For weeks in southern Gaza, during a recent visit, I collected stories from women admitted to hospital, each of them there to recover from what they call “war wounds.” . But it’s not a war, because only one side has a real army. A single side is a state with full military equipment.
These victims were mothers, wives and babies, whose tiny bodies were pierced, torn, broken and burned. Their deeper wounds aren’t visible until they talk about their lives over the past five months.
First, they relay the main points: a bomb hit their homes, they were pulled from the rubble, they were seriously injured, members of their families were martyred and the situation was terrible. This is the extent of what they have said about the unimaginable horrors they have endured and continue to endure.
But I’m looking for details. What were you doing a few moments ago? What was the first thing you saw, the first thing you heard? What did it smell like? Was it dark or light outside?
I push them to zoom in on the molecular structure of each fact – the gravel in the mouth, the dust in the lungs; the weight of something; the warm liquid flowing down your back; the crooked finger seen but not felt; the time of realization; the wait to be rescued and the fear that no one will come; ringing in the ears; strange thoughts; the things that moved and those that couldn’t; the expectation of death and the wish that it would be quick; the desire to live.
In the months or weeks that have passed since one of the world’s most powerful armies targeted their lives, they have yet to visit, let alone verbalize, the smallest details of this genocide. As they venture beyond the outlines of their stories, their eyes darken and sometimes they begin to shiver. The slightest unexpected noise makes them jump.
Tears flow and tears can flow, but only a few allow themselves to cry. Few people let go of the horrors they have in their minds. It’s not for superhuman strength. Rather the opposite. They are somehow numb, as if they have not yet understood the enormity of what they have endured and continue to endure.
Jamila
A young mother, Jamila (not her real name), cried for the first time since she held the lifeless body of her six-year-old son in the dark, her fingers accidentally digging into his brain. She is one of the few to sob, giving in to the memory.
Their family had been targeted by tank fire, not a missile. A drone, perhaps equipped with heat-sensitive sensors, hovered outside their apartment building, and the bombers followed them as they ran from one side of their apartment to the other, unable to get out.
She was sure someone behind a screen was playing with them before delivering a final blow that went through the boy and injured his father. The world went silent after that. The shooting from the tank stopped, “as if they had come just to kill my beloved son,” she said.
She didn’t cry then. In fact, she didn’t make a sound. “My husband was worried and told me to cry, but I didn’t. I don’t know why,” she said.
Two weeks later, after fleeing from place to place, an Israeli soldier shot his three-year-old daughter Nour in the arms, breaking both of her tiny legs as they cowered in terror in a hospital they thought was safe.
When I met baby Nour, she had metal bars protruding from her tiny shins, with a long scar running down her right calf, where the bullet had exited. Doctors had released her a few days before, but allowed her and her mother Jamila to stay a few more days until they could find a tent somewhere.
Jamila’s husband, barely able to walk due to his injuries, lives in a tent with a group of men. All he can accomplish is to get meager food and water each day. He came to me once when I was there after he was able to save 10 shekels (about $3) for transportation and a small gift for his daughter.
Showing any physical intimacy between lovers is a private matter in Gaza, but there is no privacy in a hospital where 40 patients and their caregivers share a single room, rows of beds pushed together with just enough space walking between them.
Jamila was over the moon to have spent an hour with her husband after more than a month without seeing or hearing from him (her phone had been destroyed in the bombing). But she told me later that she would have liked to kiss him, maybe even kiss him on the cheek. “He is in so much pain,” she said, carrying her pain, that of an entire nation, on her small shoulders.
Nina
Nina (not her real name) has a disarming smile and overflowing generosity. She can’t wait to tell me how she saved her husband from the clutches of Israeli soldiers.
She had been married barely a year when Israeli bombing near their home intensified. The recordings that emerged online from some of these nights are unimaginable. An army of dragons trampling and burning all around them, shaking their buildings, breaking the windows, terrorizing young and old; thunder and earthquakes, demons from above and below drawing near.
Hamad, Nina’s husband (not his real name either), made the decision to leave with several members of his family – his parents, uncles, aunts, as well as their partners and children – and some of their neighbors. Together, there were about 75 people, moving from town to town, unable to find a safe place to hide for more than a few days at a time.
Less than a week after leaving, Nina learned that the family home had been bombed. In this moment, at the push of a button by an Israeli woman in her twenties, 80 members of her family were murdered – father, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, nieces and nephews .
She was initially told that her mother had been martyred, but fortunately it turned out that she had survived. She was seriously injured and transferred to the hospital, where Nina became her beloved caretaker. This is how I met this extraordinary young woman.
Nina, her husband and the rest of the group eventually managed to stop temporarily in Gaza City, from where they walked along the fence walls to reach shelter. They went one by one, following the logic that if Israel shot them, they wouldn’t all die. Losing one was better than losing 75 in one go.
One person was actually shot by a sniper after almost half of them managed to reach the group, separating the group for a while until they found the courage to run again towards the goal, again, one at a time. The children were divided between the parents. Better to kill half a family than all. These were the choices they had to make, a bit like “Sophie’s choice”.
Soon their shelter was surrounded by tanks. A “quadcopter” – a new Israeli terrorist invention – flew into the rooms, spraying the walls above their heads with bullets. Everyone was screaming and crying, “even the men,” Nina said. “It broke my heart to see the strong men in our family cowering in fear like that.”
Finally, soldiers entered. “At least 80 of them,” she said. They separated the men from the women and children, stripping the former of only their boxers in the middle of winter. The women and children were crowded into a small storage room, the men divided into two classrooms. For three nights and four days, they listened to the cries of their husbands, fathers and brothers being beaten and tortured in the other rooms, until finally the soldiers ordered the women, in broken Arabic, to take their children and to “go south”. .
All the women obeyed, except Nina. “I did not care. I was ready to die but I wasn’t going to leave without my husband. She ran into the rooms where the men were being held, calling Hamad’s name. None dared to answer. It was dark and the soldiers were leading him away. She fought them off as they laughed, seemingly amused by her hysteria. “Crazy,” they called her.
She recognized her husband’s red boxers in the second room and rushed towards him, taking off his blindfold, kissing him, hugging him, promising to die with him if necessary. She alternated between insulting the soldiers and begging them to release her husband. Finally, they cut the plastic ties and let him go.
But she wasn’t finished. As Hamad walked away, she went back inside to gather clothes for him and for his uncles sitting naked in the cold. They wouldn’t be released for weeks yet. Some of these men would be executed.
She and Hamad got through it together. When they finally got to a safe place, they realized his leg had been broken, his wrists were cut by the plastic ties and his back had the Star of David on it.
Among the screams Nina had heard in previous days were those of her husband, as a soldier used a knife to carve the Jewish symbol into his back.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.