he is supposed to be in the first grade next year; he really wanted the year to pass in order to go with his siblings to school. Then he says: “Now, even the schools are gone.”

“And what else do you want to do?” I ask.

“I want to draw. In my home, we had a lot of drawing books and pens, pencils and colouring pens. Here we don’t have anything. I want to play with my toys too.”