120 Days Away from Home in North Gaza, Palestine (original) (raw)

image courtesy of the authorA child seated on a thin mattress on the floor of a cinderblock-walled room

One family's story

Published on Feb 5, 2024 7:00AM EST

Ed. Note: We have withheld the author’s name to protect the family’s privacy.

On October 7, 2023, in Gaza, my entire life changed. I am an accountant, married, with three kids, 2, 4, and 6 years old. Lived a happy normal life like any normal family. It was a Saturday when a war erupted between Israel and Hamas. “Armored group controls Gaza,” we heard, with no preparation or warning. Rockets bombing and destruction, everywhere in Gaza, without caring about civilian people’s lives.

Two days later I received a text message requesting that we evacuate the house, and to go south; it would be very dangerous to stay, because the IDF (Israel Defense Force) would be operating in my area in North Gaza. We got scared and started to pack our important stuff, some clothes and food, got into my car very fast, closed the house, and headed to south Gaza—but where?

I called a friend who lived in the south, telling him what had happened to me and my family, and asking to stay at his house until the operation ended and we could get back home again. He welcomed me and my family, and told me that it would be no problem for him. He said he’d be emptying a small room for me on the roof of his house.

On the way we saw a lot of people, in cars and walking, escaping from the north and going south as they been told. We were shocked at the great numbers of people leaving their homes. In the extreme traffic, it took us three hours to get to our friend’s house, ordinarily a 40-minute drive.

When we arrived, my friend and his family welcomed us, and showed us to the small room where all five of us would be staying. We started to tidy it up, to make it somehow suitable to live in. We shared food in every day and they were nice to us at first, but in a little while food, water and clothes became hard to get, and then very scarce, with prices steadily rising. Soon it became necessary to stand in long queues for clean water; then there was no electricity or internet in the house, and the gas in the kitchen started to disappear, too. We had to deal with that every single day. Clean water queue, bread queue. Medicine queue. So much time and so much money spent to get simple things that had always available to us before war.

In our room we all always stayed close together, hearing bombs falling every night and a lot of them came close. My wife and I had to deal with our frightened kids, all of us waking up from the shattering sounds of bombs. Everything we had to buy from the market at double and sometimes triple prices—even including relief food sent from abroad we were forced to buy from the markets, things labeled NOT FOR SALE.

In these days the weather changed and it grew cold. We had escaped in summer clothes and weren’t prepared for this. No clothes were available in the markets, and Gaza’s borders were closed. With no goods entering, I had to start searching for second-hand clothes, which were available only at very high prices, especially for the kids.

We spent 70 days at our friend’s home. A long time, nobody had expected this, and we started to feel heavy on him and that we’d overstayed our welcome. Others who hadn’t been able to find a place to stay had resorted to schools, universities, and hospitals, sometimes pitching tents on empty areas close to schools.

We decided to find another place, and even started to think about a tent for ourselves. After three days’ search we found an apartment, but it wasn’t ready to live in. I went alone, and set up a bathroom and made the apartment somehow proper to live in.

We have found it very hard to stay here, very cold, and we’re able to make only the very simplest arrangements, just to stay alive. Me and the kids have had to find clean water and some food every single day; I use small yellow small tanks for saving the clean water, amid the constant blasts of bombs, drone sounds and airstrikes at every moment. Somehow we’ve become more or less used to the sounds, but we are very scared when it comes louder and closer than usual, and we feel the house shaking.

My wife and I try to stay strong by thinking of all the others living in tents, especially in the rainy days and very cold ones, with thoughts in every single minute and the unanswered question, When we will we go back to our homes again? If they are not destroyed.

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