Every morning at 8 a.m., Amal al-Robayaa leaves the United Nations school where she has taken refuge with her extended family since the start of the war in Gaza, for a foraging mission.
“It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up: how am I going to feed the kids today?
Mouths to feed include her husband, six children, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.
Under the constant threat of bombing in Gaza since October 7, Amal’s daily struggle to provide for her family has become a journey of deadly assault.
She searches through the rubble between the school and her house in the Shabura neighborhood of Rafah, southern Gaza, where she hopes to find neighbors with flour to make bread.
His son Suleiman, 24, goes to a nearby bakery in the morning to pick up a number in the queue, before rushing to a water point.
“I try to fill one or two canteens with water before returning to the bakery before it opens,” Suleiman said.
This tiring task “takes two hours, if you’re lucky, but more often than not four or five,” he says.
There’s no guarantee of success in the end either. “We take turns in line. Two days ago I waited in line for four and a half hours and when my turn came they told me there was no more bread. I begged them to give me just a few coins for the children but they refused,” his mother explained.
Rare water
Amal says the building she lived in was destroyed by an Israeli bombing on the first day of the war following Hamas’s attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli response killed around 11,200 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry.
“Even the horse that pulled my son’s cart, his livelihood, was killed,” she said.
The family spends the day in the rubble of what was once their home.
Later, Amal is joined by her sister-in-law Nesrin, 39, who arrives with a small bag of flour as a trophy.
The two men immediately got to work, mixing the flour with water. One worked the dough, while the other rummaged through the rubble for pieces of cardboard and wood to light a fire to cook the flatbread.
“Look at me! I help too!” says nine-year-old Bilal, hanging his clothes out to dry on concrete slabs.
The little water available should be used carefully, a little for washing clothes and a little for taking a shower.
“Usually the kids and I wash every four or five days. Sometimes there is no water and we have to wait longer,” Amal said, pointing to her bathroom, which was still among the rubble.
“It allows us to have some privacy but we are always afraid that a piece of concrete will fall on our heads,” she said.
Her husband, Imed, tries to occupy the children by playing old Palestinian songs and more modern tunes on the ney, the traditional Arabic flute.
Children first
“My oud was buried under the rubble but at least I have my flute to keep my spirits up and make the children smile,” he says.
By the afternoon, the family had managed to obtain 27 liters (seven gallons) of water, a 500-gram (18-ounce) bag of pasta and a packet of sauce – to share among around 50 people.
“We start by feeding the children,” says Imed, while the younger members of the family line up with their plates to grab a few bites of food that quickly disappear.
After dinner, the parents each poured themselves a cup of tea. The little powdered tea they have left must last.
As the drone noise grew louder and darkness approached, the family returned to the UN school, where they sleep alongside thousands of others.
“We don’t have winter clothes for the children and every night now it’s a little colder than the day before,” Amal said.
“The children don’t sleep much and if they do manage to sleep, they wake up at night screaming,” adds her sister-in-law Nesrin.
“So I spend the night waiting for the sun to rise, so I can go back near home. »
