Doaa Salim
The Electronic Intifada / September 27, 2024
In Gaza, I want to live and die.
To die in Gaza these days is not like dying in any other place. In Gaza, you might get a farewell. You might get a grave. You might end up half a body, or just a piece of flesh.
We live in a so-called safe area in Deir al-Balah. Our home has hosted dozens of displaced women and children from different places in Gaza since last October. Though relatively quiet, the area is not safe.
Nothing is safe.
On 2 July, I remember sitting with my siblings, Ahmed, Mahmoud, Asma, and my parents, enjoying tea in our backyard. It was bright and breezy.
My brother, Ahmed, finished his cup and left us.
At about 3:30 pm, I heard a massive explosion. Stones and dust started to fall on my head. The area became grey, and I could barely see because of the intensity of the smoke.
When I heard Asma’s screams, I screamed out.
An Israeli warplane had fired a missile that ultimately would kill 14 people.
Among the victims were my brother, Ahmed, 37, his wife, Marwa, 28, and their children, Mahmoud, 6, and Muhammad, 3, as well as 10 people from Marwa’s family.
In total, 18 people had sought shelter in my brother’s flat, on the fourth floor of the building we all lived in. Of those, nine died, including a stranger whom my brother had met wandering the streets, homeless, and had taken mercy on.
Ahmed and his immediate family members were lucky to be intact enough to each have a grave. Others were left as only unidentifiable body parts.
Marwa’s sister-in-law Aya and her two kids, Hassan and Malek, were playing in the children’s room when the missile struck. Their bodies were torn apart.
I survived almost unscathed, only a minor injury on my forehead.
40 days
Outside, a stranger gave me a 7-month-old toddler to hold. All his family were in the building, I was told.
The child was scared. His fear of losing his parents made me hug him tightly.
Luckily, miraculously, his parents had survived the carnage, even though they had been on the roof of the building.
I waited for a while, scanning the crowd for Mahmoud and Muhammad before my sister told me that an ambulance had taken Mahmoud to the hospital and that Muhammad and his father had been killed.
I refused to accept the truth.
“Ahmed is okay and will return home with his kids,” I told her.
Ahmed, Marwa and their two kids did not return.
Their lives had been too cheerful and small for them to be killed with half a ton of explosives.
Ahmed was an accomplished engineer who always expressed concern for others.
He brought solar panels to generate electricity in the home, pump water and charge our electronic devices during the Israeli genocide.
I still picture his boys playing in my home. They were smart and ambitious, even as little children. Mahmoud once told me how, “me and dad boycott Israeli goods because we do not support killing,” which was followed almost immediately by, “I want to be an astronaut and fly to the moon.”
It took me 40 days to go upstairs to Ahmed’s flat, and I did so only because my mom had asked for help to clean the place.
As I gaze out at their stuff scattered all over the place, there’s no space for grief. I stretch out my hand. I can’t. I feel all my memories of them rise to my throat. I try again.
I can still hear Mahmoud’s laugh. I can hold their stuff and clothes in my hands.
I hold on to the hope that life will sprout again amid the massive destruction, like a broken and burnt olive tree grows under the rubble.
Doaa Salim is a writer and translator in Deir al-Balah
