Umayyah Juha writes: The diary of a visual artist from Gaza who was forcibly displaced to the cesarean section (1)

Al-Jalaa Street in Gaza was bombed and destroyed, and its beautiful features and green trees disappeared (Medgerney - Al-Jazeera)

In her 10-part diary published by Al Jazeera Net, Palestinian cartoonist Umayyah Juha documented the harsh humanitarian conditions taking place during the Israeli war on Gaza, especially the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, which the World Health Organization described last November in its periodic report as “ "Death zone."

In your hands, dear reader, is the first episode of the diary, which will be published successively over the coming days. In it, a Palestinian woman from the Al-Nasr neighborhood, Zaghbar Tower in Gaza City, narrates what she saw. The woman loves cats, birds, and neighbors, and draws pictures. She was displaced to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (until the last... He contacted her before the hospital was stormed for the second time on March 18, 2024) and she lay down on the cold hospital floor, waiting to survive.

October 25, 2023

It was a day that complemented the other days. We hear bombing from a distance, or up close, everywhere. When the daylight was about to set, we would repeat in misery: Night came and it was a worry, as the bombing intensified at night, and hardly any sleep, whether young or old, would jump out of bed in terror. We all hated the arrival of night, and my brothers’ little children would shrink in their mothers’ arms, to increase... Their feeling of security.

“Exodus” cartoon by Umayyah Juha (Al Jazeera)

The radio was transmitting news of successive massacres of entire families, so we feared that we would meet the same fate. Whenever I heard about a massacre and the number of martyrs and wounded was in the dozens, I would flare up with anger and burning. Where are Muslims in everything that is happening in Gaza? How can they close their eyelids while the blood of our people is spilled?

Dozens of families left the neighborhood where my family lived, and I had sought refuge in living in my family’s house after the occupation destroyed Zaghbar Tower in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, where my apartment was located, on the first days of the war.

It was the first tower to be destroyed by the occupation. They did not leave any opportunity for the residents to take their important possessions. The residents quickly left, fleeing for their lives and the lives of their children. I was the first to live in the tower since February 2002, and in it I gave birth to my only daughter, Nour. How many memories did this house contain?

I owned a large library that contained hundreds of important books and volumes in various fields, as well as hundreds of children’s stories and magazines, which I had kept since my childhood, and it contained an archive of my original works stored in several “hard drives” over a period of thirty years, and awards, shields, and certificates of honor, local, Arab, and international. All of them were buried under the rubble of five floors. They were destroyed and the misery of their owners was destroyed in one second.

The vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza is spread out with families who were displaced as a result of the Israeli bombing of residential neighborhoods (Midjerney - Al Jazeera)

With every passing day, the chances of maintaining security in my family’s home were decreasing. The occupation completely cut off electricity since the beginning of the war, and this prevented the delivery of water to the tanks on the roofs of the houses, which meant an environmental tragedy in every house, even the vehicles that used to supply the houses with drinking water. The filter no longer works, and the street vegetable vendors no longer hear their voices on the streets.

The children who were playing ball and filling the place with noise with their voices left the ball and left with their families. Hungry street cats were gathering around piles of accumulated garbage, searching for food.

I was hearing the sound of a cat meowing all day long. It later became clear to me that she was crying for her dead kitten. She kept meowing near her for long hours, then the sound faded away. Perhaps a passer-by took pity on her and buried her kitten. I remembered my cat and her three kittens in my modest rural house built in the Al-Tawam area in the northern Gaza Strip. And I remembered my crops and ten chickens. I used to put plenty of water in every corner before the war, during the heat, in order to earn the reward of watering the birds and other cats that visited the place from time to time.

This house was also destroyed, along with all the modern residential projects surrounding it, and the 30 Naif Towers, which were built with Saudi funding and supervision, were destroyed. These towers were built specifically for those whose homes were destroyed in the 2014 war. The towers were destroyed in stages, and over several days, in the form of belts of fire. I could hear its echo when I was three kilometers away from it. The sound of the cars transporting our neighbors out of the neighborhood since the early morning made our fear escalate. Living without neighbors, and in an atmosphere of war, is a very lonely thing.

My mother remained hesitant about leaving the house, because she only went out with a wheelchair after she had a cartilage operation in her back. Immediately after the afternoon call to prayer, the entire northern Gaza Strip shook as a result of the military aircraft’s bombing of a residential square extending between the intersection of Yarmouk Street and the Al-Ghafri area, passing through Al-Jalaa Street. With approximately ten destructive missiles in succession in the form of a huge belt of fire.

We thought at the time that the aircraft would now inevitably bomb the residential neighborhood in which we lived. The sounds of ambulances and civil defense vehicles did not stop. It seemed that a horrific massacre had taken place in the targeted place. The decision to flee had now become decisive, and without thinking we left the house and those remaining in the neighborhood, almost flying at a run. We wandered, carrying some of our important light luggage, heading towards Al-Shifa Hospital.

The displaced people cannot find shelter after their homes were bombed, and some of them took refuge in hospitals and schools, which were crowded with displaced families (Midjerney - Al Jazeera)

The most important thing a displaced person carries in his bag is the key to his house, certificates, personal identification for himself and his children, money or his wife’s gold, and light clothing, so that it does not weigh on him if circumstances require him to flee quickly.

If he was planning to stay in the new place, he would carry some mattresses, pillows, and covers. Al-Jalaa Street was one of the beautiful, wide streets, about 24 meters wide. On both sides of it are houses, large buildings, various shops, and pharmacies, and in the middle is a long line of large trees, which create lush shade and a green environment that pleases the onlookers.

Eighteen days after the start of the war, many buildings on both sides of the street were bombed and destroyed. The stones of the houses and their broken furniture were scattered across the street. The standing and fallen green trees were covered in a large shawl of pale gray dust, while the severed poles and electricity wires were stretched out like lifeless corpses across the street. Street.

The closed storefronts were bulging out as if they were pregnant from the horror of the bombing and the pain that befell them. Even the houses in the side streets that connect Al-Jalaa Street to Yarmouk Street were struck by the sudden bombing, demolishing the roofs and walls above the heads of their owners, and the glass of the windows shattered on the ground and became like scattered bags of rice. The clotheslines hanging on the balconies still contained their owners' clothes, all of their colors now black.

The asphalt in some parts was cracked, filled with deep cracks, as if the place had been subjected to a devastating earthquake, that is, barbarism pursued by the army that claims civilization and humanity, striking the homes of safe women and children in the middle of the night or in broad daylight, and without warning. This barbaric war proved that The Palestinian child is the military force that the occupation fears will grow. The major strike was in the Al-Ghafri area, which is about half a kilometer away from my family’s house, and it is a place we must pass through as long as we want to reach Al-Shifa Hospital.

We did not find any car to help us escape from any possible additional bombing.

All the cars are fleeing at the speed of a missile, carrying mattresses and luggage on their backs, and in their stomachs are crowded with family members, as if it were the Day of Judgment. Everyone wants to flee. As soon as we approached the Al-Ghafri area, the horror of the destruction that had befallen this huge residential square became clear, including the homes extending between Al-Jalaa Streets. And Yarmouk, dozens of martyrs, wounded and buried under the rubble of houses.

How are the humble civil defense vehicles, whose crews are also targeted by the occupation, able to remove all this rubble, and find the victims six floors deep in some buildings, such as the Al-Taj Building on Yarmouk Street, whose ceilings of all its floors fit together, as if there were no walls and columns separating them? Two speeding cars delivered our entire family, after we had walked for a long time in fear.

At the same time, warplanes and drones did not stop roaring through the sky, spreading the smell of death everywhere.

We arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital, and it was the first time I entered it after the war. The displaced people were sleeping on every centimeter of it. Many families made tents out of blankets to protect them from the sun of the day and the cold of the night and cover their private parts, and other tents were for journalists and news agencies, and many others without tents or covers were sleeping on the facades of the hospital buildings, and in Its outdoor courtyards have many smells spreading throughout the place. Here are sellers of coffee and other hot drinks, there are those who cook rice with Maggi broth and sell it to the displaced, there are those who fry falafel, potatoes, seeds and pistachios, here sit sellers of canned goods of sardines, meat and legumes, and there sit sellers of clothing for children and adults from both countries. Both sexes, and here sellers of winter blankets spread out on the ground, and there are sellers of children’s supplies.

And between all these alleys, piles of foul-smelling garbage are accumulating. The municipality has become almost unable to carry out its work in light of the continued bombing and the threat to the safety of its crews. As for the other, larger area, it has been crowded with white shrouds stained with blood, some of whom are known to be the owner, and many of whom are unidentified. I tried to look away from them. The extent of the loss hurt me. The sound of the families’ grief and the wailing of the fathers hurt me.

I went to the third floor of the caesarean section, where my sister and her little ones were waiting for me. I was happy to find many people, the noise of their voices softening the horror of the sound of the bombing, and I slept for a long time after I had lacked sleep for many nights before. I slept thinking that I would stay for two or three days, and this war would end. Cruel.

Source: Al Jazeera