In Search of Safety: A Family’s Journey Through Gaza
Farida’s bedroom after it was damaged in an Israeli airstrike. (Photo: Farida Algoul/We Are Not Numbers)
This article was originally published by We Are Not Numbers on July 23, 2024 at https://wearenotnumbers.org/in-search-of-safety-a-familys-journey-through-gaza/ and is republished here with permission.
My family’s journey through war-ravaged Gaza started last October, the very day after our Gaza City home was bombed — with us inside — killing my oldest cousin, Mohammed. We knew we had to move. Leaflets fell from the sky, urging us to flee southwest.
So began a journey that took us through the Jabaliya refugee camp, Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younis, Al-Nusirat, Al-Qarara, and Rafah. Each stop marked a milestone in a trip punctuated by evacuation orders and displacements. I’ve lost count of the number of times we were told to move, but it’s at least a dozen.
The first time we set out, we ended up back home after spending a night on the streets. Instead of being homeless, we decided to take a chance on returning to Gaza City, where we temporarily sheltered at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency before going back to our damaged house. But bombardments continued for a month, and then Israeli forces told us to evacuate.
My father, as he did the first time, instructed us to travel in two groups, to increase the chances that some of us would survive. My parents, who on the first evacuation saw people shot and killed at a checkpoint on the way south, decided to stay behind with some of my siblings. I left with others, and their children, and headed for Khan Younis.
This time, the journey was even more fraught. One of my brothers, also named Mohammed, was shot and severely injured by a tank right in front of us as we walked in a group. There were burned cars with charred bodies. Corpses lay in the street. My old university, Al-Azhar, was destroyed. We had a short respite at my grandfather’s house in Deir Al-Balah before pushing on to find a shelter that could accommodate us.
The tent in Khan Younis. (Photo: Farida Algoul/We Are Not Numbers)
The trip was marked by urgency; you couldn’t stay anywhere too long because of attacks, or threats of attacks, so we kept moving until we again reached Rafah, where set up a tent.
We settled in, and were overjoyed at one point, in May, when we heard that Hamas had approved a ceasefire. I remember hearing the laughter of my nieces and nephews. But having survived other conflicts in Gaza, I remained skeptical.
Sure enough, the very next day, the Israeli army issued a direct warning for us to evacuate, designating our new area a combat zone. My brother got the call: a recorded message sent to all areas targeted for attack, urging Gazans to move for their own safety. We grabbed a few belongings — clothes, a tent, some water tanks, wood, tinned beans and bread — and left Rafah quickly under intense bombing.
It was a frantic escape, filled with whispered prayers. We had no clear destination, and no place was truly safe. We decided to find a place to pitch our tent in an area in Khan Younis called Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian Bedouin town on Gaza’s southern coast where many displaced people from Rafah had gathered.
At this point, I was with one of my brothers, Adeeb, and his wife Yasmeen; my sister Reem; my brothers Mohammed, Adel, and Adeeb; and my brother Jihad’s wife, Noor, and their children. This was the hardest displacement of all. We had to flee so quickly that we couldn’t take anything except a few items to ease the children’s cries and fears.
We ended up walking for three days. Then, thankfully, we found someone we knew with a car and paid them in cash to take us the rest of the way to Al-Mawasi. It was overcrowded, and we were threatened not just by bombings but hunger, heat, and insects. There are no hospitals or essential services near there, and finding food and water was a daily challenge.
Farida using an improvised stove. (Photo: Farida Algoul/We Are Not Numbers)
We stayed three days. But the tent was too small for all of us, so half the group, including myself, returned to Deir Al-Balah to live with my grandparents, who had miraculously survived a bombing that partially destroyed their home. This is where I remain. But I regularly take a donkey cart back to Al-Mawasi, a trip that takes over two hours each way, to visit my sister Reem, who suffers from hepatitis, among other medical problems, and take her back to the hospital in Deir Al-Balah for treatment.
My life, of course, is very different than before the war, when I co-founded a teaching academy and built it up with colleagues. We ran language courses for all different communities and age groups. I was gaining independence. I had hopes for the future, ambitions, and a home.
Now I live between a ruined building and a tent, with no apparent end in sight and no clear path back to a normal life. Privacy and personal space are gone. In the tent, I couldn’t risk taking off my hijab even for a moment during the day because someone could enter at any time, asking for water or some food. And my family is splintered into three parts, with the half in the North entirely cut off from the rest of us since last year. We can’t even rest easy at night, because we don’t know if we’ll live to see the next morning.
Children that Farida taught. This photo was taken before October 7; many of the children here have been martyred. (Photo: Farida Algoul/We Are Not Numbers)
Amid the pain and hardships, there have been nice moments of solidarity. In Al-Mawasi, we shared tasks with our neighbors across the way. I’ll never forget Umm Khalil, who would sometimes help me light the fire to cook. Her daughter, Lara, helped me carry my siblings’ children, and Lara’s sister, Hala, gathered wood for me.
For those of us at my grandparents’, daily life is marked by waiting. We trade off the worst tasks: getting up at 6 a.m. to stand in line for water, then taking our turn in the line for bread, which we don’t always get. There are just too many people. One thing that gives me hope, above anything else, is that my parents are still alive in northern Gaza. Conditions are worse there, but I hope to see them again, one day. I try to stay hopeful.
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