Cover art by Giovanni Berton.
At the peak of my frustration and anger, fueled by the relentless onslaught of Israeli occupation forces in Gaza, the first video message reached me from my dear friend, Wafa Eid, a resident of the Bureij refugee camp. Subsequently, an inundation of videos poured in from the Bureij area, painting a grim tableau of destruction, desolation, and the nightmarish ruin of homes. Shattered stones and concrete rubble lay strewn across the landscape, intermingling with the abandoned remnants of children’s clothing. Within the confines of her living room, a shroud of dust and the acrid scent of smoke hung heavy in the air. Curtains consumed by flames and plummeting to the earth. I could hear her breathing as she described the devastated area. Worried and horrified, I asked her, “Are you okay?” There are no signs of life left. As the videos continued to arrive, depicting a neighborhood scarred by war’s relentless fury, a concise message arrived, composed of a mere handful of words:
“We have evacuated to Nuseirat, there’s nothing left for us.”
Even the remnants of what once were piles of rubble faced renewed bombardment. They watch from the heights, wherever they sense a Palestinian, they shower them with bombs to ignite hell in them. It was a night of horror in all parts of Gaza, the central and the south. Merciless bombing everywhere. The planes do not leave the sky, and the fire and smoke they spew do not end.
I sat there, watching the videos dozens of times. The area almost spoke of anger and injustice. But I collected my wits to reassure her, and I told her that the house will be rebuilt, and the neighborhood will be even better than before. I found words that might seem appropriate. I don’t know, I do not know. I dozed off while sitting, and I only felt scattered news coming from everywhere. Families displaced and killed in broad daylight. I didn’t know how to check on my family and loved ones and friends. This monster is slowly consuming us and chewing us up. It leaves us no moment to ask ourselves if this is a nightmare or a dream of extreme horror that will disappear.
I could not stop thinking of Wafa. “Is she still alive?” The voices started to fade, but the terrifying reality was growing. The displaced were relentlessly hunted down. Wafa and her family, too, were forced to abandon their homes, their numbers necessitating dispersion among various dwellings in Nuseirat. Tragically, her elder brother, Isam, who had sought refuge with his family alongside their in-laws, Al-Taweel family, was among the casualties. In the blink of an eye, her brother, Isam Eid, along with his wife and daughters, Samah and Tamara, and their children – a total of sixteen souls – were killed in a single devastating strike, within what was supposed to be a haven of safety following their displacement.
Amidst this unimaginable loss, a singular survivor emerged, a seven-year-old niece, the daughter of her brother, Halah. She had embarked on a brief errand to the neighborhood grocery store, a mere seven minutes that had spared her life when the onslaught claimed her family and transformed the house into a pile of rubble and human carnage. Halah Saeed Al-Taweel, a lone soul in the aftermath of her family’s annihilation, remained a living testament to the depths of loss, a poignant question mark within the narrative of tragedy. What is the nature of such loss, and what role will young Halah play in the harrowing tale yet to be written?
“Wafa, who’s left among the children? What’s left of them?”
I turned to Wafa and asked, “Wafa, who’s left among the children? What’s left of them?” I could barely hold back the tears as I wrote with a heavy heart, “There’s no one left. They’ve all turned into a heartbreaking pile of small and big pieces. Zeina Ashraf Eid, who came into this world as a beacon of hope after five years when her parents had undergone a successful fertilization procedure, met a tragic end along with her mother, Hadeel, and her her grandmother, the wife of my brother, Isam.”
She continued, “And Tamara, Essam’s daughter who lived in Sweden and held Swedish citizenship, came to visit her father and mother in Gaza. Little did we know that it would be their final family reunion. They all became martyrs, every single one of them. Her children, Farah Al-Khatib 17 years old, Menna 15 years old, Isam 13 years old, and Mohammed 11 years old, were all caught in a single devastating moment, they all melted, their bones and flesh entwined, along with their grandfather, my brother who had embraced them all..!!”
As I continued to grapple with the anguish of unceasing news pouring in from every corner of Gaza, I wondered if there existed a pathway to life within this besieged enclave. Our very existence was held captive to the ping of incoming messages and ceaseless notifications. Seeking a more humane means to endure the agony, loss, and weariness that had led me to depend on painkillers merely to stay awake, I resolved to maintain vigilance in my efforts to check on those who still clung to life in Gaza.
Time crawled by, each passing hour and minute feeling like a venomous serpent’s bite, slowly coursing through my very being. We live on the brink of hell. Gaza has become an absolute hell that crushes anyone who approaches it. Anyone who lives there remains burning with the horrors of daily massacres. I returned to contact my friend Wafa, but the messages were silent, as if they had left this life. The minutes pass slowly, lethally, slaughtering us from vein to vein. I received a brief message, arriving suddenly after a day of unfathomable darkness, a day when my eyelids could scarcely close:
“My family is gone, Hedaya!” I didn’t have any words of consolation. Who would comfort my wounded heart when every home is our home, and every family is our family? The words echo in my mind, exploding with pain. “My family is gone, my family is gone”
“How can I endure this?
The war raged on in Wafa’s heart, and then the harrowing news reached me. She uttered these words, her voice trembling as if she were a victim of unspeakable horror: “my sister, is gone. My sister and her family, they’re all gone. Hiam, my sister, they’ve taken her away. Her daughter, the pride, she’d packed her belongings to Egypt just a few days ago, and then the war erupted. Her husband went to Egypt, and she ascended to heaven. My family is no more. They’re gone.”
“How can I bear this? My sister Hiam and her children were struck by bombs in their very home. In their own home? In their own home? They all became martyrs. Can I continue living without them?”
I searched for words, but what words could suffice? My heart ached with a mixture of sorrow and helplessness, my body quivered as if struggling to comprehend the atrocities that befell my friend Wafa.
As I write these words, she remains alive, enduring the ordeal of losing her family and living in displacement. Wafa, like every Palestinian girl, survives under the unrelenting bombardment that shatters secure homes and robs Palestinian families of their safety without restraint.
Who can put an end to this dark animosity that stalks civilians, targeting them in their homes, streets, roads, schools, and even hospitals? My heart smolders at this very moment, as if I can smell the fires within my friend’s heart, mirroring the unquenchable ember within my own.
Hedaya Saleh Shamun is a Palestinian journalist and writer from the Gaza Strip. She is a contributor to the Arab feminist news website Nawa.
