One year later: memories linger, but beauty still blooms

“In less than a minute, you have to pack the most valuable things you have and run.” This is the message Israel delivered to so many families in Gaza during last summer’s assault, whether directly through loud speakers or through missile “taps” on the roof.

It was January 14, 2009. He was on duty when the telephone rang. The residents of Gaza City’s Al-Maqqousi Tower were besieged in the building by Israeli forces, and they were desperate for someone to get them out. My brother was responsible for Jabalya firehouse, but the appeal came from a different area. He had to make a choice whether to save lives or sit behind his desk and wait for news of the people killed. He chose to go.

Mohammed, my brother, was raised without his mother, who died when he was 9. He was now 28. Humorous, outgoing… he was also sometimes a pain in the ass. But he was certainly human. He had one head, two legs, two arms—and a wife. She was the love of his life. Before they were married, he used to call her in the middle of the night (or whenever no one was watching), and as a result my father was forced to pay a huge phone bill at the end of the month.

He married when he was 20 and she was 15, but they never had a child. The worst feeling that tore at Mohammad’s heart was when he saw the child of a man and woman who married at the same time he did. Before he joined the civil defense team, he worked as a tailor, spending his money on clothes and cigarettes, staying out all night with his wife or his “cool” friends. My father was often cruel toward my brother, who actually was often a rather naughty boy. Mohammed never had a good relationship with my father.

Then he got a civil defense job, and lots of things changed.

On that fateful night during the war dubbed Operation Cast Lead by Israel, Mohammad received the call and decided to go along with his crew, after not being able to contact the closest firehouse.  Most of the telecommunication lines in the Gaza Strip were down. The 14-story building in the northwestern Gaza governorate had been bombarded. Mohammad drove the fire truck and rushed into the building wearing his new silver firefighting suit. The crew extinguished a fire on the seventh floor, then hurried to rescue the people on the 11th floor. A man and his wife were lying on the cement, but by the time they got there, the two were dead. Mohammad and two of his coworkers, Hossam and Bahaa, covered them and tried to move their bodies.

“Suddenly, the electricity went out,” Mohammad recalled. “I didn’t understand what happened. I wondered for some time if I was alive or dead. I remembered my father. I didn’t want my life to end with us as enemies. I wanted to live another day to please him. I tried to stand, but I couldn’t. I understood that I had an injury to my leg. After awhile, I heard a paramedic shouting, asking if anyone was still alive. I called to him, so he rushed up and carried me. I insisted he should bring a stretcher, but he didn’t listen. I was annoyed. My leg was hitting the wall, so I reached down and held it in place. Two stories down, he brought me the stretcher. After that, the paramedics came and took me to the ambulance.”

Angels in white. He forgot he was injured. He thought he was in heaven, yet he was wrong. He was in the emergency room of Al-Shifa Hospital. The angels were doctors. And the red fruit and the wine he imagined were the blood of his friends and himself.

Mohammad soon realized they had amputated his right leg and it felt as if his life was over. He couldn’t be the person he used to be. The attack launched by the Israeli warships injured three of the crew as well as a cameraman. Hossam Al-Kholi, the father of a boy and a girl, lost his right leg. Bahaa Al-Tlouli lost both legs. Mohammad had to accept the fact that he was now a disabled man; people would look at him with pity in their eyes, and then mouth nicely shaped words. He simply didn’t like it. He didn’t want this life.

I remember the look on our elder sister’s face when she sat beside him in the hospital, touching his hair and hoping for him to recover. The one thing that could make Mohammad smile was his cat. My brother loved cats, and he asked for his cat to be brought to the hospital. Tamtam visited him several times.

Because of the lack of medications plus the huge number of wounded people arriving at the hospital, Mohammad didn’t get the care his condition required, and he was given the opportunity  to be transferred to an Egyptian hospital. During Operation Cast Lead, the Rafah border was still open for wounded Palestinians. So, he spent four months there. They gave him an artificial limb as a gift before he returned. I never see him wearing it. He uses his crutches instead. 

When he returned home, Mohammad asked himself over and over why the Israelis didn’t just kill him and get it over with. But then he remembered that moment when he carried his leg in his hand. He wasn’t sorry for his attempt to save peoples’ lives.

My brother decided that no matter what the Israelis did to him, he’d continue to live as Mohammad. He wanted to return to his work at the civil defense department, but they didn't consider him competent because of his injury.. There was nothing wrong with his mind, yet they wouldn’t let him return.

Mohammad was soon granted an opportunity to enroll in a six-month course in sofa design. He seized the opportunity. He was determined to eliminate the word “disabled” from his life. Using his expertise in tailoring, he began to create his own sofas at his small house. Everyone liked his work. For the first time in his life, my father was proud of Mohammed. It appears that the only thing my father really wanted from his son was to be a dreamer, a believer and an achiever. Mohammad now works with a big furniture company in Gaza. Indeed, Mohammad has another dream of setting up a company of his own.

Despite his injury and the ordeal he survived, Mohammad is still human.

And yes, he has one head, one leg and two arms. 

Published June 8, 2015

Original link: http://www.wearenotnumbers.org/home/Story/36

It was the same smile. I wanted to hug him and tell him that I missed him. I missed his classes. I missed his words, the wisdom he taught us, the experience he gave us.

“Do you know me?” I asked.

He looked at me intently, scrutinizing the man standing in front of him. “You are that little kid who used to torture me, wanting to answer every question I asked,” he said and smiled again.

That smile took me years back. I remembered that he used to live here in Beit Hanoun. This was his home. Over there is the tree he inherited from his father, although its branches are now covered in gray, sticky dust. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to say. Mass destruction had killed life in this town.

There are no more birds here. I came here many times before, but this time is different. Everything is different. His passion was to help his students survive life, help make their dreams come true and work for his country to thrive. But my teacher has nothing left in this land, part of a former state that is recognized only in ancient history, where nothing like Israel existed.

He pinched my ear the way he did when I was a child in fifth grade and was paying no attention, reminding me that I used to sit in front of him with a packet of sunflower seeds, hiding them under my desk and eating some every once in a while.

“What has happened to you, Allam? How have you become the man now standing in front of me?”

“I enrolled in university, studied for a BA in Arabic language and received a technical diploma in translation; here I am, however.” My eyes couldn’t bear looking at him.

I know it makes you sad, my teacher. I know that I am a great disappointment. I tried my best to be who you hoped I could be. I studied hard. I succeeded. Yet I am from the besieged Gaza Strip. I really tried to get a job. I even tried to be a freelancer. Guess what? You can’t open a checking account unless you are a businessman or an employee of an international company. You can’t bank your money, because you’re a Palestinian, and because Israel said so. Your fate is to die or languish. I am the generation who has lived through three wars.

He told me that the first 60 years of a human’s life are difficult, but things will get easier afterwards. I laughed. He laughed too.

“What about your son, Laith? How is he doing?” I asked. “I knew him when we were in a boring class. He was the one who always turned it into a festival.”

My teacher wept.

Don’t say it, please. Don’t tell me he was killed. I have enough pain in my life. I lost many friends during the Israeli aggression against Gaza last summer. They were good people with open minds and great personalities. Don’t say it, teacher, please. Don’t.

With tears in his eyes, he smiled and said, “Oh, Allam. My son was such a good boy. I still remember his laughter. His jokes. His… everything. He used to fill our life with happiness. My son was killed with the first Israeli shell that struck our home. His blood was everywhere. He left us. My son didn’t have a choice.”

I didn’t know why my teacher smiled this time. I didn’t have any words to say to him. All I could think of was that I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked him about my friend, his son. I should’ve stayed silent. But I missed my friend. The sight of the rubble lying on the ground, the smell of death filling the air and the pulse of pain in his eyes should’ve silenced me. I should have known.

Then, he told me he had a surprise for me. “What is it, teacher?”

“I avenged my son’s murder.”

I started to think he had gone crazy after the death of his son. How the hell did he avenge his son’s murder? This didn’t make any sense to me, and I was afraid to ask, but I did.

“And how did you do that?”

“They stole my son from me, but my wife is pregnant with another child,” he replied. I smiled, knowing that this man is a survivor. It had been a long time since I attended his classes, yet he had a last lesson to teach me,

“Don’t give up, Allam. Be patient and stay to fight another day.”

Original link: http://www.wearenotnumbers.org/home/Story/31

He was wandering around. Suddenly he stopped in front of an old woman who was sitting aside with some strawberries that she tried to sell since the early morning. He greeted her and asked if she knew a young man who was working in her place. She asked him for a description. He didn't hesitate. He tried to give her one. He told her of the simple person that he knew several months ago. He told her of the kind and elegant young man who helped him during his research on the Israeli harassments against the Palestinians in Jerusalem. He told her about the bright eyes that he couldn't forget and the smile that didn't leave him once. His reckless Arabic seemed to give her an idea. She stopped him and said "Do you mean Abu Samed?". "Abu Samed, yes, that was his nickname", he replied. The old woman smiled and said "The occupation killed him".

Allam Zedan

26-06-2014