7 October 2023
It’s raining. October rain is eagerly anticipated by Palestinians. This is the season for festivals. We consider the rain a sign from Mother Nature, signalling the start of the olive season, branches gilded with green gold. In Palestinian slang, this time of year is called the “jad alzatoon” season, in which the bond between the land and the people is renewed, and families gather to pick olives in an atmosphere of cooperation and joy.
My grandfather, who was born in 1898, before the establishment of Israel and the British Mandate, spent much of his life planting his land with olive and prickly pear trees. He lived a long life, nearly 100 years, and when he passed away his sons pledged to care for his trees as if they were their own children. My grandfather used to say, “The olive tree is like Palestine: its roots burrow deep into the earth; its branches are a symbol of peace, and its oil is the elixir of life.” Despite the colonisers’ attempts to steal his land, the Palestinian clings to it to every last inch of it, dying a thousand times if necessary, only to rise up with a newfound love for the homeland.
Picking olives is as laborious as it is enjoyable. Tasks are divided among the group. One person spreads out the mats on the ground, another picks the olives from low-hanging branches, another climbs the ladder to reach those on the higher branches. Someone prepares breakfast, skiving the bulk of the work to sip a cup of tea and wait for the others to join them. We pick the olives by hand, as my late grandfather insisted: it is gentlest on the tree, and yields the richest oil.
Harvesting begins in the early hours of dawn. We prepare for the busy day ahead, loading the car – ladder, ground mats, cooking pots – and head out. As soon as we reach the orchard, explosions begin to echo in the distance, rattling off in time to our heartbeats. What is this? Is it a new war launched by Israel? But the rockets are coming from Gaza. My questions are interrupted by the screams of my little sister, Fatima. I hug her tightly, but I can’t seem to ease her shock. I remember this fear well. I lived with it throughout my childhood. My lungs can’t forget it; the smell of gunpowder still lingers within them.
This is what life is like for Gazan children. Alongside the alphabet of letters, we learn the language of war. I was taking an Arabic language exam when my eight-year-old heart was first tested on the latter. As we received our papers, explosions began to thunder around us, creeping closer and closer to my school in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The words “war”, “escalation” and “conflict” weren’t yet in my vocabulary. We poured out from our desks into the corridors of the school, screaming and stumbling. It was late December 2008, when Israel launched a bloodthirsty war on Gaza, killing more than 200 Palestinians on the first day alone.
We quickly pack up and return home, leaving the harvesting for another day. As we drive, passersby share different theories about what has happened, all just speculation. My brother suggests we shop for emergency supplies on the way home in case we’re not able to leave the house for a while. Uncertainty prevails: uncertainty about what is happening, and what will happen next; today, tomorrow, who knows how long. This is normal in Gaza. Life is full of surprises, but Gaza’s surprises never end.
16 January 2024
Sleep during wartime is elusive, as hard to come by now as a loaf of bread. Low-flying planes emit a never-ending buzz, and I wonder: does the pilot ever tire of soaring and diving, bombing and surveilling? Is he ever tempted to retreat from our besieged skies and grant just one Gazan some peaceful sleep.
Gunfire echoes sporadically. Any one bullet is capable of rending my body to shreds, any one missile capable of levelling an entire neighbourhood. Inside me, there is yet more noise, still audible amid the gunfire and confusion: what if tragedy befalls my family now in Rafah? (When the bombing became too much, my family had to flee, but my sister Shirin is pregnant and can’t walk long distances so I stayed to look after her.) Will I see my little sister Fatima again?
We sleep in the central corridor of our home, the 30 or so people taking refuge there stretched out on mattresses in neat rows, like bodies in a mass grave, enveloped in darkness. I get up to use the bathroom, using the light of my phone to guide me, and am scolded by an elderly woman: “Put down the phone, child, you’ll get us all killed! Don’t you know there are snipers on the rooftops all around us?” I return to my mattress, wanting to scream – at the old woman, at the snipers on the rooftops, at the world.
In the morning, the same woman recounts stories of battles past, detailing the many risks resistance fighters take every day, as if she were one herself. She speaks of how the Israeli Defence Forces monitors civilians’ movements, forcing them to leave their homes and evacuate to Rafah, watching them as they move, as they arrive and set up their tents. She obsesses over the devil that she calls the mobile phone, how it exposes civilians and fighters alike, makes them vulnerable with their bright screens and their traceable signals. But to me, a phone is a lifeline, connecting me to my memories and my beloved people. Even though communications are down most of the time, there is always hope that a message from my father will reach me, reassuring me that he and other members of my family are safe.
I’ve become indifferent to everything. All I can think of is how my heart ached when, at the start of this war, I held Fatima close to my chest, shielding her from the sounds of explosions. Fatima and I have birthdays just a few days apart, and we usually celebrate together. Now we are separated. Whenever I feel lonely, I open my phone and look at pictures of her, searching for solace in them. Just her name sounds, to me, like a beautiful symphony – perhaps because it was also the name of my late mother, who took her place in heaven early.
Warplanes launch their missiles day and night, and the explosions cast a pall of choking gasses across the neighbourhood, their foul odour scraping at our throats. I no longer cover my mouth and nose when I smell them after each explosion; I have made peace with these foul fumes. But I cannot forget that night when a different smoke crept into my nostrils and I struggled to breathe. I lost consciousness, only waking up in the hospital, covered by a spiderweb of tubes leading to oxygen tanks and other machines. I learned then that the smoke wasn’t smoke but white phosphorus.
It is January, and the cold at night is biting. My hands and nose freeze. I wish I could light a fire, but my sister warned me against doing so, fearing the planes might notice it. I hear the sounds of clashes nearby. Time passes slowly, as if stretching so thinly it will disappear altogether. We wait eagerly for the dawn.
We remain inside until late morning, listening out for gunshots and in on each others’ conversations. Our thoughts swing like a pendulum between hope and anxiety. It seems as though a breakthrough is imminent. They say the enemy is withdrawing from the area. People go out to verify the news, and gradually, movement stirs across the neighbourhood.
In the afternoon, the doorbell rings and I go to answer it. Our neighbour stands in front of me with a ball of dough in his hands, asking if he can use our wood-fired oven. I agree, in exchange for four litres of water; our supply has run out. At last, I get to wash my face. Then, I hear something in the kitchen crash to the ground as the neighbour flees the apartment. Before we know it, we are all fleeing to the sound of a missile screeching overhead. The walls shake, but the missile hasn’t yet exploded. It is so close that its message cannot be any clearer: the withdrawal of tanks doesn’t mean an end to the destruction.
The shards of war have caught our souls in the ricochet, tearing from them their joy. But let us step away from the ambiguity of metaphors. This war has exhausted us, drained us, worn us down. We have suffered greatly. We are mentally and physically drained. We are oppressed in our own land, counting the days and misnaming them.
12 May 2024
Of course, they don’t intend to kill us, even as they rain down bombs on entire neighbourhoods and make life impossible in our city. No, don’t misunderstand. They are merely “eradicating terrorism”.
Today, “terrorism” was hiding in the body of Omar, my six-year-old nephew – perhaps in his heart, or among his soft locks of hair – so they killed him. They dropped two missiles on him and his siblings, Aya and Ahmad, and his niece Sila, who was only six months old, killing them all. Perhaps terrorism hides, too, in a garden, in the warmth of a home, in the bells of a church, in the minaret of a mosque, between the pages of books, even amid the tents of the displaced.
At five o’clock this morning, my sister Randa woke to strange noises around her house. She roused her husband to investigate, and as soon as he opened the window, two successive explosions shook him and a thick layer of smoke filled the air. Randa fell to the floor and crawled on her hands and knees towards the adjacent room to wake her children. She found them awake. She whispered in the ear of her eldest son, Samir: “The army has surrounded us.” Fear gripped Samir’s heart; he picked up his seven-month-old daughter, Sila, kissed her, and put his hand over her mouth to prevent any sound that might alert the soldiers to their presence. As soon as they made their way towards the basement, seeking shelter, shells began hitting the courtyard of the house, making the decision for them: they had to leave immediately.
The sun was already rising as they moved cautiously towards the backyard. They were ten in total. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder; a dense fog enveloped the neighbourhood and the sounds of explosions echoed on all sides. They snuck into the garden one by one, holding a white flag above their heads as they ran. A drone flying low over the rooftops noticed them and rained down bullets. They scattered, stumbled, fell to the ground – then, realising they were still alive, got back to their feet and ran, driven by the profoundest of instincts: survival. They ran until they reached a school affiliated with UNRWA and took refuge. But the missiles had followed them. Death pounced as they rounded the corner to safety.
My nephew, Omar, was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel and died instantly. His siblings and niece were left wounded, bleeding. Samir dragged his young siblings and niece into a nearby house and tried to stop their bleeding, but to no avail. Aya was wounded in the side, Ahmad in the chest and legs. Samir, himself suffering a shrapnel injury to his throat, ran out to try to find an ambulance. But ambulances have become scarce in northern Gaza. Thousands of wounded are left to die on the pavements or in their houses.
When I received the news, I tried to contact the Red Cross, and after struggling with the network, I finally got through:
“Hello habibti, Red Cross here, how can we help you?”
“This is Sondos, I need an ambulance to transport my sister’s children who are wounded to the hospital. They are now trapped in Shuja’iyya in a house belonging to…”
“We are sorry, habibti, we cannot help. The army is preventing our personnel from entering Shuja’iyya.”
How cold the answer, how warm the blood.
Ahmed followed Omar, an hour after the strike, and Aya joined them minutes later. The neighbour who was sheltering them wrapped the three bodies in cloth and placed them on the second floor of the house, away from the eyes of his own children. Sila clung on, craving more of her mother’s hugs, her father’s kisses, her grandparents’ gifts.
Sila’s arrival, the first grandchild of my sister’s family, had brought joy to the entire household. The day of her birth had been a celebration. Her father distributed sweets to all the children and adults in the neighbourhood, rejoicing at her arrival. During the November truce, I visited her, took her in my arms, inhaled her scent. A tiny white tooth had started to press upwards in her lower gums, already sharp, biting voraciously any finger that dared touch it. Sila had a laugh that could transport you out of your own world into hers, with all its exuberance.
After 12 hours, Sila left this world that turned its back on her.
Her body remained in the arms of her mother, Saja, for a whole day. Saja was injured herself, a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in her right elbow, and another in her left leg. She was barely able to move. The neighbour’s wife tried to persuade her to let her take her daughter from her, but she refused. “Please,” she begged, “Let her stay in my arms; I want to hold her some more.” Saja married at 18, gave birth to Sila at 19, and lost her in the same year, heartache compounded by the pain of milk drying in her breasts.
1 October 2024
This morning, lines from George Orwell’s 1984 linger in my thoughts: “How does one human impose their authority on another, Winston?”
“He makes him suffer.”
These words feel awfully close to home for Palestinians. Today is a new day, but we may as well be living in the past, dragged back a hundred years. At noon, I resume my work with an initiative providing psychological support to children. I work in a school in northern Gaza that shelters displaced families. For these children, the word “school” now means nothing more than a shelter, stripped of its original meaning as a place of learning.
Today’s mission is to gather the children and spark conversations that steer their thoughts away from war. On the surface, this might seem simple, but it’s one of the hardest tasks I’ve ever faced. All their stories revolve around blood, loss and destruction. I try talking to them about dreams and the future, but every time a child speaks, they start with, “When the war ends, I’ll do this and that…”
One little girl particularly dear to my heart is named Masa. Her name means “precious gem” in Arabic. She’s five years old and is convinced that when the war ends, her father will return. She and him will play with her toys on her colourful bed, and she’ll scold him for being away so long. But Masa’s father isn’t coming back; he was lost to the war, along with her home and her bed.
After work, my colleague Noor and I decide to go to the market. On the way, she complains about her child’s health: the doctor has told her he is malnourished. We arrive at what Gazans still call a “market”, but just like “school”, the word has lost most of its meaning. Supplies are scarce, prices are high, and most of the food is canned. Noor points to the shelves of cans lining the market and asks: “Do they expect these to provide my children with the nutrients they need to grow? This food is meant to fill their bellies, nothing more. The bodies of adults are already exhausted, so imagine a child’s!”
The road home is long, but we walk because there is no diesel to run cars or public transport. When I finally get home, I light a fire to make a cup of tea. I sit on my bamboo couch, sipping my tea, and the children’s stories fill my thoughts. I’m afraid I might forget them. Each time I try to recall a story, a new one is born. My thoughts are like half-formed sentences, lacking cohesion, overwhelmed by the things I have seen and felt.
When I lay my head on the pillow, I think about how it has been nearly a year since the war began, how disappointed I’ve become. I think about how deeply sad I am, and I don’t know who to tell. I don’t know how to wave to someone and say, “Hello, there’s a massive fire inside me. Do you think you could help put it out?” I am alone with my memories, the things I have seen, harshly strumming the strings of my heart. My body plays a long, lonely wail.
Sondos Sabra’s diaries will be published in “Voices of Resistance” by Comma Press early next year
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[See also: A year after 7 October, what does it mean to be human now?]
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