By: Yusuf El-Mobayad, Palestinian Writer at We Are Not Numbers (mentored by Connie Charles)
Originally published as a story on August 13 at We Are Not Numbers
Shuja’iyya before and after its destruction by Israel. Photos circulating on social media
Early morning on Thursday, June 27, 2024. We were all asleep — 14 of us — at my sister’s house in Al-Shuja’iyya, east of Gaza City. We’d been taking shelter here since January 2024, after our home and farm had been destroyed by Israel’s offensive forces in its first assault on Al-Shuja’iyya in December 2023.
We were awakened by the heaviest, most intensive bombardments that I had experienced since October 7. When the hateful shelling ended, I didn’t care what was coming next. All I could do was go back to sleep.
I managed to get up about 7:30 a.m., wash my face, and have breakfast. I felt weary and bedraggled.
An escape from the chaos
My brother Mohammed and I headed to our family’s destroyed home and torn-apart farm, not far from my sister’s. We wanted to see if anything more had happened there overnight, and Mohammed wanted to take a shower. He found a place amid the piles of rubble and doused himself with water he’d brought from my sister’s. It gave him a shred of privacy and dignity.
The family farm. Photo provided by Yusuf El-Mobayed
For me, our property was the best place to escape from the chaos and noise of the ugly night I had just lived through. It was a place of comfort, where I could recall the happiest moments of my life and dwell on favorite memories. I thought about my family, my friends, and relatives while wandering on what had until recently been our breathtakingly beautiful farm.
Allowing myself a flight of fancy, I could hear birds serenading my spirit, lifting me on wings of euphoria. I looked skyward, marveling at the expanse of clear blue, a limitless canvas of hope. I could remember the fragrant perfume of blossoming trees — a symphony of scents. It was as if the air embraced me with the sweetness of grapevines, lemons, peaches, pomegranates, figs, and oranges in the gentle breeze upon my face. This for the moment was a place of tranquility.
(In reality, it was all I could do to keep my wrenching anxiety inside me. My only outlet for all those feelings of terror and fear is writing. For me it is the only means of gaining a measure of relief. I keep asking, am I going to survive this genocide? Will I get to live the rest of my life happily with the remains of my family and my beloved people?)
Return to terror
Going back to my sister’s neighborhood, I ran into my youngest brother, Zakarya, and asked him why he was there rather than at the farm, where he usually works taking care of things until after 7 in the evening. He said he had a bad feeling about what was going to happen, that he felt something terrible was about to unfold.
Not long after that, without any prior warning, Israeli occupation fighter jets unleashed a devastating assault on my neighborhood — my relatives’ homes and our farm — with a massive amount of artillery shells. I realized that this was the beginning of a horrific onslaught and I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do or where to flee. There was no place to take cover, so I just started running under a rain of bullets. I called out for my brother Mohammed; I thought he was near me, but he was gone.
When I got to the entry of my sister’s street, there was an occupation helicopter shooting straight down on the people in the middle of the street. I quickly saw the direction they were shooting in and managed to escape that danger.
Checking on family
Getting to my sister’s place, I ran up the stairs to see what might be happening there. I found my 11-year-old nephew, also named Mohammed, in hysterics. He had been severely injured back in mid-October and is now unable to walk. He was further frightening the others, who were already in a panic at the noise and clamor. I tried to calm him down. All I could say was, “Maybe it’s just a random attack. All we can do is wait and see what might come next.”
Leaning out a window to take in the whole targeted area, I witnessed the killing of one of our neighbors: An artillery shell hit him in the face where he was standing at the entrance to his building. His brother, filling water tanks on the roof of the building, reacted in fear by leaping off the three-story building, breaking his legs but avoiding his own death.
Worse and worse
I could tell that the bombardment was now coming closer to our place. Turning back inside, I went straight to my traumatized nephew, picked him up despite the severe pain in one of my arms from an injury six months earlier, and went right out the door with him. He was screaming in terror. The rest of my family followed, but in the street shrapnel and stones were flying in all directions, hitting everything in front of me. Still, I managed to protect him, and we all fled the area, taking only our lives with us.
The overhead Israeli forces were destroying everything in advance of the ground forces and committing an unimaginable number of bloody massacres against humanity. Where could we go to get away? to be safe?
After the better part of an hour of ongoing, devastating, and terrifying bombardment, the ground invasion was launched, leaving many innocent people bleeding and dying in the streets. For some time, I and many others were trying to be of use, jumping over bodies, screaming for help, but getting none. The ambulance crews were prevented from reaching our location because of the ongoing danger, so these martyrs were left without medical care. It was heartbreaking.
Temporary safety
On that endless day, all I could do was run. I put my legs in motion, trying to get us all as far away as possible from that harrowing place, heading into the unknown. Thankfully, we managed to find temporary safety of a sort in the next neighborhood. We settled in to wait impatiently and uncomfortably until we would be able to return to our own place, or somewhere safe. What we’d been through — bombing, helicopter gunships, drones, tanks; people wounded, bleeding, dying before our eyes — was more than enough terror for one day — for a lifetime.
(As I wrote this, my mental relief was in believing that I was only describing scenes for a movie, but I was physically shaking uncontrollably. This was no movie. We people of Gaza, homeless and starving, have continually in mind the need to evacuate where we are and find another place to shelter. I wish deeply to head to our destroyed home now, so sick and tired am I of being a refugee in my own country, believing that I have basic rights yet having none.
(Till now, I’ve been trying hard to digest if not forget the ugliness of those scenes my family and I have experienced, but unfortunately, they are engraved in my mind. What we must have is an end to all of this.)
Let us pray:
Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Source: The Book of Common Prayer)
About the Author: Yusuf El-Mobayed works as a freelancer reporter and writer with charity institutions in Gaza. He has survived more than six deadly onslaughts against humanity in Gaza. Since childhood, he has been passionate about becoming an internationally famous reporter who tells the unheard stories of Palestine to the outside world. Yusuf describes himself as “a guardian of truth, a weaver of narratives, and a relentless advocate for justice. In my hands, the power of storytelling becomes a force to be reckoned with, piercing through the shadows and illuminating the untold stories that lie buried beneath the rubble.”
