(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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My martyrs live on [1]
['Reem A. Hamadaqa', 'John O', 'You Are Going To Send Email To', 'Move Comment', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img']
Date: 2024-10-07 12:50:52+00:00
For the heavenly souls of my martyrs — my family and my professor
Palestinians reflect on the past year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Read more from the series here.
“If I have ever written something, it will be for you, mum” was my last chat with my mother. On March 2 at noon, my mum insisted that I should go to search for some internet in Khan Younis to publish an article I wrote. Her assurance that I needed to write and that people need to know about us, about Gaza, and about Palestine amazed me.
“If you don’t, then Dr. Refaat Alareer isn’t your professor! He taught you well so that you can complete the message.” She shushed me and prayed I would be able to send an email.
I sent the email. But that night at midnight Israel sent us an explosive bomb that leveled my uncle’s house to the ground, or to be clearer, caused a 7-meter deep hole. My mum was gone. Everyone in the house and nearby were killed that night. I was the sole survivor.
That was Saturday, March 2, 2024. Going back to the night of Saturday, October 6, I was preparing myself for a long, tiring day the next day: teaching, having a quick sandwich with a hot, tasty cup of tea, and then a 3-hour lecture along with giving a presentation. I spent the whole night preparing.
I did not do any of these things.
That night was actually a little sweet break after a long week of work in a normal life. I was a little bit depressed about some routine problems at work and with studying. I thought for hours about a brand new idea for this semester’s research papers and preparing for my mother’s 51st birthday the coming Thursday. I thought about preparing gifts for my students who got a full mark in their exams or discussing entrepreneurial projects.
But then on October 7, of course, everything changed.
My family and I and many other displaced relatives resisted tons of bombs and rockets showering Gaza City and countless other ‘firing series’ that invaded our neighborhoods and hearts for forty days. We resisted. We did not choose to flee to the South. We thought we would die in our homes, in our beds, beside our trees.
On the morning of November 15, 2023, the Israeli occupation bulldozers and tanks invaded our neighborhood. Mum had just finished baking. We did not even get our breakfast. Tanks and amplified voices were drawing nearer. We had to run away.
I looked at the whole house. Everything seemed serene although the massive bombs interrupted. I thought “How could I take all my memories in one small backpack and run? How to collect the whole house in one bag?” I decided not to take a thing. I left everything in its place until we met again.
Dad closed the door, not knowing it would be for the very last time. He kept our house’s key with him.
We fled to a nearby UNRWA school. We were surrounded for hours. We were bombed for two whole days. As we experienced that we all contemplated the different ways we could die: hugging the wall, being stuck under the rubble, bleeding out, getting shot by a sniper, burning, or worse, being shot dead at point-blank range if the soldiers decided to invade the school.
In the schools I taught in, I would stand in front of the classroom and teach the rules of language. In school, all the rules were falling down on our heads.
Once again, we had no other choice but to leave. We headed sound which was supposed to be safe. An animal-drawn cart carried us to the ‘border’ checkpoint. “There is no place for dignity after this,” Dad commented. He did not know, then, that finding an animal-drawn cart to carry me and the martyrs to the hospital on the morning of March 3 would be considered a great luxury.
When we left the UNRWA school we were humiliated for six hours, facing the sun heat and the soldiers. We departed, fainted many times, feared, sobbed, got thirsty, and just walked and walked. Homeless.
We started a long, humiliating journey of displacement, starting at the al-Nuseirat camp and then at my maternal uncle’s house. A small room hugged me, Mum, Dad, and my two sisters, Heba and Ola. Other displaced relatives lived in the house and neighbors’ houses. We survived another 100 days, lacking the basics of life: flour, water, and safety.
I yearned if we must die that we die while asleep, all of us until the heavens show up, all of us. But I learned one very important thing: hugging your siblings, standing beside them, being very near, sleeping in one room, holding hands or even being in their arms is not any help. This does not necessarily mean you will die together.
In a safe ‘green’ block, we were killed. I lost my whole family at once, in a moment. I slept for a last time with a family, without bidding them a last farewell.
The rocket shockwaves took all my family members and flew them away to fairer places. The bodies of my most precious people were left in the streets for 12 days without a proper burial, let alone a funeral. In an animal-drawn cart, eight bodies were piled one above the other. In bags, they were covered.
“As long as we’re alive, we’ll listen to stories. But once we die, people will listen to our stories.” Dad once said.
My soul had fought the Zionist power. It now rises up to tell their stories.
Reem Hamadaqa, far right, with her parents Sahar, and Alaa’, and her two sisters, Heba, 29, and Ola, 19. These four members of Reem’s family were martyred along with 10 other family members in a March 2 Israeli attack in southern Gaza.
My dad, only 59, was a very hard-working man. He was a carpenter, who built his career and factory by his hands. His dad was shot dead by Israeli bullets in 1967 when my dad was only three years old. He was raised fatherless, and killed by an Israeli airstrike. Israel deprived me of my tendered-heart mother. Sahar, Um Ahmad, turned 51 during the war, and had a serene life and a caring family. Heba, my 29-year-old sister, is an incredible UNRWA Arabic teacher. She got stuck under rubble, which crushed her body and dreams. Ola, our youngest sibling, only 19, was just taking her first steps in life, studying literature with her tender soul. She got a shrapnel in the back of her head.
What sin did my 80-year-old grandmother, Um Muhammad, commit to deserve to be bombed? I wonder. All she did was sob over her long-distanced sons and pray and read her dua’ and adhkar.
But I am positive that little Maryama, 8, and her brother Anas, only 3, did nothing. Their only sin was being born under occupation in an unfair world for their heads to be smashed under rubble and rocks.
My cousins, Shams, 16, and Hani, 25, were severely burned, bled, not rescued, and then died. Farid, 26, was found beheaded, 21-year-old Sundus’s leg was amputated, and Muhammad, only 18, bled to death. My uncle was burned, “survived” for three days and then died. His wife was stuck under rubble for five months before being buried.
In March 2024, instead of discussing my master’s thesis, with my family proudly clapping and Dr. Refaat Alareer serenely announcing the degree, my Mum hugging, my Dad proudly smiling, and sisters and cousins bringing flowers and chocolate, I was stuck in a hospital bed for months, unable to move. And they were all stuck in a cold grave.
I see my family for the last time, unknowingly.
I see the explosions. I see myself under the rubble.
I see myself surrounded by tanks and soldiers. At my brother’s back, running.
I see myself in an animal-drawn cart. In the hospital. I see myself stuck in bed for months. I see myself in a wheelchair. I see myself incapable of, forget walking, but even sitting or standing. I see myself helplessly waiting my turn to get medical care. To travel for needed surgery.
I see myself helpless. I see myself all alone. Parentless. Homeless. I see myself obliged to live in a tent and forced to flee many more times.
I see home far away, my family far away, my school, my university, students, professors, and my health far away. My mother’s smiling heart, my Dad’s proud looks, my sisters’ tender hugs, my grandma’s dua’, and my cousins’ waves so far away. Dr. Refaat’s proud look as the discussion ends.
But home drew nearer. Breathing out life. Out from under the rubble. I see my martyrs waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go back home. Bearing home and hope, they go back. For mum, I write.
[END]
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[1] Url:
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/my-martyrs-live-on/
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