ZIAD IN GAZA

 

Am I still alive? Well, I am sure still breathing; the pain all over my body is a sign that it is functioning. What does “alive” mean? Is everything we are going through called life. I wonder about the difference between me and a dead person.

Does the loss of safety and your hopes and dreams qualify you to be dead? Because if so, this means that Gaza has became a city of ghosts.

Is it a life when you are helpless all the time, unable to even provide your loved ones with their basic needs?

In a phone call with my friend, who I have been trying to reach for the past three months (wow! I cannot imagine it has been three months), she tells me that she and her family are still alive.

“My children always ask me for their favourite food and toys,” she tells me. “I had to take them to the empty shops to show them that there is nothing left. I wanted badly to make them believe that I would sacrifice my whole life for a moment of safety and joy they could have, but there is nothing I can do.”

She tells me how, when she took her children out, she was holding them tightly to keep them safe and not lose them in the crowd. She talks about the huge numbers of people everywhere you go, and how the streets are packed. I share with her that a couple of weeks ago I saw a lost little girl who was crying. She couldn’t see her family and hundreds of people were moving in all directions. I stood next to her and did not know what to do. I asked around if anyone knew her, but no one did.

About 10 minutes later, a big man approached, he was almost taller than everyone in the street, and he had broad shoulders. He picked the girl up and put her over his shoulders and he kept turning around in a circle until her sister, a teenager, who was at the end of the street, saw and came running towards us. He put the girl down and she hugged her sister.