There’s a look I’ve come to recognise – the best way a toddler’s eyes widen once they see me, carrying a press vest and holding the microphone. It’s not curiosity. It’s hope. A fragile, determined hope that perhaps I carry solutions I should not have.
“When will this finish?” a boy as soon as requested me, tugging at my sleeve as I filmed close to his shelter. He couldn’t have been older than 5, his ft naked and caked with mud.
His associates gathered round him, watching me as if I held some secret key to the long run. “When can we go dwelling?”
I didn’t know what to say. I by no means do. As a result of, like them, I’m displaced. Like them, I have no idea when or if this battle will ever finish. However of their eyes, I’m somebody who would possibly know. Somebody who, by merely being there with a digital camera, might change one thing.
And they also cling to me. They comply with me by way of rubble and throughout damaged streets, asking questions I can’t reply. Typically, they don’t say something in any respect. They simply stroll alongside me, quietly, as if my presence alone is sufficient to fill the silence that battle has left behind.
I can’t depend what number of occasions a mom has pulled me apart after an interview, held my hand tightly and whispered, “Please … are you able to assist us?” Their voices tremble not with anger, however exhaustion – the form of exhaustion that sinks into your bones and by no means leaves.
They don’t ask for a lot. A couple of extra blankets. Cleaning soap. Medication for his or her kids. And I stand there, my digital camera nonetheless rolling, nodding, making an attempt to elucidate that I’m right here to inform their tales, to not ship assist. However what’s a narrative to a brand new mom who doesn’t also have a mattress to sleep on, not to mention to her new child?
I relive these moments each time I sit down to write down. They replay in my thoughts like echoes – each face, each voice. And with every phrase I placed on the web page, I’m wondering if it would make a distinction. I’m wondering if the individuals who learn my phrases, who watch my studies, will perceive that beneath the politics and the headlines, there’s this: a girl washing her toddler’s garments in sewage water, a boy selecting by way of garbage to search out one thing to promote, a lady lacking faculty as a result of she can’t afford sanitary pads.
I don’t cowl politics. I don’t have to. The battle speaks for itself within the smallest of particulars.
It’s within the tangle of ft beneath tents, the place households share areas too small to breathe. It’s in the best way kids cough at evening, their chests heavy from the damp and the chilly. It’s within the sight of fathers standing by the ocean, staring out as if the waves would possibly carry away their burdens.
There’s a form of grief right here that doesn’t scream. It lingers, comfortable and chronic, in each nook of life.
At some point, whereas reporting close to a uncared for group of tents, a lady handed me a drawing she had made on the again of an outdated cereal field. It was easy – flowers and birds – however within the center, she had drawn a home, complete and untouched. “That is my home,” she instructed me. “Earlier than.”
Earlier than.
That phrase carries a lot weight in Gaza. Earlier than the air strikes. Earlier than the displacement. Earlier than battle stripped away every little thing however survival.
I write these tales not as a result of I imagine they may finish the battle, however as a result of they’re proof that we existed. That even within the face of every little thing, we held on to one thing. Dignity. Resilience. Hope.
There’s a scene I return to usually. A lady standing on the entrance of her shelter, brushing her daughter’s hair along with her fingers as a result of she can’t afford a comb. She hums softly a lullaby that drowns out the horrific sound of shut air strikes and distant shelling. Her daughter leans into her, eyes half-closed, secure for only a second.
I have no idea what peace appears to be like like, however I feel it would really feel like that.
That is the Gaza I do know. That is the Gaza I write about. And regardless of what number of occasions I inform these tales, I’ll preserve telling them, as a result of they matter. As a result of, sooner or later, I hope that when a toddler asks me when the battle will finish, I can lastly give them the reply they’ve been ready for.
Till then, I carry their voices with me, and I’ll make certain the world hears them.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
