Happy (late) Mother’s Day Pink Bunny
When the taxi stops in front of a large institutional
looking building, the Palestine Avenir (is that Avenue lost in translation or what?) for Childhood Foundation,
Cerebral Palsy Center, I should have suspected this would be an extraordinary
experience from the start. Outside in the sandy park fronting the building,
three children in wheelchairs are strapped into a playground spinner/merry-go-round/round-about
thing (you know the one that abled children run around and then leap onto for a
ride, hopefully not splitting open their chins like my daughter at that age).
These children are screaming and laughing like ordinary children and that is
indeed just the point. Besides this
there is a brightly colored swing/contraption modified to hold a wheelchair
with a heavy rope suspended from above such that the differently abled child
can thrill to the joy of rocking up and down with the wind in her hair.
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We are greeted by Ahmed Alkashi, the Director, who our
delegation organizer Gerry refers to as an angel. He is the kind of man with a twinkle in his
eye, radiating a combo of competence, love and energy, or in my world, a real mensch. The USAID funded school is
focused on getting ready for Mother’s Day which they have delayed for several
days to coincide with our visit! No
problem! This is Gaza after all and not
much runs on time.
Ahmed explains that the children are separated by IQ, 70-80,
80-95, etc., and if less than 70 they are given extra support so that they can
qualify for the school. Ultimately some of them are able to be mainstreamed
into the Ministry of Education schools. The facility is clean and thoughtfully
wheelchair accessible, two elevators transport students up and down. We pass the outreach and portage program (ie
they get the kids to and fro), and a number of small classes that have two to
three dedicated and specially trained teachers.
The students have a variety of levels of disability and mobility
issues. One class is making gifts for
their mothers, they are wearing stars with the words, “My mother is my source
of happiness.” There are a total of 150
students and 43 teachers. It turns out
that in Palestine, there is no Father’s Day.
Every day is Father’s Day I am told, and I am not sure if that is primarily
honorific or just plain patriarchal.
We pass a staff meeting where parents are working to
integrate their child into regular school and establish a good follow up plan. We poke our heads into an office with a
social worker, a dabke class, speech
therapy, a library, a gym with weight training to build muscle strength,
physical and occupational therapy, with students from Al Azhar and Islamic
University. The facility appears very
well run and there is an unusual warmth, respect, and kindness that is palpable
in the relationships we observe.
But the big surprise has yet to start. We are ushered into a large hall with several
hundred students, mothers, a few fathers, teachers, and several DJs. Loud rhythmic Arabic music is booming as we
are seated in a separate long table as the honored guests. The mistress of
ceremonies speaks passionately about Mothers with poetry and Quranic
verses. “Heaven is under the feet of the
mother.” “The mother is not small, she is the whole world.” A child in a
wheelchair recites a Quranic verse about mothers and another relates a Hadith
from the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) about how the most important
person is your mother, the second most important.. your mother, the third…your
mother, and the fourth..(finally)… your father.
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“Mother always looks after the children, we should be in
gratitude.” The flowery tributes continue as mothers beam in the audience, the
music blasts on, the director gives a speech, (“There is no handicap, there is
only a society that is handicapping them.”) An entertainer plays goofy games
(this is reminding me of an over the top Bar Mitzvah), the children get up and
do synchronized dances and singing which reveal an incredible amount of
practice, coordination, and enthusiasm. People are really having fun and soon I
am in a circle dance, pushing a young boy in a wheelchair with a large pink
bunny wiggling ahead of us. Oh and I
forgot to mention the two clowns, one sporting a truly bizarre orange Mohawk
spiked hairdo. I am beginning to feel that we can really learn a lot from this
school and the loving acceptance of all the differently abled children. This is also a dramatic contrast from ten
years ago when I first learned that children with war related disabilities were
celebrated, but congenital problems were considered shameful and those children
were often hidden from society. The educational system here has certainly made
an enormous amount of progress in this regard. I think of all the ridiculous
racist comments I have heard about how Palestinians don’t love their children
or don’t treat their women respectfully. A day in this school for children with
cerebral palsy should put the final kabash on that ugly bit of propaganda.
The celebration ends with an impassioned, tearful speech by
the woman MC’ing, condemning Israeli attacks and reading a poem to all the
mothers who lost their children in the latest war. The music turns mournful and many eyes are
starting to tear up. At some point as a profound mix of rage and sadness fills
the room, she calls up a young woman, early teens, who also lost her own mother
in the war. At this point the child is
sobbing as well as many in the audience. I do not know if this is a form of
community tribute and support or an incredibly re-traumatizing moment. Ultimately she is embraced, we hear “God will
provide,” and the anguish that underlies this remarkable tribute to love and
resilience, embraces the room. I learn later that the school has stepped in to
support this young woman along with her immediate and extended family. Mother’s
Day, once an international feminist call for peace, celebrated here in a time
of war after war.
What do you say to a mother who has lost everything?
Jump into the sky.
Afaf Abu Ajwa is from Shejaia and “before the aggression I was very
happy.” She has seven sons, three at
university, one working as a teacher, one an engineer, and one in high
school Her close family and relatives
all live nearby and once the war started, she was afraid her sons could die “at
any time…all suffering from the bombs.”
It was hard for her to leave her house but because her house was half
concrete and half aluminum, people repeatedly advised that she leave for safety.
“I faced death every day but where I go? Every place I will go suffers from the
same problem I suffer from.” Her two sisters sitting next to her at the
conference table both agree and argue with her as she speaks; these are three
tough, outspoken, defeated women.
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“On the black Sunday, [July 2014] it was not a night, it was a suffering
from Israeli occupation when they hit our houses, kill our children.” She uses
the word Yehud and Israeli
interchangeably; I do not blame her. In
her world they are synonymous. “At
about 7:00 pm, Yehud bombs hit the house
continuously like the rain, and they start light bombs, burn the house, and
light up the street. It was Ramadan and she put iftar on the table but they were not able to eat. Although she has diabetes, (spending about
400 shekels a month for medications), she still could not eat. Today she starts
crying as she recalls her husband urging her to eat so she will not lose
consciousness, but she was “just looking at my child as if it is the last time
I will see them…one second to lose one relative of yours.” Bombs hit her house, but she didn’t know what
to do. She went to the bedroom; her husband
shouted to come back to join her sons. The room was immediately totally damaged.
Ultimately the family asked the Red Crescent to come and rescue them, but the
Red Crescent refused because the Israelis would not permit the ambulance
passage.
“If we stay in our house we will die
and if we leave our house we will also die.” Her neighbor opened the door for
her and her young sons and as they fled the Israelis immediately bombed the
street. Her husband and other sons were in their own house, two sons came over
to the neighbor’s and the Israelis bombed her home again. Her husband “he start
shouting and tell me not to be afraid.
I thanks God that my sons are still alive” and from the neighbor’s house
they can see the damaged second floor of her home; there is no safe place, there
are 30 people in one room, houses are crashing down on other inhabitants, “Yehud becomes crazy,” When glass falls
on a newborn, the grandfather grabbed the baby and started to run in the
street. He was killed and the baby injured. 80 people in her neighborhood died. She used to save money for her son, but now when
she wants to save anything she asks, why save, another war is coming.
As the memories of that time explode
into the room, Afaf is getting more angry and outraged, her voice rising with a
fierce sense of fury and hopelessness. With bombs all around, her husband was
ready to leave, but there were no ambulances, no Red Crescent, “there was no
hope to live; the streets were crowded with women and children.” Her husband
asked her to shout for people to go out with them, “it was like ’48 nakba.” Women fled without their hijabs,
many were in pajamas, blood was everywhere.
She injured her foot running towards an UNRWA school for shelter, but
once she arrived she realized she had lost one of her sons. She ran back to Shejaia but this time the
place was totally different. “There were
no humanity, people dead in the streets, like Sabra and Shatila, (two refugee
camps in Lebanon that were the sites of horrific massacres in the 1980s). She saw disembodied hands, bodies without
heads, a dead woman clutching her dead child, eight women crushed under a
house, their faces frozen in fright. The bombs were dropping, she found her son
dead. One neighbor had a long haired son
who was lost during the escape, people assumed he was a girl and it took over 2
weeks to match his severed head with his damaged body. Afaf suffered from
extreme shock, “I start to ask God to take revenge of who is the reason for what
happened, no humanity, in five years, three aggressions. Where are men’s and
women’s rights, Palestinian rights?”
“If there is woman’s rights, how can they leave us in the shelters in
this bad situation, it is impossible for a five year old child to live through
three aggressions. Israel didn’t fight just one people, they fight humanity. It is our right to struggle for our land, I
ask the world to stand with us because Palestine is for us. And the right of
return is our right, and we have to achieve it soon. We don’t have a house, and mice walk on our
bodies, in our clothes, we have no work, no life. Our children were totally
frightened, they stopped playing, they just play Israeli occupation and Arab. What can we say? How do you think if we do
not have job or house, or water, from where can we get money for rent, clothes
or to eat. I am still living in the [UNRWA]
shelter which isn’t suitable for a viable life… We want to leave now, give us
our rights. We don’t want food or clothes, we just want our rights.”
Afaf’s sister, Samar Abu Ajwa says that everyone has a different story.
She and her husband (who I think is the brother of Afaf’s husband) and their
children, lived in a single room for 15 years, saving money and borrowing
15,000 dinars to finally build their own house.
“Thanks God we can build a house...I just live in my house for one year,
and then the aggression came. Around my
house there were no houses, after my house there were farms. Six bombs hit the farms around me.” She is
now weeping uncontrollably, describing her enormous level of fear, her sisters
hold their heads in their hands. “My brothers ask me to go to live with them
but I told them, no, it is my right and it is my right to live in my
house. My house is near the border with Yehud, I can see Israeli jeeps. I went to live in my brother’s house on July
20th, I left the house, my brother coordinate with the ambulance to come and
take us and the neighbors and to leave with us.
My neighbor was in a car with his family and the bomb hit them, the car
totally burned with the people inside it.
“I went to my family [parent’s] house and with the first cease fire, I
go to Shejaia, I used to go with one taxi but this time I used three taxis. When I arrived at Shejaia, there was no Shejaia.
There were no people, no houses, no trees, nothing but blood all around. I just
want to see my house, my sister asked me to go back, but I refused. I didn’t know where it is, I start walking
over damaged housing looking for my house, my dream house. I just live in it
for just one year; can you imagine, fifteen years in one room and when I have
my house, it is damaged, it is suffering.
My little child asked me about his
toys, I don’t know what to tell him. He said that he want to die, he is three years old. He asked me
when I die, don’t cry please. What
Israel did in this war, they turned a child into a soldier and women became
unafraid of anything. Where can I go,
now I am living in a nylon place, they are living in a plastic house, [ie a tent]…Do
Americans [not] prefer Arab people, because American control the world?
The third sister, Etaf Farahat is also from Shejaia; she left the house
when it was too difficult to stay. There
were 30 people in her home, they wanted to leave; it was Ramadan and everyone
was fasting. “The houses around were totally
empty, but we don’t know where to go, we stick together to the last moment at 8
am July 20, Sunday. We were at home, bombs were exploding all around us, in the
streets and houses. The bombs hit our
house, a huge part of the [building was] damaged…One room is okay, there were
13 persons in one room like the one we are in, they don’t know how to go, how
to drink water, how to eat, how to do anything. They were too much children,
(15 children), four families, four sick people, one suffered from diabetes and
she lost consciousness. The entrance of
my house was totally damaged, my husband doesn’t know what to do. There is a huge number of people in the
house, death all around.”
“At 4 am July 21, my husband Zohair Farahat start to say allah akbar, so people can hear him so
people can leave the house. At this
moment his mother was with them, she is 80 years old and it was hard for her to
run and leave the house. Etaf’s sons
refused to leave the grandmother alone, so they carried her and started to run
in the road while the bombs were falling.” Her hand gestures are becoming more
expressive and dramatic and I can hear the fear and rage in her voice. They saw
bombs all over, people lying in the street, limbs missing. They walked over bodies and blood. They couldn’t
see each other, “can’t see, just hear bombs and shouting of people.” They found the ambulance and Red Crescent
cars at the beginning of Shejaia but cannot reach them; the ambulance carried
the injured people but the bombs also hit the ambulance so the driver and the
injured were dead. They continued to run
and shout their names, they couldn’t see anything until they reached a taxi
area.
By the time they arrived at the school/shelter they were wearing bed
clothes, pajamas, and some women had improvised hijabs and skirts. “We do not have money. We have no food. We didn’t
eat for Ramadan. We found thousands in
the UNRWA shelters, injured and dead. Some people looking for their children;
they were dead. They went to the hospital and stay around the hospital in the
garden, about 50 days in the garden, Shifa Hospital. They sleep in the
hospital. Her daughter was in the
university, her sons were shocked because of the blood. They stay in the entrance of the hospital and
just look for relatives dead or injured.” Her voice has an insistent, steady rhythm
recounting the mounting disasters; her sisters look increasingly saddened and
weary. “When aggression ends, they count 47 of her families and relatives
houses totally damaged with no place to build.
We still live in the UNRWA shelters, Tal Al Hawa. We do not have money, house, anything, about
15 relatives in one room in shelter. The food is canned food, I have two sons
in university and four in schools, husband not working, I lose everything. I don’t know how to live and now everyday we
just eat rice for past three weeks. [I
see all the women nodding in agreement.] “We bored with rice, we didn’t take
money for rent, and we lost the house.
We want to leave shelter but we don’t know where to go, and people who
leave the shelter they give them rent for one month. I just want for you to
look after the money for rent, how to get child to school. We just want to live, no more wars. We just
want to live like countries around the world. Why we are living just like this,
different from people around the world?”
Zahra Ereif’s husband Mohammed who is the son of Fatma, the older woman
at the table, died in the war. Her child
sleeps in her arms as she begins to speak. “I was living in Shejaia, I had very
happy life, five children, the oldest in 3rd grade, the little one
is four months. I graduated from journalist department [at university]; I would
love to watch the news. At the beginning of the aggressions,…husband also
watching news, she felt something different will happen today. What? My husband wanted to see his father in
his farm, the brother-in-law was also in the farm. My husband want to buy
something for the child, I was still pregnant, I told him that it’s aggression
do not go out. He said it is safe, my
father just came, bringing figs. He told me that he will come in five minutes.
He went to the farm and found a friend dead.” The tears come flooding
and at this point everyone is reaching for tissues. “The bomb hit his father, his father dead and
he want to help him but the bomb hit his knee.
People come to tell me what happened.
They said that my husband has gone, but people tell me that that the grandfather
died.” The grandmother is now crying. “My husband was injured, I has full of
hope that my husband was just injured,” Tears are streaming down her face. As people became aware of the deaths, they
came to tell her. “They took me to the
hospital and I went to the fridge to take his body. I was shocked. My children start to ask where my father?
Where my grandfather? After July 12, bombs hit around them, my child ask why?
Why the aggression happened? What we did? Why they took our father and
grandfather? My little child thought father
traveled and will come back.”
“On July 20 the aggression become harder and ambulance came to take
them. We didn’t take anything with us,
we just left our house. People said what are you doing in the house, leave Shejaia.”
During a ceasefire, “I went back to the house, half of our house was damaged. My child used to say where is our dad. When we
went back to our home, they ask about their toys and about their rooms, if their
father will come to take them, when will we see grandfather, alhamdulillah,. They were totally frightened by what happened
to them. Ever since we tell our child what happened, my little daughter didn’t
understand father had died, until now, she think that he is traveling. My son,
thinks his father is in paradise with grandfather, he is in heaven and they are
just suffering from their loss. My
little daughter four months, when she grown the first word she will speak is
where is baba?” Zahra has repaired her house and is living with children. “Who will look after my child? Many
questions, no answers…I lost everything in my life. God give me patience”
Shadia Al Sabagh was living in a rental apartment at the beginning of
the war; the owner of the house was wanted by the Israeli Defense Forces. At
the first day of Ramadan, a rocket landed nearby and her husband asked her to
take her child and go to her family. “I was living in Salateen in Beit Lahiya
and while they were breaking the Ramadan fast, “Israel bombed a garden around
my family house, my brothers took their wives and leave the house. I went to live with my sister’s house. Once I
was walking with my child, no one in the street, bombs were all around. I didn’t
feel comfortable in this house, [interpreter explains there were interpersonal
stresses and conflict within the family including physical violence]. I become
nervous and start to hate my child. I asked my husband to take me from this house
to a shelter, Al Set Soura Shelter.
After two weeks my father-in-law came to the shelter, hit me and I leave
the shelter with my child. My husband
hit me and broke my arm; he treat me badly. My mother asked me to go back to my
husband.” [The social worker interjects a comment here, not sure what.]
Shadia is now in a UNRWA shelter, “the bathrooms are dirty, food came
to the school at 11 am and they ate in the afternoon, canned food. The shelter
used to buy it but now they bring rice. [It seems that everyone is mostly
living on rice and they are so done with rice.] The shelter wants her child to
attend a different school than she is used to. “I don’t where to go, I buy poisons
to kill myself many times, my child become bad in school, no longer get high
marks. My husband takes drugs [tramadol]
and beats me always. My furniture burned and the owner of the house gave me no
money.”
Fatma Erief lost her son and husband in the war. Her face is lined and
weary and she weeps in great waves of pain.
She was living in Shejaria, “bombs all around, we were afraid to go to
the bathroom. We were living in one
room. We were totally frightened, [this is the same house as the earlier
interviewees] On July 12 bombs falling, we feel that this will hit us, bombs
from sky and from the ground. Many people died around my house. When my husband
and my son want to pray in the mosque, I told them not to pray due to
bombs. He said, no I want to go. In the morning when he want to go to mosque,
he was wearing a white galabeya. “I told him he looked like a white flag and
planes will see him. I ask are there
many in the mosque, he said says yes. He left my life to his God. I was preparing for the dinner [after fasting
all day for Ramadan]. A bomb hit my husband in the farm, my son was just
looking for his father. I go in the
streets, didn’t know what to do. People brought my husband and son, people
making ululations. People take me in the ambulance. During the ceasefire, we
went to our house, it was partly damaged.”
The three sisters are resting their heads on the table,
heavy weariness pervades the room. Fatma talks about being alone, how the
people she depends on have passed away, how she didn’t take anything from
anyone. “Who will take care of all the children? Now they don’t have anyone to
take care of the family.” She has 20
grandchildren, a son with metal in his arm from an accident who is unable to
work. She suffers from hypertension. In the winter “we suffer from nylon over the
roof, cold in the winter, rain in the house.
I ask God to let Arab countries help us.” She wants her grandchildren to go to
university. “Who will take care of them? God give me life, our lives are
totally damaged and meaningless.” Three of her neighbors, older women, drank
gas and committed suicide. She shares a
joke, “Gaza is like heaven, there are no jobs,” but adds, “Death is better than
this life.”
There is
quiet and as I absorb these stories, I worry that I have intruded into these
incredible women’s deepest traumas and I have nothing to offer. In fact, it is my tax dollars and a country
that claims to speak in my name that has destroyed their families and their
lives. My sense of utter inadequacy
clings to my tongue as I look at their tear stained faces, but I manage to
offer my deepest sympathies and promise to tell their stories (at this point shout
is probably more where my heart is) and bring Gaza home. I brace myself for
some angry comments, demands for aid, anything, but suddenly the mood changes
and the women are smiling, thanking me for coming, listening, embracing me as
one of their own. It is almost more than
I can bear. They will be back next week for more speaking bitterness, maybe
some individual counseling, job training, and they thank Aisha for standing
with them in their time of unbearable need.
Feeling pretty depleted, I return to
Marna House and join some of the delegates for a drive to Beit Hanoun, the
northern most city tucked into the eastern shoulder of Gaza, just adjacent to
the Israeli border, ie., not a good place to be these days. We drive through death defying traffic, a
constant game of playing chicken with folks who already feel they have nothing
to lose. There is pavement and rocky dirt roads, donkeys trotting along with
massive piles of grasses, flowers, and produce, multiple rotaries, mountains of
rubbish. We pass Salahadine Street, a
route thousands of years old from Morocco to Turkey, industrial areas, a huge
building with bags of cement (Gaza gold), sheep trundle across the road, there
is a bombed out juice factory, (juice? really?) massive bomb craters and piles
of harvested rebar that is painstakingly straightened and reused. Everywhere
Palestinians are living their normal lives, going to school, in the markets,
walking the streets, sweeping the dust, mundane life goes on despite the
post-apocalyptic surroundings. We pass one of the UNRWA schools being used as a
shelter, clothes and rugs, hanging from the balconies, the smell of unwashed
bodies. There are 29 of 89 UNRWA schools still be used as emergency housing.
We pull up to a massive scramble of
crushed concrete jutting out at all angles, house after house crushed into
deformed skeletons of a former life,
hills of dirt and sand and toxic military waste, garbage, “You’re very welcome
to Beit Hanoun.” We park in front of Banksy’s
famous cat; a British graffiti artist who is rumored to have arrived via the
tunnels and painted an enormous kitten on a slab of vertical concrete, a wall
to somewhere, a bullet hole in the cat’s neck.
He knew that people would repost a photo of a cute kitten a million more
times than a hungry displaced Gazan child. We are soon surrounded by those very children,
barefoot, dirty, ragged clothes, beautiful open faces, blank stares, borderline
terrible teeth, sullen teenage boys flirting with us uncovered wild Western
women. An Arabian horse gallops across the horizon, donkeys graze in open
fields, a truck with a familiar jingle, oh my God it’s Fur Elise! Ice cream? No
this is the water tanker making the rounds.
There is no running water here. A horse trots by with a cart piled with
fragments of concrete to recycle. Someone asks if I am Israeli. An older man,
face dark and creased with some kind of leg deformities sits cross legged on a
mattress surrounded by some of his family.
He is mostly toothless but has a warm smile and a twinkle in his
eye. He has two wives and 42 children
and grandchildren. A UN prefab “house”
is tucked in the concrete rubble, what kind of bombs create such massive
destruction?
But we are actually here to see an
amazing group of young men doing a form of acrobatic gravity defying skydiving
called Parkour. They mostly wear black
sweatshirts with PK GAZA: Gaza Parkour and Free Running. They dream of starting
a school to teach their skills, of buying a video camera to record their feats,
of entering Parkour contests all over Europe. They understand that jumping off
of buildings, flipping backwards, forwards, twisting their supple bodies in
various gravity defying acts is actually a positive channeling of their
enormous energy and macho aggression. When too much of a crowd interferes with the
show, not much entertainment actually happens here, they insist we drive to Shejaria,
the devastated city that was described to me by the six women this morning.
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