In Gaza, tomorrow will be another long day in hell

Israel controls everything, even the hours of rest.

Since Oct. 27, Gaza has been in a communications blackout, leaving it isolated from the rest of the world.

I haven’t heard from my sister Fadwa or my father, who live there, for two days now and I’d like to join them and protect them.

No one has been able to leave the encircled Gaza Strip besides the souls of the dead, which heaven can no longer contain.

When the news of the attack appeared on my television screen, I sent my sister a voice message: “Hello, Fadwa? How are you? Why aren’t you answering? I heard that your area is being bombed. They didn’t give the victims’ surnames.”

I wrote to my other sisters on our WhatsApp group: “Fadwa isn’t answering. When was the last time you spoke to her on the phone? Did she answer?” There was no response from Fadwa.

On Telegram, by far the fastest and least monitored platform, the surname of a family, six members of which had been killed, appeared on the news feed.

“Thank God it wasn’t my sister’s house that was hit!” I thought. I was briefly relieved, but then the guilt set in. War has a way of robbing us from parts of our humanity.

I started to hate the sound of Telegram’s incoming message notifications. I started to shake, as I heard the buzz of a notification in my ears. “Hello, Fadwa? Are you asleep?” Still no answer.

I got back to her on WhatsApp, I tried an international line, and I called everyone I knew in her circle. I was petrified. My stomach turned and I had a splitting headache. I held back my tears. I was keen to not wake up my mother, who has a heart condition, because I did not want to share my anxiety with her.

After what felt like forever, I finally got a WhatsApp message from Fadwa: “I’m fine. What’s happening? We don’t have any news here.”

My heart leaped at the sight of her messages. Seeing the first letter of her name appear on my screen filled me with joy. But that joy quickly turned to concern. What if I sent the message too soon? Before the last bombing? What if I’d received his reply too late? My hands started shaking. What if my sister was dead now, being pulled from the rubble, like hundreds of families every day? Maybe they’ll never find her little girl.

Another message arrives: “We were sleeping. Our sleep is interrupted by the bombing.” Then another one: “I woke up with Yoyo, and she should be walking soon. In a fortnight, she’s become more and more agile.”

I took a deep breath. I was almost sure I had gained additional gray hairs. The first ones appeared two days after the war started. My throat constantly closes and I’m terrified to see the names of new victims appear.

In Toulouse, where I’ve been living in exile for the past seven years, life seems to be running smoothly: my 11-year-old daughter puts make-up for Halloween, my 19-year-old son is plays video games, my mother prepares olives she foraged from the only tree in the neighborhood (nobody has pressed charges yet) and Yaqin, Fadwa’s twin sister, is studying French.

My mother and sister have been here for a year and a half. I did everything I could to get them to join me. If I’d been able to, I’d have taken my whole family out of the hell of Gaza, but I couldn’t. My father and Fadwa are still there. The rest of my siblings are scattered across the world, like the Palestinians whose land was confiscated in 1948.

My mother started talking about the Six-Day War. “They’re causing a famine, just like in 1967. My family and I were left munching on dried beans because we were so hungry. They arrested your grandfather, my father, who worked in the settlements, just as they are now arresting workers from Gaza who found themselves stuck in the West Bank,” she recounted.

This war revived memories of that other war in my mother’s mind. “People stole flour from UNRWA warehouses, just as they did in 1967.”

I felt sorry for her. How will she cope with another war? She has two stents placed in her heart and I’m probably to blame. Her heart was damaged in 2008, while I was a journalist in Gaza. I spent most of my time under the bombardments and I was the reason she was scared.

I also covered the wars of 2012 and 2014, but back then I felt protected by the feeling that nothing would happen to me in my homeland.

It’s different here. At every demonstration in Toulouse that demanded a ceasefire, police fired smoke bombs at us. I felt like each bomb was going to hit me in the head. I was never afraid in Gaza, but I’m afraid here, in this land that is foreign to me and whose government supports the massacres perpetrated against my people.

I can’t stop thinking: how could God have remained silent without warning us that death would descend on Gaza for a month or more? Who in Hamas knew? Did they even think of asking us if we wanted to die? If we wanted to lose our homes, our memories and our friends? The only place where we had a life, far from our pseudo-lives in exile in Europe, the Gulf or the United States.

I learned through Telegram that a new family, whose name we don’t yet know, has been decimated. I paced back and forth in my room, responding to the dozens of messages I received and the warnings from Facebook to delete posts: we don’t deserve an open forum, a humanitarian corridor or safe places to flee to. We are the “animals” the Israeli defense minister referred to. They have abandoned us all — Hamas, the Arabs, the West and Mahmoud Abbas — into the jaws of the monster.

It’s impossible to stop the bombs from falling on the people of Gaza right now. I only hope that my family will be spared. Fadwa sent me a WhatsApp photo of her little daughter, proudly wearing a pink pearl bracelet made by relatives.

Will this bracelet be the distinctive sign that identifies her if she is buried by concrete? Will this photo be the last of her? And if she joins the birds in the skies over Gaza, will we post it on social media along with a beautiful message?

I’m going crazy. I need painkillers. How can I get some? I’ve been on a hunger strike for a week with others around the world, and painkillers would finish me off. All I can do is watch helplessly as my motherland is destroyed.

I sent Fadwa a voice note: “I begged mum not to cook any of the dishes I like, but she made mana'iche, moujaddara, chocolate cake, falafel... I run away from tempting smells from room to room.” We laughed a lot. I pray that it won’t be her last laugh.

Yaqin lives with us. She’s worried, sad, and almost on the verge of madness, but she shows it in her own way. Her reactions are less dramatic than mine.

I scream and jump off the sofa as soon as I hear of a bombing. I feel like I’m going to kill my mother with my reactions, but I can’t help it: I hate war. It continued to haunt me, despite starting a new life, adapting to a new community, learning the language, and forgetting my painful past.

War and misfortune overwhelm me once again. Sometimes, I wish I came from somewhere else. While this thought ran through my mind, my daughter came up to me. She said to me in English: “You know, mum, my country is the best. Everyone loves Palestine!”

I smiled and told myself that perhaps life would be kinder to her generation. My generation has lived through too many wars and internal conflicts. We’ve lost hope a thousand times over.

After losing my uncle’s family in 2014, I wrote an article entitled “Don’t talk to me about peace after this.”

Moderation has no place after such horrors. Shaking hands with the enemy became impossible. I’ve experienced the impact of war on people, and witnessed the despair it plants in them. Few people survive the shelling and far fewer get out of it unscathed. It’s a game of chance and luck.

I’m tired of the wars, the warplanes and the cannons that have decided my life and the lives of those I love.

Anyway, for the moment, I can take a breath. Fadwa and her daughter are alive tonight.

Tomorrow will be another long day in hell.

Asma Alghoul is a Palestinian journalist and co-author of “L'insoumise de Gaza” (Calmann-Lévy, 2016)

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.