Days and Nights in Gaza
February 13, 2025 at 11:37PMPrize-winning poet Muhammad al-Zaqzouq recounts the first weeks of the war in Gaza. In these early days, he and his three brothers and their families—nearly 50 people in all—sheltered in the family home with his mother and father in the Khan Younis refugee camp without electricity and intermittent water. He describes a surreal and ceaseless horror: Schools crowded with displaced citizens, all sharing limited potable water and portable toilets; queueing for hours each day for bread to feed the family; and the constant terror of nightly bombing raids by the Israelis.
By now the population of Khan Younis was many times greater than usual, and the humanitarian crisis was worsening. We would take turns standing in line at the bakery at the end of our street: my father would join the queue after dawn prayers and stay there till 10:00 AM, then my brother would take his place and stay until two, then my other brother would relieve him and wait until five, when we finally got some three kilos of bread, enough for one meal. There was a separate, hours-long queue to fill up a few liters of drinking water, and yet another for water we could use in the kitchen and bathroom—endless hours of waiting and jostling, shouting and arguing.
I was getting ready for bed when a massive explosion, close by, again sent the roof flying into the air and back, covering us in dust and fragments of cement. I ran to the terrified children, took Baraa’s hand, and pulled him close. His heart was pounding so hard and his breathing was so intense that it felt like an electric current was surging through him. I thought the terror might stop his heart. I snatched him up, planning to make a run for my aunt’s house, and launched myself toward the door, followed by Ula, Jawad, Basel, and my brothers and their families.
When we reached my aunt’s we found a crowd of people there. Civil defense officers were ordering her to evacuate the house and leave the area. Still carrying Baraa, I ran down the street toward our cousins’ house, around 150 meters from ours. When I got there I realized I was wearing only one shoe.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/02/13/days-and-nights-in-gaza/
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