Chronicle of deaths untold

Saturday October 7, Day 1

I never thought it would happen while I was swimming. I had risen early, around 5.30am, and decided to go to the sea. It was Saturday and I didn’t have any appointments till 10am, when I was supposed to be in Kararra, near Khan Younis, to participate in National Heritage Day. The night before, I had slept in my sister Halima’s house on the west side of Beit Lahia, just a few minutes from the beach. Being so close, it’s so tempting. Ismael, her husband, goes swimming every morning, even when it’s raining.

It was a beautiful morning. There was a cool breeze, and everything seemed so calm. Today was going to be a good day, I thought. I would swim until 7.30, then take a shower in my flat in Saftawi, near Jabalia Camp. By 8.30 I would be on my way. It was all going to be so simple.

But nothing in Gaza is simple. As a teenager, I would get so frustrated by this fact. I would make plans for the weeks ahead, then we would hear the soldiers announcing a curfew from militarised vehicles passing through the camp:  “No moving around until further notice.” From that point, till some unspecified time in the future, we weren’t allowed to leave our homes; if we did, they couldn’t be held responsible for what might happen to us. For a teenager, this meant no school for the foreseeable future; it meant no homework as there was no-one to mark it; it meant no playing football with my friends in the playground at night, or hanging out with anyone. In time, I learnt not to plan anything, even what we did the next day. “We live for today,” my mum used to say.

Now, when I think about this Saturday, the day would inevitably become known as the “first day of the war”. I think about remembering this lesson — one that I had almost forgotten. Plan nothing. We arrive at the beach. The sun is still sleeping.

Towards the horizon, the tiny fishing boats can be seen heading in to shore, after a long night at sea. There were four of us: Mohammed my brother, Yasser my 15-year-old son, Ismael my brother-in-law, and me. I was visiting Gaza from the West Bank, on a typical work visit, combining time with relatives with work commitments. I only planned to be here three days, arriving on Thursday evening and leaving on Sunday morning. Yasser had asked if he could accompany me this time, saying that he missed his grandparents. Never did he dream he’d be caught up in this.

We drive to the northern end of the beach, park the car on the main road, then walk onto the shell-flecked sand. We head further north, along the water’s edge, beyond where any car can reach. In Gaza, the belief is that the beach and seawater get cleaner the further north you go. As usual, Israeli warships squat on the horizon, visible to everyone.

The sea is so inviting this morning. Ismael and I strip down to our shorts, while Mohammed and Yasser decide not to join us. I realise this is the first time I’ve swum this year. And the feel of the water is joyous. Yasser walks around taking photos; Mohammed smokes heavily, as he always does in the morning.

Without warning, rockets and explosions sound in all directions. I look up at the lines of smoke the rockets have traced across the sky, like decorations. I carry on swimming. It’s a training manoeuvre, I think, an everyday exercise. More rockets and explosions, coming from sea and land. This is normal in Gaza. It might last an hour or two, I think, I can still make my meeting.

I swim back to shore, calling on Ismael to get out as well. He shrugs as we walk out of the water: typical intervention. Nothing to worry about. I shout over to him that it doesn’t seem to be stopping. Then he nods his head and points to the east. By the time I’m on dry land everyone on the beach is running in all directions. “We have to get out of here!” Mohammed shouts. He barks at Yasser to stop taking photos. It isn’t the time for that. Explosions ring in our ears, louder and louder. Something is going on, I realise. This isn’t a one-off strike. We head for the car, but the sand is difficult to run on. We make it to the main road, but the car is still another 500m away. Ismael and I run barefoot, carrying our clothes and our shoes in our hands. But the further we go, the more dangerous it feels. Everyone around us is doing the same, scrambling for safety.

I look up at the lines of smoke the rockets have traced across the sky, like decorations. I carry on swimming. It’s a training manoeuvre, I think, an everyday exercise

Eventually, we reach the car. Jumping in I hit the accelerator before anyone else has even closed their doors. I drive like mad, breaking all traffic laws. People jump in front of the car, trying to get a lift. We stop and let five men pile in the back. I shout at Yasser to climb into the front seat between me and Mohammed. We speed off again, honking the horn to clear the way. Suddenly I turn to Mohammed: “Where is Ismael? Did we leave him to the rockets?” Mohammed laughs: “No we left him to the sharks,” then explains that Ismael could not keep up with us and told him to go on, his house is close to the beach anyway, he can get there on foot. Mohammed’s shark joke doesn’t make me feel any better. Out of fear for my son’s safety and my own, I had completely forgotten about my in-law. The moment we get to my flat, I phone his wife, my sister, who confirms, that eventually, after much ducking and hiding, he had indeed made it home safely.

For hours no-one knows what’s happening. Then the news starts trickling in. My friend, the young poet and musician, Omar Abu Shawish, had been swimming just like us in the sea in front of Nuseirat Camp, when he was killed along with a friend of his, by a shell from a warship. They are the first two victims of this war.

Friday November 17, Day 42

Last night I had to sleep in a school shelter. I had been visiting my sister Halima, who’s staying in one of these schools, when the Israeli attacks suddenly intensified on all sides, and apparently all over the camp. I waited until it grew dark and the explosions were more spread out. But everyone told me it was now too late to be seen moving through the streets. So I made myself at home.

Settling down in Halima’s tent, we hear all the conversations taking place in the surrounding tents. And it’s easy to shout across and join in. It feels very natural to join in with their gossip and reflections. There is no privacy here. The only thing separating you from your neighbour is a thin piece of cloth. Ismael shares jokes with his neighbours in the tent to the south. At 8pm when the lights go off, everyone uses their own chargeable battery to light a small bulb. At around 2.30am, a huge piece of debris falls into the playground not far from our tent. A piece of concrete has hit the high metal ceiling overhanging one of the tented areas. A woman screams. We all wake up. Torches are turned on.

Ismael shouts out to the next tent: “You guys OK?” “Yes,” comes the answer, “What about you?” Ismael reassures us before we all go to lie back down on our mattresses: “It was only a small piece, this time.” I am not sure how many minutes sleep I get but night merges into day. I couldn’t help thinking about how exposed we were with just a piece of fabric between us and them, and how ridiculous it was to try to sleep in the middle of a battlefield. For the rest of the night, I hear rockets and shells and watch the sky light up through the fabric of the tent. I try my best not to use the bucket, telling myself I won’t need it till the morning, but around 4am I can resist no more.

Despite it being so early, everyone is awake. The streets are full of people coming back from the “safe places” they slept in, to their daytime homes. Instead of saying “good morning” when we pass, we say: “Alhamdulillah you are safe.” Each morning feels like a gift, an extra free day awarded to us, when our names aren’t on the death list. I go and visit the area that was targeted last night at the heart of the camp. Some six houses were destroyed completely, belonging to the Hijazi, Abu Komsan and Abu Dayer families.

Can death be something you wish for? When someone like Fouad, one of my relatives, loses all of his family (his wife and children) as well as his house, he will find himself, after the war, having to start his life again, as if he were in his early 20s not his early 50s

Hundreds of men climb over the rubble. Dozens are still missing. The injured have to be carried to the Indonesian Hospital now, as al-Shifa has fallen under Israeli control. Eisha’s neighbour, a retired teacher, laments the killing of her young daughter and her family. Her daughter was a general practice physician. A man is gathering up the school textbooks of his lost kids. He had been staying with them when the explosion happened. Now he wishes he had died with them.

Can death be something you wish for? When someone like Fouad, one of my relatives, loses all of his family (his wife and children) as well as his house, he will find himself, after the war, having to start his life again, as if he were in his early 20s not his early 50s. He has to rebuild his house and, if he can, remarry and bring up children again. If he’s lucky. But he has spent his life’s savings on that house, the one that’s now a pile of rubble; he has nothing left to rebuild with. Even if he’s lucky enough to have more children, he will not have as long left in life to see them grow up. In this sense, I can understand why that man on the rubble pile wishes he’d died with his family.

Now, as I sit writing this diary at my sister Eisha’s place, I have to suddenly jump up and run to the side of the room; a cloud of dust pours in through the window following an explosion, followed by a hundred small stones raining down on everything. A missile has just hit a building less than 100m away, at the entrance to Eisha’s alley. I hide behind a cupboard with my hands over my head, not knowing what will happen next. After a few minutes, the air in the room clears and from the balcony, I can see a plume of smoke stretching up from a pile of rubble that a few seconds before was the Areeni family’s home. When I pick up my cup of coffee, it’s full of gravel, fragments of concrete and dust.

• ‘Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide’ by Atef Abu Saif is published by Jacana Media