As the chorus of everyday, watching the war on Gaza from distance.
Scrolling through social media content and stories cautiously, worried, with a very heavy heart, to stumble into a face or name that I know.
But it does not matter if I know the victim, the deceased, the person, the name: a man, a woman, a child, a girl, a boy. It does not matter if the street that has just been destroyed is familiar, or the building crashed into the earth is known to me, or even if that beach with bombs splashing from its waters is a known area to me. Everything looks the same.
One enormous tragedy.
Stories are alike.
Victims are refusing but to tell their stories. Even if they left us behind.
It does not matter anymore. It does not matter if we do not perceive them as numbers… they are not numbers…
It does not do them any better if we remind our consciences with their names… they are not even names….
They are stories of a history that insist on marking itself on us with an everlasting Nakba.
A young boy, who committed suicide after his mother was lost in the invasion. The adolescent could not bear the idea of losing his mother in this invasion, the way he lost his father in the one before. People no longer feel the need to life. How worse could it get?
A same age girl is caught with tears as she is trying to grasp her just lost dreams for a future, that she thought she could reach. She dreamed of becoming a doctor so she could help her people. As if reality was faster than her years. With her little dreams she thought she could become a doctor until the next invasion, and she can help. The invasion was much faster than her time to grow.
A young man caught in a hysterical moment, laughing in tears of pain, he just lost his fiancée. The future dentist, whom they were supposed to get married now. then… a few days later…before. The last message he recalls… the sounds of explosions from the sky… his fiancée was found under the rubbles… she went there before him… he recalls with a laugh.
A young boy and his sister: we rescued our fish from the rubbles. they claim with victory.
A young mother of four, a psychotherapist is mourned by her patients… she was lost to death with her four children in the other night’s raids.
A father posts: I have decided today with my brother, that we swap some of our children. If anything, happen to any of us, at least some of our children will survive.
A young woman who was insisting that in Gaza life can still be lived, a lawyer, an activist, a courageous woman, dares to think of her bird left with food for some days in her apartment, her turtle. The bird must have died from fear. from shakes of hell in the skies.
A courageous writer, activist, holds herself in one piece and her voice comes through with obvious fear: We are okay don’t worry… we are currently gathered in the living room trying to avoid- hopefully the shattering of our window glass… waiting for the raid to stop.
A friend, a mother of young children screams in fear, I cannot get the sound of explosions from my ears. I cannot get them out of my children’s ears.
In Gaza with lots of pain, resilience, endurance, courage, one voice is heard loud and clear: We are not ok… but it is ok….