Khan Younes, Gaza – From a makeshift kitchen with a sand floor and a nylon roof, and lacking the most basic equipment, Mayess Hamid baked Christmas cookies this year.
Hamid, 31, has been baking cakes and cookies for about 10 years, working in one of Gaza’s largest pastry shops before it was destroyed by Israel’s ongoing war against the besieged enclave.
Like many in Gaza, she lost her job when the bakery where she worked was bombed.
“I wanted to start the year with optimism and bake Christmas cookies to hand out to the kids around me at camp,” she says, kneading.
“The war turned our lives upside down. I lost my income and my house was destroyed,” says Hamid, who has been displaced nine times since his family left Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, and has now settled in al -Mawasi in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
“My kids are excited, eagerly waiting and trying to help me, especially with the decorations,” she adds, arranging the cookies on a baking sheet.
Making biscuits was a challenge due to basic food shortages which are so severe that some areas of Gaza are in famine.
Israel has largely blocked the entry of aid and commercial shipments since the start of the war.
Drawing on her experience, she replaces unavailable materials with things she can find.
“Before the war, I decorated cakes with ready-made sugar paste. Now I use a mixture of liquid cheese and powdered sugar, and it works,” she says.
Lacking Christmas cookie cutters, Hamid drew stencils on paper using his phone, cut them out and shaped the dough by hand using a knife.
“Even simple tasks like baking cookies became challenges during the war,” she says, as she arranges the cookies and prepares to bake them in a nearby clay oven that the entire camp relies on.
“From collecting materials to shaping the dough and baking, every step seems unusual and complicated.”
While the second batch of cookies bakes, Hamid begins decorating the first one inside his small tent.
“The war may have taken my home and my life as I knew it, but not my passion for decorating and my attention to detail,” she says, glancing around her tidy tent.
While trying to bring a festive mood to the displaced camp, Hamid cannot hide his sorrow that the world is celebrating Christmas as usual, while Gaza endures a second year of war and devastation.
“We try to smile, but our wounds are deep and there is little we can do. We feel forgotten. »
At the same time, she still hopes that this Christmas will bring peace. His only Christmas wish is for the war to end.
“Just let the war stop. May the massacres and destruction end so that we can live in peace with our children,” she said.