Story 1 from Yasmine

On the seventeenth day of aggression on the Strip, we continue a long journey of looking for a safe place inside or outside our home. You see, after we received messages stressing that we leave our homes and head to the south, we believed that the south is truly the safe place! But after we headed south, we discovered for ourselves that there is really no safe place in Gaza! We are targets for this fascist occupation wherever we were. We then decided to go back home, telling each other “We are dead, either way. Better to die in our homes, for at least then people would know we rose as martyrs. But outside our homes, we may die and nobody will know we passed.” For this reason, we came back home. My husband, Mohammad, has been preoccupied with keeping me in the house. He wants to protect me from any danger that may hurt me. You see, Mohammad and I have a strong and special bond. With our love for each other, we had barely survived the loss of our baby Sofia, just a month before these attacks started. Sofia turned into an angel, days before her first birthday because the hospitals in Gaza did not have the proper equipment to care for a baby born pre-maturely. Our best was not enough to keep her alive. Now, Mohammad wants to do all he can to keep me safe. So he looked for a place he thought may be the least dangerous, and so he decided on under the stairs. He made me a safe “Staircase House” to protect me from any of the rockets of the brute occupation that could hit any time. I keep by me a bag with important papers and some money, and I have another bag with essential clothing, knowing very well that if an emergency happened and we had to leave suddenly, I will carry none of it! But simply having them next to me gives me a sense of safety. You know how they say “we have to secure ourselves”. I don’t know what to secure ourselves from in this case, with these bags, if we lost our homes or our families! Will any safety remain afterwards, anyway?!

I run to seek refuge in my safe staircase house every time I hear the sound of a falling missile, horrified that this may be the moment that would end our lives! Although I know very well that if any of these missiles fell on us, there will be no safe place, and even this little safe house of mine will disappear!

Yasmine Ayoub
HP at UPA
23 Oct, 2023