With trembling hands, I gathered what remained of my family. We had been displaced more times than I can remember. Now we faced the pain of loss again
Home is a piece of the past that only exists in memories. How painful it is to realize that you’ve left all that you have ever loved, and your new home is the unknown.
Not all bags are packed for travel. Sometimes, you pack your belongings just to save them, or to save yourself. A leaflet falls demanding your evacuation, and you have only a few minutes to gather an entire home into a couple of square feet.
Life can force you to face harsh realities and make difficult decisions. I had to leave the house I had built over the years, with all its warmth and life. The baby spoons my son first ate from, the clothes that made me look cute, our marriage bed, the wooden doors salvaged from my great-grandmother’s house, the window trim etched with love—all things I will never see again.
My heart pounded, my thoughts raced. I stood before my clothing closet. How could I choose only one change of clothes? My prayer robe, or the dress my husband bought me? Do they want me to choose between God and family? These were memories. How to choose which ones should come with me and share a future filled with uncertainty?
I turned to my three-year-old son, Kamal, and asked him to choose an outfit. “You can bring a toy!” I added, hoping that would help. He sat down surrounded by tiny cars and building blocks, and faced a task that, to him, was as equally important as mine: he was choosing a companion, a friend. No child wants to go on a journey alone.
So he grabbed his yellow bulldozer. The same one he declared he would rebuild Gaza with last week. A child’s fantasy! But isn’t that symbolic of my people’s dreams? We will be tasked with rebuilding our fragmented nation, torn and tattered by the Occupiers who’d rather see us dead or exiled than living free. Our possessions gone, our bank accounts empty, each of us will rebuild ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our mosques, our land—the Earth that birthed us. We will rebuild these things one generation at a time, until we regain our dignity and quench our sorrow.
When finished, my son and I had a suitcase full of the barest of dreams—like watching life in black and white, or in our case, smoke and sand. We couldn’t even wash ourselves in the sea. Still, I clung to that suitcase. Not because it was full of what I needed, but because it was all I had left.
And then it happened. We left the bombed out building we had almost died in and began more than just a journey. It was a severing. A leaving of all that we had known with nothing but a change of clothes and a toy bulldozer to find our way. We had saved our bodies only to leave our souls behind, trapped by the injustices of the Occupation. The spaces we loved, the people we kissed goodnight, the laughter we shared—these were the sounds of life that were no longer ours.
But, as it was written in the name of God the Merciful, we survived. My husband, my son, my daughter and I. Four bodies with hearts still beating, lungs still breathing and tears still streaming. A proud family destined for greatness, even if the greatness was just surviving the Nakba, our people’s catastrophe.