Eman Abu Shawish Story 23

The forty seventh day in the war calendar…

Five twenty in the morning…

My phone alarm went off, declaring it was time to wake up.

Wake up from what? I can barely sleep, for our nights are but naps between raids.

I got up for prayer, an act I purposefully postpone until some light is out in the sky so I can see around me after we’ve been deprived of light.

No water in the tap. As per usual.

I grabbed a water bottle we had filled for house use. I washed and prayed. The sun came up, announcing the start of the daily strife.

I prepared the dough and waited a little before turning them into balls. Then I went on to light the charcoal to bake the bread, a process that takes an hour at best, and much energy for charcoal aeration to keep it lit.

Sometimes we send the dough to our neighbor who built a clay oven, and get a turn. If we arrive early, we may get our bread in half an hour or an hour…

My husband lit a fire on top of the house, and we made some tea. Everybody woke up, and we had some Zaatar (thyme) and zeit (oil), and those are what was left from our stored food. All stores are out; and lucky is he who finds – with great difficulty – some vegetables picked by a farmer from his land, and brings back to his family for lunch…

The men go fetch water in buckets daily from different places. I brought some pots and the children helped me fill them up with water to wash our clothes. Every time I finish washing and hanging them to dry, I feel pains I cannot describe in my neck and shoulders, worsened by muscular tears I incurred 3 months ago…

No time to rest, back to lighting fire on top of the house to cook whatever I can scavenge for lunch, and I really don’t know what I should feel as I see my children learning early their first lesson in economics, as they eat half what they need to leave the other half for dinner!!

Back to the pots, to fill them with water, so I clean the ones I used for cooking… and if you ever cooked on fire, then you know the trouble that goes into cleaning them…

Fayruz started suffering with toothache… for the eighth time since the start of the war. I gave her a pain killer, praying this war ends so I take her to a dentist to rid her of these pains and relieve her stomach from the side effects of pain killers…

It’s almost the evening.

We wish we could take a hot shower… but it is a thing of luxury… no hot water and no way to boil it… water is so precious that showering became a wish…

Even using the bathroom، may God bless you, turned into a dilemma requiring the person to ponder thoroughly before going. As electricity is out, the sewage pumping stations stopped working, and the entire situation became a disaster.

I rushed to ready the sleep mattresses before dark, and we sat to chat.

They feel hungry quickly and often these days… maybe it’s because they are in periods of growth spurts, or perhaps they are in a state of worry and horror that drains them incessantly, or maybe they crave many of the dishes we used to make before everything was out of stock, or because they are eating less than what they need…

They started to eat what they saved from lunch. They started remembering and listing the dishes they miss, and comfort each other that all difficult things will pass, and there will come a day when they are able to buy chips again, have some crepes… one of my girls looks at me with embarrassment and humour, promising that she will never object to mouloukhiyya (a traditional Palestinian dish) as long as she lives… and they all laughed!

They remembered together the good old days. Dana said: “Do you remember when we turned on the TV and watched cartoons?” Judy jokingly replies: “what does a TV mean?! What is electricity?!”

Fayruz says: “Do you remember when mom used to come from work every Thursday with all sorts of treats and we stay up and watch a movie?”

Masa introjected: “Do you remember when we used to walk to the market and buy ice cream? I am so craving ice cream right now…”

As I started putting the dishes away, Judy adds: “Do you remember when we used to complain to mom that life is boring! Why are we not like the rest of the children in the world? And she used to say we are living in blessings we did not appreciate, and must thank God for them. She was right… turns out there are worse days still!!”

I smiled as I poured water over their hands to wash, and we all sat on the mattresses…

Exhaustion over exhaustion and the day passes… as is every day since the fuel was out and we had to go back to primitive ways of living, at a time the world reached such a high levels of luxury that they can whisper to a smart ear piece to turn off the house lights!!

Everything in my body was hurting to the point that I did not know which pain to complain from…

The allergy eczema creeped up. It found its place on my hands that are soaked with detergents, and I calmed it down with creams so it stops itching…

I really don’t know when and how I fell asleep. I think that I – from over exhaustion – went into a coma-like state.

A humongous explosion woke us up!! The sounds of things falling was horrific! This time things are not falling just inside the house, but also on the roof and around, on the street. They kept falling for at least twenty seconds. For a person awakened from sleep, the whole thing felt delirious, and in the pitch darkness I started calling on everyone by name to find out if they were ok… The gas smoke filled the house. No need for light to see it, as its presence is overbearing… we feel it in shortness of breath and coughing. I got up to get something, anything to wet with water to cover the suffocating children’s noses… we were aimlessly running back and forth, we just didn’t understand… we didn’t know what happened, where and to whom it happened…

Fifteen minutes passed before we could breathe oxygen again. And before we could understand what happened, and before one of the men who went down to the street declared whose house was targeted, Dana and Fayruz finally went to sleep. I stayed up with my two eldest girls. Judy was loudly out of breath as she said: “I feel my heart is outside my body and refusing to go back in, as if it’s about to stop from how fast it’s beating…”

Complete silence…

Another exhaustion-induced coma… stolen from us by two consecutive explosions four hours after the first one… for the previous scenario to repeat itself with minor differences in details…

There the night goes, throwing us into the forty eighth day, for all the brutal actions to be repeated, our bodies to get more drained, our hearts to be heavier with all the losses.

Everyone is wondering: Is it our turn yet? Or do we still have time left?!

Eman Abu Shawish – Mental Health Practitioner at UPA, Gaza, Palestine
24 November 2023

To read all stories in the series: http://upaconnect.org/category/gaza2023