A Pause Beyond My Reach

There’s nothing that remains constant. For as long as you rejected a certain idea, something stronger than you eventually come to change your mind about it. How great it would be if that something weren’t a human—but this time, it’s the sea!

After the first fleeing of Gazan people from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, after the horrible actions that had taken place, I came to hate the south of Gaza strip. I came to hate the moments when my family spoke about fleeing. Although I didn’t flee with them, but my heart was always with them!

Sometimes I sit absent-minded about who truly bore and faced the most struggle, the people who lived in the southern Gaza Strip or the northern, but when I remember that the criminal is one, I close the thought by saying, "All Gazan people struggle to live!"

The day before, I ventured for what I had always dismissed!

Yesterday morning, I woke up as routine every day; there were no alarms, because the sounds of the explosions, the wails of bereaved mothers, and the screams of children had become the alarms that never stop! I ate my breakfast with my family. We were engaged in the usual depressing news, and as usual, we turned it into jokes just to keep going through our days!

My father said an something outrageous, that he wanted to go to the southern of Gaza, specifically Deir al-Balah city for a couple of days. He wanted to make some work related matter, planned to return to Gaza. Everyone was shocked, because we all know this decision wasn’t easy at all, even the name " south of Gaza strip" alone terrified us.

I listened to that idea, and my mind kept saying, "It’s unthinkable to go with him." My little sister encouraged me to go with my dad. I can say what motivated her was her search for life—normal life, for a glimmer of hope that had disappeared in Gaza, and for air she could breathe freely. Maybe she would find anything!

After I had completely refused to go to the southern Gaza Strip, I agreed without much hesitation—more than I had expected, but perhaps like my sister, I was searching for a life that might exist in another city!

We packed our bags quickly. I took with me many things that I would need, and because the same fearful thought still haunted me—that I will stay there like my family, for fourteen months without permission to return to Gaza, I took all that I needed. We moved around 11AM: my father, my little sister, and I. There were a huge number of families fleeing in the street, carrying whatever their backs could carry, whatever remained from their homes, leaving their loved ones behind them, and moving far from rockets that could kill them, or the rockets would keep them in pain without the ability to heal, because the injuries would be stronger than what doctors could treat, and the lack of medical equipment didn’t help at all.

While my dad was driving, suddenly the three cars in front of us turned back, because there was a bombed robot at Al-Dahdooh roundabout!

Our faces changed, as if they had hit a wall. At that moment I could hear my heart thudding in my ears. My dad murmured the prayers, my sister and I with him. After hearing this news, my dad changed our destination and turned onto another street. We spent about three and a half hours to reach Deir al-Balah city, causing the fleeing of the Gazan families, who were carrying their belongings and memories on their backs in bags. While they were still searching for the peace, they had forgotten how to feel alive.

We reached the city. The view that caught my eyes was the sea. When I saw it, I remembered that there is a life worth living and a force we can draw from it. After we reached our place, we set down our bags and took a deep breath of the sea air, trying to find the strength to persist. My father told us we would stay here for three days, so I decided to take these three days as a break—from everything, from my university, work, social media, and anything that would stress me, even from people who might bother me.

I thought I could make such a decision, in my hometown, and especially in the war, so I just wanted to try. I spent those days like a person, trying to reshape all her city, in the way that she desired. This attempt forced me to wear a fabricated smile in a bleak world, tried to forget stress, that I remember it in the faces of the Gazan people around me. I was chasing beauty, peace, and a life that had already vanished.

One day during these three days, our neighbors came to us, to share words and discover one another. They introduced themselves by saying, this is my sister whose husband died, this is my nephew’s photo who died, due to the lack of medical equipment, we have been fleeing since the first day of this war!, and……..

Is that how a person introduces himself?! While the dialogue took a turn that I hadn’t planned, I didn’t want to narrate stories similar to theirs, if not grimmer. I was just trying to change the conversation, to hear about their lives—before the war. I would have forgiven them if they had lied to me, even though that would be uncharacteristic of me. After that night I preferred not to go to them, because I was just taking a three-day break!

On the second day, my sister and I went to the place that motivated me to come, a place no force could conquer or destroy—the sea! Or the homes of many Gazan people, who had pitched their tents on the sandy shores to live there, so if I wanted to cross the sea, I had to walk past their tents. I sat on the sands of the sea with my sister, talking about anything but war, until a strange girl joined us. She told us about her martyred brother, about the last thrilling moments before her fiancé was killed shortly after the next day of their engagement, and about the things I had been running from, but these kinds of stories still haunted me, even coming from this stranger whose first name I knew! She gave us her number to see her every day, at the same place. But my resistance forced me to delete her number, as I am satisfied with what I had been living like with these stories. I don’t wanna know more!

On the third day we were convinced that there was no escape, because every detail reminded us of the war, and this is the shape of the life that I must live in! We left Deir-Al-Balah at about 6:45. At first the road was clear; there were countless families fleeing from Gaza to the southern Gaza Strip, carrying their belongings on the cars, their children, and all that the war had left them with. The features of the street had been effaced entirely, wiped away as though nothing had ever existed there, like a city of ghosts! Because of the traffic, we moved to another road, but it was sandy, so a lot of cars weren’t able to move easily; a lot of them broke down, and their wheels stuck, but we were with one heart, helping each other as much as we could; we were all facing the same nightmares. Our car was moving ordinarily, and suddenly the engine fan stopped working. Because we were still in the traffic, my father tried to fix it, but it needed a lot of water, which we didn’t have, nor did the other drivers around us. By the mercy of Allah, we met a lot of my dad’s friends; one helped us push the car, and another gave us a rope to tie our car to the van that was in front of us. After these struggles and the traffic that was, we spent eight hours just to reach Gaza; they were really hard hours, but because we successfully returned to our city, all of these troubles felt easy to bear.