Today, for the first time since the Israeli genocide against Gazans began, I left my home not out of necessity, but out of a deep yearning to visit my university—Al-Aqsa University. The Israeli Occupation had denied me the right to pursue my diploma in education on campus, reducing my studies to a phone screen amidst the destruction that has brought life in Gaza to a complete standstill.
Today, I decided to leave my home, not out of compulsion but out of a desire to go, and If I counted the number of times I was forced to leave the home in the past year and three months, I would not stop at three or four. And because my forced departure is divided into several different forms, not one shape, I am astonished by my own desire to leave. But these are the circumstances of life that force you to encapsulate into yourself at times, and to come out of that encapsulation at others.
My forced departures have taken many forms. Once, I fled after my home collapsed over my head, damaged by an Israeli airstrike targeting my neighbor’s house. Another time, I left under an evacuation order from the Israeli army, and yet another time, I fled an unexpected Israeli incursion into my neighborhood. And other times, which I write in my blogs, and others I resist extracting from my memory, hoping to ease the burden on my mind.
Today, I went to Khan Yunis, where Al-aqsa university is located, and it is a region between Rafah and Deir al-Balah. Khan Yunis embodies the contradictions of the Israeli occupation appear: one moment, the Israeli army orders evacuations; the next, it raids the area, reducing buildings—and the lives within them—to rubble. Life extinguishes in these buildings in an instant. The buildings have souls, which derive its pulse from the warmth of their inhabitants’ breaths. If the warmth disappears, the souls wander aimlessly in a void.
I decided to capture as many images as possible of the current Gaza (the southern part of it), so I planned to go to Khan Yunis, wander through any area my feet could reach, and then return via a different route than the one I came from.
To reach Khan Yunis, there are two routes: either through Salah al-Din Street, the eastern road that separates eastern Khan Yunis from western Khan Yunis, or through Rasheed street, which separates Khan Yunis from its shores.
I decided to take Salah al-Din Street. I boarded a car and we set off.
We usually feel a sense of familiarity when passing through the streets we’ve grown used to walking through, the ones we’ve always seen standing tall. But what I saw along my way to Deir al-Balah was destruction, with houses lacking walls where their inhabitants still lived, because they felt any roof, no matter how damaged, was better than a piece of cloth in a tent that couldn’t protect them from the winter cold or summer heat.
I arrived at the entrance of Deir al-Balah. life here was full of incomprehensible chaos. I saw someone selling cigarettes that had no tobacco in them. Another was selling diesel, and another was selling bags of cold water. The street sales were all unbalanced. I was the only one who observed the situation with a blank stare, noticing that those around me didn’t see what I saw. Maybe they’ve lived this moment for a year or more, but for me, it was my first time.
I snapped out of my daze when I heard a thirty-something-year-old driver ask,
“Where do you want to go, sister?”
“Bani Suhaila roundabout.”
“Alright, last passenger, sister, please.”
I got in the car, thinking I was the last passenger, but I was actually the first. A minute, two, three… and the driver after fifteen minutes took us towards Khan Yunis.
Sometimes, we feel strange about the roads. I felt a sense of alienation from Gaza, even though I hadn’t left it. The entire road I took seemed insignificant compared to the streets of Khan Yunis. Every residential block there was destroyed, as if a nuclear bomb had unleashed its fury on it. Despite all I had lived through in the genocide and the destruction around my house, the devastation here went far beyond anything I had seen or heard in the news. I closed my eyes on all these shocks and didn’t open them until we reached Bani Suhaila roundabout.
The driver told me that this was the Bani Suhaila roundabout. I denied it, saying he was taking me to an unknown area, exploiting my ignorance of the roads. He told me to get out of the car.
What kind of affliction has struck me? This is the Bani Suhaila roundabout, Sis.
I got out of the car in total denial, turned around, and saw no landmarks. My attention was caught by a metal sign bearing the name “Gaza Sky Geeks.” I didn’t recognize the place where I had spent my training period in a course except by the charred metal sign! Can metal burn?! The Israeli occupation was able to even melt iron. I didn’t wait any longer. I got in the first car I could, and the driver told me he was heading to Al-Aqsa University.
The scattered tents along every street I passed on my way to Al-Aqsa University told a new story.
I saw the tents and imagined what life would be like in them. But my imaginings fell short in comparison to the reality of the tents here. Every inch of these streets is marked by a piece of cloth called a tent, which houses a family, or perhaps more. In a stormy night, neither the cloth nor the family remains. The cloth flies away, unbothered by storms, and the family dies of the cold. Even if one survives, they will not escape an Israeli airstrike.
I got out of the car at Al-Aqsa University. It was no longer a university; it had become a camp for those forcibly displaced from their homes. There was no place to study anymore. Here, children line up for water to meet their daily needs. Here is another line for lunch food, another for food aid parcels… and so on, queues everywhere.
How did they turn us into machines driven by the need for water and food?
How did they turn us from students seeking solace in their places of learning, hoping for a prosperous future, into people who burn books to start a fire to bake a loaf of bread?
How did they reduce our displacement, oppression, and death to mere survival?
I had enough of the bitterness that surrounded my heart, which slowed with each passing moment. And because I knew that returning via the western road would bring more pain over the areas the Israeli occupation had destroyed, I decided to return the same way I came.
I took the same route in the opposite direction, closing my eyes throughout the return journey, reflecting on the words the driver said to another driver before we set off:
You want Gaza, but don’t want to pay its price!! This is the price of Gaza, my friend.”