By Ramzy Baroud in Gaza
"...It has been many years since I last stood here, in the Red Square. Named after the many people who were killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers during the First Uprising of 1987, the once open area has shrunk, like many other spaces in and around the refugee camp. The population of the Gaza Strip has grown significantly, as has poverty. Surrounded and besieged by Israel, 1.6 million people living in 360 square kilometers (139 square miles) are now exploiting every inch of this tiny and continually shrinking space. Still, Gaza persists....
My father was buried in an area called Zawydeh. In 2008, I was told he was buried in a ‘small graveyard,’ which encouraged me to attempt to find the grave on my own. However, the graveyard is no longer small and I spent over an hour trying to locate it. In the process, I learned that some of my friends and relatives have also died.....
I found my father’s grave at last. My dad, Mohammed. The wonderful, loving, resourceful, angry, thundering and warm man. He never imagined he would one day be buried in Gaza. He wanted to go home to Beit Daras, his long destroyed village in Palestine. “I will see you soon, son,” he had told me many years ago, when I last saw him. I now wrote him a note, and buried it in the Gaza earth by his headstone.....
....A few of my friends have been killed, but many others have remained steadfast, building, repairing, educating and surviving. The astonishing level of determination that has always defined Gaza is much stronger than I remember it. No one seeks pity in this place.....
“There was a large building here,” I remarked inquisitively to a cousin at one point in my journey.
He replied casually. “It’s been destroyed in the latest war, but the people crushed the rubble, processed it into concrete and the building now stands on the other side of the street”. In Gaza, few discuss what has been destroyed, but many speak of rebuilding...
I held onto my plastic cup of Barrad (like snow cone) all the way to Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, taking careful, slow sips. It tasted exactly as I remembered it from when I was six years old. Since then, nothing in the world has tasted better....."
"...It has been many years since I last stood here, in the Red Square. Named after the many people who were killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers during the First Uprising of 1987, the once open area has shrunk, like many other spaces in and around the refugee camp. The population of the Gaza Strip has grown significantly, as has poverty. Surrounded and besieged by Israel, 1.6 million people living in 360 square kilometers (139 square miles) are now exploiting every inch of this tiny and continually shrinking space. Still, Gaza persists....
My father was buried in an area called Zawydeh. In 2008, I was told he was buried in a ‘small graveyard,’ which encouraged me to attempt to find the grave on my own. However, the graveyard is no longer small and I spent over an hour trying to locate it. In the process, I learned that some of my friends and relatives have also died.....
I found my father’s grave at last. My dad, Mohammed. The wonderful, loving, resourceful, angry, thundering and warm man. He never imagined he would one day be buried in Gaza. He wanted to go home to Beit Daras, his long destroyed village in Palestine. “I will see you soon, son,” he had told me many years ago, when I last saw him. I now wrote him a note, and buried it in the Gaza earth by his headstone.....
....A few of my friends have been killed, but many others have remained steadfast, building, repairing, educating and surviving. The astonishing level of determination that has always defined Gaza is much stronger than I remember it. No one seeks pity in this place.....
“There was a large building here,” I remarked inquisitively to a cousin at one point in my journey.
He replied casually. “It’s been destroyed in the latest war, but the people crushed the rubble, processed it into concrete and the building now stands on the other side of the street”. In Gaza, few discuss what has been destroyed, but many speak of rebuilding...
I held onto my plastic cup of Barrad (like snow cone) all the way to Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, taking careful, slow sips. It tasted exactly as I remembered it from when I was six years old. Since then, nothing in the world has tasted better....."
