The killing and bombing is finally done. Yet I don’t think we in Gaza will feel like the war is truly over for a long period of time, if we ever can.
The killing is over but the pain of the missing dead is not.
The killing is over but the injures are not healed.
The killing is over but the houses are no longer standing.
The killing is over but our souls are not yet cured.
This is the third war I have witnessed in the last five years of my life. I wish I had never had to experience this, but it just happened, and all I can do now is to deal with the pain…once again.
My first experience with war was in my last year of high school, the year that is critical to anyone’s future. It wasn’t easy to go back to school and study again, it wasn’t easy to throw all the pains and bad memories behind my back and continue life normally. It took so long…but I did it, and I passed that year with satisfactory results.
The second war, I was a university student; I faced the same dilemma of not being able to get back to university and study. It needs an awakened brain to do so, and mine was not! It was full of dark thoughts and the constant question, ‘how could I survive again?’
This third war has been the most difficult. Now, I’m an employee. I have to deal with things faster to best do my job. I grew up, and realized that every time it only gets more and more difficult to accept and deal with such situations. This time, I think it will take too long for me to get back to life.
It takes too long to get used to the city’s new face, to not feel guilt every time we laugh, to not fear the sound of a door slamming…to dream of things other than death!
I write this, and I didn’t experience the loss of any loved ones, thanks to god, and I’m in a good health…but I can’t stop thinking of those who lost. Some lost everything and everyone, others lost their beauty, their vision, the ability to hear, and parts of themselves that can never be returned.
They lost a life that they will never have again. The war is over but to the survivors it has merely begun. I was jailed in my house for 50 days, it feels strange to deal with people again, to carry out the routine work we used to do…the simplest aspects of life are the most difficult now.
I didn’t experience death. But now, I have the belief that many things can be more painful than death.
For someone who is homeless, who lost the ability to walk, to hold a pen, to see the light, to hear the voices, to live with their love…for those and others, death would be mercy.
All we can do, all we have to do, is to try to continue, to heal our injuries, to heal our souls, our brains, and hearts…to heal the broken…and try to live, once again!
What happening to Farah Baker, the Gaza Twitter Girl. Did she get killed in Israel’s sloppy punishment of Gaza Strip? Last I hear Israel turned off Gaza’s power so twitter feeds could stay on the down-low.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10997610/Teen-Palestinian-girl-on-Twitter-live-tweets-Gaza-bomb-attack.html
Sarah you remind me again to be ever grateful for my life and the lives of those that I love.
You remind me that I have to work even harder for justice and peace for the Palestinian people, and to never forget what has been done with our terrible and enormous contribution to your suffering and pain.
Your strength and your experience leave me truly humbled.
Sarah, what an epitaph to people of Gaza! The hurts of second world war never really healed and my grandmother would wake up with nightmares up to the day she died, aged 89.
She hated to talk about the war, but spoke over and over again about the need to work, tirelessly to combat injustice, racism and demagoguery in the politics. She explained that it is the individual people’s refusal to be silenced that can make the difference, down the line, to prevent or stop ghetto’s and occupation.
Your writing reminds me that my humble attempts at making my voice heard, far from being insignificant, are part of an important vigil to reduce the evil that sense of entitlement and supremacy can make happen.
And your writing reminds me that the end of bombing is in no way the end of suffering.
I need EDIT function back! English is not my first language and how am I ever to tidy apostrophes, tenses, and worse?!
“A ground-breaking international collaboration between Gaza’s Theatre for Everybody and London’s Az Theatre, which includes live links between the two theater companies, will see its first public showing in London on 14 September.
The project, which has already seen a year of creative work in Gaza, aims to “create a unique Arabic stage adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.” The launch, which takes place at the Rich Mix multicultural arts space in East London, will also include specially-commissioned new works by British- and Iraqi-origin playwrights Haifa Zangana, Caryl Churchill and Hassan Abdulrazzak, as well as music and an exhibition of Palestinian art from Gaza curated by Arts Canteen.
The event will also feature a live link to the “work-in-progress” in Gaza. This part of the program has been threatened by the ongoing attacks on Gaza by the Israeli military, which led Theatre for Everybody’s Hossam Madhoun, writing on 20 August, to fear that: “Yesterday we were almost sure that war ended, at the last hour everything collapsed, war continues!”
However, with the partial downturn in the Israeli raids and an ongoing ceasefire agreed on 26 August, it is hoped that the link will go ahead. Madhoun has stated that: “I believe in our work on War and Peace more now than at any time before”.
Madhoun and Theatre for Everybody’s painful journal through the July-August onslaught, which left over 2,000 Palestinians dead, can be traced through a series of moving blog posts on the Az Theatre website.
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A press release from the company elaborated further, saying that “The companies in Gaza and London believe the epic framework of Tolstoy’s great romantic, philosophical novel can open up contemporary and historic events and shed new light on the nature of conflict, individual destiny and what peace can be.””
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/sarah-irving/gaza-britain-theater-collaboration-launch-london