As my gaze sweeps across the vast sky before me, the scene is dominated by the disorganized tents I see everywhere. I also see palm trees, fighter jets, drones, kites, but there are no tall buildings left. All the high-rise buildings in Gaza City, as far as the eye can see, have been razed to the ground. My house is among them.
Genocide has its sound. It is the hum of drones and the sound of a building being reduced to rubble. Amid the destruction of bulldozers and tanks, each of us is forced to embark on our own complex journey of displacement.
Living far away from home due to displacement is painful, but at least my family and I were initially relocated to other houses.
After the last house we sought shelter in was bombed and razed to the ground, we had no where to go. Like hundreds of thousands of other displaced Gazans who also have no place to live, we had no choice but to build a “tent”.
Setting up a tent
If you find yourself homeless on the streets of Gaza during the current genocide, you have two options.
One of them is to buy a prefabricated tent. In theory, these tents are supposed to be distributed to the displaced by aid organizations, but almost every single family I asked who lives in a prefabricated tent said they bought it. Every tent has “AID” written in big letters on the side, but people buy them at prices ranging from $200 to $1,000, depending on the type, height, and space available.
Another option is to build your own tent. This requires the help of several men and the cost of equipment. Wood, a tarp and blankets are needed. Since almost every family fled under fire without taking anything with them, you will have to buy every single part.
Building a tent is not much cheaper than buying a ready-made tent. Each tent has a different price depending on the height, space, pieces of wood and type of cover. A piece of wood costs about $15 to $25, but you will need many pieces to put up the tent. Blankets and tent covers cost about $70 to $100. Prices vary depending on the time and when you want to put up your tent. For example, the cost of materials always increases when people are forced to flee to a new location.
Setting up the tent takes time, effort and money. You also need a plan to set it up efficiently. Since setting up a tent takes days or maybe weeks, you will probably be forced to sleep on the street in the meantime.
If you manage to get all the supplies you need, finding an empty place can hamper the whole endeavor. Sleeping on the street might be your only option.
The residents of Gaza have been forced to flee from one place to another on several occasions. And they have had to go through all these steps many times. Because every time you escape, a new tent has to be set up.
Your tent is your whole house. You now have to reduce your old house to an area of 4 x 4 meters: the kitchen, the bedrooms for each family member, the living room and a small bathroom behind it.
It is hot in all types of tents, no matter what material they are made of. Sand is your floor and the sky is your ceiling. You wake up at dawn. When the sun rises, the light illuminates the tent, and the heat and buzzing flies disturb your sleep. You have no choice but to leave the burning tent. You flee in search of shade.
Tents are only meant for sleeping and staying in at night. During the day it is unbearable to be in them. Just take your chair, your pillow – or your phone if it is charged – and find a cooler place.
To make your tent your home, you have to buy every single tool from scratch. Since many houses were bombed, it is impossible to find utensils, blankets, clothes and other things. And if you find them, their prices are ten times higher.
There is not even a drop of water at home. It has become a luxury.
And when we say water, we mean water for washing, bathing, cooking and other tasks – not filtered drinking water. Since last November, finding drinking water has been an impossible task.
“I admit that the war has challenged us all, but not being able to drink filtered water is a headache for me,” our neighbor said despairingly recently. My brother added, “Having both water to use and filtered water to drink is a luxury that hurts both my heart and my head.”
To find water, one must walk long distances and then carry it back oneself. To fill a 15-liter water container, one must walk long distances and pay about a dollar or two. Carrying those gallons of water back is a big challenge under the heat of the sun.
If you are lucky and have a cart, you can use this mode of transport to fetch water from more distant places. It is a luxury. However, not all people here in the camp have a cart, so people borrow others to fetch as much water as possible without having to carry it themselves.
Sometimes water trucks come so people can fill up their water cannons. But the large number of people needing water overwhelms the very small number of water trucks arriving. You hear the sound of the water trucks arriving and then you see people running, men, women, girls, children and elderly people with their water cannons in their hands. They all gather, shout, run, give up their water cannons and get wet from the flowing water. If you are lucky, the water cannons or some of them are filled up, but most of the time you return helpless, trying to think of other options that you don’t have.
Wandering around all day in search of the things you need to survive leaves your body and soul exhausted. When the weather improves a little at night, you sit outside your tent. Sand is your floor and the sky is your ceiling. You start to count the shining stars, but when some move quickly, you know they are not stars. Drones buzz around, ready to kill more women and children and end the lives of many people and their families and friends.
I hope that soon only dragons will populate the skies. And the disorganized tents will disappear and our high-rise buildings will return to populate the landscape as far as I can see.
