The ceasefire stopped the war. But every night is still mortifying here.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
Gaza has lost the cement houses that would protect its residents from the cold. We have lost the glass windows from which we used to look out at the streets, wet from the rain that marks the season. We had thick blankets, winter clothes in different and distinctive shapes. We used to walk around the streets with cups of hot coffee; we used to have a huge mall where we would meet our friends for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We used to buy hot chestnuts there.
Before the war, children ran in the streets carrying bright, colorful umbrellas. Thousands would walk to the sea before going to work, to exercise or just to gain some positive energy from the sight and sound of rain on the water as they ate their breakfast and drank their morning coffee. There are no words to describe the beauty of winter in Gaza. But starting a year and five months ago, the warm houses were destroyed, and we left the sea alone. Now, the rain is dangerous.
The ceasefire stopped the war on Jan. 19, but the suffering in Gaza did not end. Two-thirds of Gaza's 2 million citizens lost their homes. The great destruction forced them to put their tents next to their destroyed homes. Hundreds of thousands of families are still living in tents. The basic necessities of life, including water and electricity, are still lacking nearly everywhere, making everything difficult. And neither the cloth tents nor the nylon ones protect children's bodies from the cold.
Since the beginning of winter we have been praying that the rain does not fall. Newborn babies have been dying from the severe cold and hundreds of children have gone to hospitals with respiratory problems. The tents are soaked with water, and the cold air has become very humid.
My aunt Wafaa, who has been living in a tent for a year after being displaced from Khan Yunis and losing her home, says that the tent is freezing, especially in the evening hours. It does not have a bathroom, and if she needs to use one, she has to walk a few meters. But by that time in the night her body is already frozen, so she has stopped drinking water from the early evening hours onward. She knows that this will harm her health, and at her age may even cause sudden strokes. But she cannot afford to go out into the wet nights.
My friend Iman told me about one very cold night when it was raining. She was sleeping in the tent, and she woke up to raindrops falling on her head from the tent window. She was forced to get up from her sleep to prevent herself from getting drenched, but then she could not sleep at all, regardless, because she was frozen. She longs for her bed and her warm blankets.
Our friends in a camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip had their tent, bedding, and clothes all flooded. My friend's mother was so sad about this ordeal. She talked to me in a state of despair, telling me that the tent was completely deluged. But she could do nothing but wait for the sun to rise to dry the bedding and the clothes so that they could sleep in them again. This mother has hardly slept since the beginning of winter. The extreme cold now makes it practically impossible. The mass destruction has meant that the city is exposed on all sides. The walls are level with the ground; there is nothing to keep her warm.
I have felt it, too. Since the beginning of winter, I have been suffering from body pain due to the injury I sustained last August. I suffered bruises across my body, but I only now started to discover that these pains still existed during the cold. I have pain in my back, my right foot, and my rib cage. I am normally such a fan of winter. But now I am so afraid of the cold nights. I cannot walk around the house, or anywhere. I am lucky enough to have my home to sleep in, but the electrical grid has been destroyed, and our heaters no longer work. The only heating option is to light fires, which is extremely dangerous. What we are experiencing every day is so painful.
The saddest scene is seeing children shivering from the cold. There are no longer enough clothes in the markets to buy, and if they are available at all, they are very expensive. My sister Sahar and her husband Adam's children live in their destroyed house, the walls of their rooms fallen and exposed to the street. There are no windows or doors. They have tried to patch the exposed walls so that no one falls from them; the family lives on the fourth floor. Rital, my 5-year-old niece, hates showering in their house because there is no door to the bathroom, and the air coming in is freezing. She is even afraid of the sound of the rain because she worries that it will flood their destroyed house.
A few days before writing this I was in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis with my brother, and I stood in front of the nursery. There was a man who seemed to be the grandfather of a child in the nursery running after the doctor and asking him to keep the child in the hospital because it is warm there. Unfortunately, the doctor told him, he could stay only for a specific stretch of time and then he would have to leave. There are hundreds of cases that come to the hospital daily seeking shelter from the cold. All of these people need medical attention, but there is only so much space. I was looking at the face of that frightened and sad man, desperate for his grandson. We are all helpless in the face of all this tragedy.
Winter is for closed houses, sound streets, warm places. But Gaza cannot know that winter. We used to welcome the rain for agricultural reasons; the crops need it. But now our lands are all destroyed and are no longer suitable for farming. The rain, now, is only another source of terror.