Frightened, you wake up in the morning to the sound of a bullet, then you feel happy as you realize the bullet didn’t hit you, you are still breathing, but soon you will feel sorry, you recognize that the bullet that missed you, hit somebody else; maybe he had a loving wife, and helpless young children. That circle of happiness and sadness each morning is an inevitable aspect of each Gazan’s life.
Gaza is also the place where you would feel scared if you don’t wake up at sounds of bullets, you would feel strange or think you are dead. Gaza is where the beauty of life is represented through young kids’ smiles and eyes, and a neighbors’ girl who looks at you shyly. In Gaza you struggle since you are born, you have to work since you are 10 years old if not earlier and sometimes you have to be thankful for one meal in the day. In Gaza your play time is a long walk with a friend or discovering the borders with risk of being shot dead while the other children of the world enjoy long trips to ancient places, zoos and cinemas. As the economic condition in Gaza strip is one of the worst in the world, many kids fail the ability to buy toys, and here bullets collecting turns into a hobby, in many occasions it is a contest between kids who has the bigger and more diverse collection of bullets, while the rest children of the world collect beautiful colored birds, roses, bicycles and Video Games. In the rest of the world children collect roses and posters of their admired star, while Gazan children keep in their rooms the bullets that penetrated through the windows or walls and turn bombs shills into vases, the will to survive this hellish situation is so strong, and so are the creative abilities of each Gazan child. In Gaza instead of recognizing the different names and sounds of birds you have to recognize the different sounds of bullets AK47, M16 ..etc.
In Gaza you wake up at the sound of a bullet, and turn on the radio on a song of the Lebanese Singer Fairuz or Majda Al Roomi, a song of harmony, hope, and love. Gaza has a long story with love; in fact Gazans do appreciate beauty despite their miserable reality and being oppressed. Going to the Unknown Soldier Square in Gaza city, where families, kids, youth, activists, protestors, Hamas militia with guns and sticks, and lovers walking holding each other’s hand all gather in the same place. Gaza isn’t a city of uncountable luxuries, there is misery all the time, but among it Gazans can create a breathing space for their families. This square witnessed eye contacts, love stories, hands-holding, and breaking bones with sticks by the militia now, and by Israel before the PA took responsibility for the Palestinian territories in 1994.
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| Photo of the Unknown Soldier Square - Gaza |
To that square, new married and engaged couples go to stress their oaths, activists and protestors go to stand tall for their issues and cases, and little helpless children go either to work or to become beggars, you would hear stories of parents wounded or killed by Israel in the last war, or parents unable to work so a child of ten or seven years become responsible for a family, selling sweets or other light-weighted things. It is the place where the light of hope and the endless efforts to break through the thick wall of reality, meets the never ending brutal real face of misery. It is the place where you enjoy moments of silence, lost in your beloved eyes and lips, before an air-strike distracts you. It is each lover’s little Gaza, and every activist’s wide dream of freedom.
Gaza is a unique case, where death reason is always just –being a Gazan-, you could be going out of school, hospital, mosque, university, or even in a taxi when a near object is targeted by Israel and you get hurt, for no reason, except being in Gaza. In Gaza neither life nor death has any sense, since Gazans lost the feeling of any difference between the two, but you want to live, not for you, but for your beloved ones.
Gaza, is an endless war, tiredness, sweat, and innocence of childhood being violated, Gaza is the land of plight and darkness, but Gaza shall remain the light of hope.
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