-Essay-
GAZA CITY — In 1948, Israel and its gangs occupied Barbara village, following the fall of the Majdal city, and the expulsion of its residents. One day in November of that year, a six-year-old girl fled the village on her father’s shoulders. They sheltered in one of the city’s refugee camps. Twenty years later, the father died.
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The girl was my grandmother. She waited to return one day also on her father’s shoulders. “Tomorrow, when we return,” was the sentence she repeated over and over when she was telling the story. “I went out on my father’s shoulder, I don’t remember what the weather was like, whether it was summer or winter,” she used to say.
All she was remembering was that her father’s shoulder was her only source of security. She narrated the village with all its details: the mosque, the date of its destruction, the families and where they lived, etc. But she grew, and became a grandmother without returning to her home village. She died in February 2023 at her home in Gaza City.
I still remember the scene when she picked a book about the village to verify its data. She wanted to make sure whether the book mentioned her uncles, the Al-Azhar-educated sheikh, and her family tree.
She remembered the house, its details and the tree inside it. We — her grandchildren — believed her story, and waited with her to return to the village. My grandmother, the last remaining member of this displaced family, has died, leaving us with her unfinished story.
Lost in the diaspora
One winter day in 1967, a 60-year-old man left Gaza for Jordan, searching for the rest of his family who had been scattered due to the 1948-1967 wars. His right foot was amputated near the Palestinian-Jordanian border. He was taken back to Jordan to receive treatment after he was reassured about the whereabouts of the family.
You will meet tomorrow!
He returned to Gaza with a disability in his body and soul. He met the rest of the family in a country different from the one they knew — a family lost in the diaspora.
At the end of his story, after he explained the extension of the family in the diaspora and refugee camps, he said: “You will meet tomorrow.” He died in 1993 near northern Gaza in his home, on his bed, which witnessed the story of the diaspora.
Where? There…
One war morning in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, I stood near the northern window. I tried to train my memory not to forget and to capture what helps my memory overcome the ugliness of what’s happening. The war forced me to flee Gaza City at the end of October 2023 after I lost my home and no longer had a single wall in the city to lean on.
The difference between me and my grandmother is that I was an adult woman carrying her bags and fear, and I had my father in my hands. We left toward the west of the city and the displacement continued.
It’s the memory of a child
As I was immersed in memory, my nephew came in and teased me, saying “when we were in Gaza” and “tomorrow we will go to Gaza.” This child was displaced when he was just a year and a half. He moved with his parents to Rafah, then to a tent in Khan Younis then to Deir al-Balah where he stayed with me since October 2024.
When we were in Gaza, there was no tent, there was a big house.
We want to go.
Where?
There.
Where there?
Gaza!
It’s the memory of a child who is now 2-and-a-half-years old, who was forcibly expelled from his house and city. Now he stands in front of me opposite the northern window of the temporary house in Deir al-Balah, which is 14 kilometers from Gaza City and says: “Tomorrow, we want to go back to Gaza.”
That is the question since 1948. Generation after generation, we have inherited that question: When will we return?
The Israel-Hamas war displaced — often multiple times — more than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. About 1 million people were forced to flee Gaza City and northern Gaza, to southern Wadi Gaza. Israel’s occupation practices in Gaza are the same Nazi acts and policies, starvation, displacement, eviction and prevention: practices four generations of Palestinians in Gaza have experienced.
