Letter from Gaza City

Yahya Al Hamarna

In the morning, I woke up to the sound of terrible bombing. I try to rub my eyes and look at my watch. It is eight in the morning.

I imagine that I am dreaming of this sound. My mind escapes from me for a few seconds and remembers the normal morning, where I wake up to the sound of birds and their quiet songs.

I ask myself, where is this sound? My mind returns to me again to tell me the truth about this morning.

Finally, I learned that I was on the sixth day of the genocide, where the news, anxiety, fear, martyrs, and displacement, where everything told me that Gaza was not well, I got up from my bed to see what we would do, people, the neighbourhood, the street was all fragments, I looked around me, not everything was fine. Suddenly everyone was looking for a lifeline.

The occupation army throws leaflets from its warplanes to leave Gaza. It throws its giant missiles to displace people. I look around me. Everyone is dispersed, anxious, afraid, but I am not sure yet.

But who was able to explain this situation to me? Who succeeded in comprehending this frightening suddenness?

Everything, everything

It is my father’s eyes. I looked into his eyes, where there is concern for us. Look in the eyes of every person who has a family. It is fear. Fear is sweeping these eyes. Bombing from everywhere. People are heading out with their belongings and fleeing.

Oh my God, the city has turned upside down. What will we do? Imagine, imagine, without warning. You are forced to leave your home quickly.

To leave this house. Your memories. Your dreams. Your room. Your books. Your pens, your clothes, your personal papers, your laptop, your daily notes, your kitchen, your favourite drink, your safe haven. Everything, everything.

Indeed, we left the house and went to a place near us, a public school. We were able to feel that things were fine after difficult and frightening hours had passed since morning.

It’s six o’clock in the evening, I sat with my family in the school class, I still wonder about this day, Thursday. What’s happening? It’s not my day like this. I’m thinking about what we’re going to do. Thinking Fatigue. Insomnia.

Night has come

Suddenly night has come. It’s scary dark again. Night means calm and rest. Night is watching a movie with popcorn in front of a screen. Television.

But this night is completely different. The sad scream of the child. The terrifying sound of the F-35 plane. Giant missiles descending on the city.

I watch the clock hands. My body is wet with thick sweat from the intensity of thinking.

I said to myself that I am strong. I will not allow the occupation to steal this strength from me, but I was thinking about everyone who loved this.

Thinking about them and imagining all the bad things running around in my head.

We hit midnight; it is now Friday.

What will I tell you?

What will I explain?

Imagine these minutes, every minute felt like an hour because of the sound of bombing, shells, pain, the sound of children screaming in the distance again. I could not sleep. Sleep is a miracle at this time.

The choice to sleep was stolen from me. It was impossible. I remained awake with my body exhausted. The voice of the child in pain from afar, and his poor mother unable to make him sleep, explained to me once again that I was not having an ordinary day.

It was war.

Finally, I was convinced that I was not in a dream. It was a reality that I had to face. Returning to the time when everything is real. All the difficult moments and fear I experience, are real.

One minute to morning, after a frightening night in which the hideous occupation used all forms of weapons, burning the Karama, Al-Maqousi, Al-Bahr and Sudanese areas, after all this destruction, oh my God, and finally I saw the morning light, I saw the dawn breathing the sound of birds, but they no longer sang, what is happening? I wonder and focus again.

The bird doesn’t sing, what?! How?! Focus again on the sound?! And I found the answer in her voice?! She cries with her voice, my heart trembles, my body shivers, the bird says to me: “Yahya, I am crying, they are burning your city, Yahya, run away, please run away for your life. I am your friend, the bird. I will tell you what happens later. Maybe we will meet one day, and you will return to your city.”

I said to myself: Is it exile? Is it deportation? Is it immigration? Is it the Nakba? Once again, I live it, yes it was.

I will live the journey of survival that my grandfather lived through in his town of Zarnouga in 1948. I finally returned to the bird after I fled to think. This dialogue was not a discussion between us only. I am shocked. I am silent and I hear this bird. I look into its eyes, where the language of the eyes is stronger than words, and once again and finally learned that I am on a new journey.

It is not a journey in the sense that you understand it. It is, my friend, a new journey with a new title. It is not inspired by a novel, fantasy, mystery, film, screenplay, theatrical art, entertainment, heritage, mountain climbing, visiting a mosque, church, or a tour.

It is not set in Jericho, or Bethlehem, or the pyramids, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the Great Wall of China, or climbing to the top of Mount Everest, or… any of these things, it is a real journey, the journey of survival from death, salvation from the most horrific, murderous machine of destruction that does not care about civilians.

It is the Israeli machine of destruction that takes lives. It is the ugliest occupation, the ugliest and bloodiest machine of destruction in this century, the twenty-first century, claiming lives one after another. I found myself on this journey. I remembered the word journey, where once again my mind took me to other journeys from the past.

Confrontation

For memories, I remembered my trips that I took. They are the beautiful trips with my family, where we go to the sea to eat and enjoy. We smell the fresh air with my friends and share beautiful moments together.

I go on a trip to read a book. I sit with myself and write new plans and how to achieve them. No, my friend, it is not a trip with yourself. Now there is no time. There is no time for this to sit, but I returned to my reality. I found myself on a new kind of journey, the journey of survival from death.

Oh my God, what is this journey? It does not make me happy, only sadness, crying, pain, fear, fear of loss, oh God. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, it was Friday. I got over the night before I described earlier that was terrifying.

Now, in the moment of confrontation, I must face reality. I went down to the street in the city and felt for a moment the horror of the scene. It looked like the Day of Resurrection. People were heading to the east and west, south, and north, up and down, faster and slower, by car and bus, staying and leaving, crying and quiet, but here I stopped for a while.

My head was spinning in all directions, finally, my head stopped moving incomprehensibly. I did not understand myself what to do, but the situation in which it stopped moving and made me helpless was the scene of the large truck that came towards me with a large group of people in it.

These frightened, lost, confused, pained, and anxious people looked at me and I saw. I looked at them and did not speak. There is no time to talk. There is no time for anything except to survive. I only speak to their eyes which say, “What will we do, Yahya? It is time for departure and exile to save ourselves from the machine of death, the machine I had read about in the university course on the political system in Israel?”

I asked myself many questions. I asked a political question: “What type of current government is there in Israel?”. I answered myself, “oh, the Israeli government now is the extreme right-wing government who were raised to burn, kill, and exterminate everything that is Palestinian. They are the religious trends that practice ethnic cleansing and do not accept or tolerate other religions or even other nationalities.

They are the murderous monsters, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who only care about killing. Nothing but genocide other than the implementation of their deviant ideas.”

I knew of the hatred of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, of Netanyahu too, who is thirsty to destroy any Palestinian dream and any hopes of the Palestinians to establish their state. He is the architect of the destruction of any Palestinian dream that leads to peace and prosperity. I will not go into more political issues with you now, as I told you, my friend, I do not have time.

The great burden

I want to search for other questions so that I can understand and find answers quickly so that I can return to people’s gazes from the great burden. Another emotional question.

I fear that this exile will turn from temporary to permanent again, like what happened to my ancestors in 1948. 76 years ago, and we have not seen a return. Will it be the same?

I ask myself another question: Will international law be applied in the event of displacement and protect us? But international law and human rights will be for the strong, but not for the weak.

Perhaps I will prostrate. Later, in answer to this question, I went back to look into people’s eyes and suddenly my family, friends, and some families of the neighborhood in which I live came.

They went to the big truck, and I transported the things, clothes, water, and some food and bread with us, and the truck moved on this trip, as I said, a new trip, and what a trip that I hope no one will go through. The journey of survival.

The truck moved, and for the first time in my entire life, I did not know where the destination would be.

This truck, time, events are the only things driving me. My mind does not understand or realise what is happening. The truck is moving, the driver is driving at a moderate speed.

There is no sound, no speech, silence, no sound that rises above the sound of the ferocious, ruthless, deadly Israeli warplanes. I look around in life. The city where only on the seventh day of genocide, the city is destroyed.

They stole my city, there is no place, only destruction and rubble. Because of the difficulty of what I see, I closed my eyes and said I will sleep for a few minutes, my body is tired, and I fell asleep already tired. I slept for only 45 minutes when I looked at my watch, suddenly waking up to the sound of people.

Finally, a natural voice, not the sound of a missile. But to be honest, my friend, the sound of the buzzer does not leave me. It is your constant partner and with you everywhere.

I believe that the journey of survival involves your imagination. The sound of the deadly buzzer. “Al-Zanana”. Where am I, in the south? Where is Rafah? Rafah!!!! The far south, yes. What will we do? Where will we stay?

The answer is we only have a tent to live in. A tent?! ! ! Yes, I started to build the tent with my father and brother. It was a strange thing for us because this tent did not have the minimum necessities of life. Everything was stolen from us, the basics of life.

The first, second and third days passed in Rafah, and the days continue to pass without end until now, my friend. The suffering is not over yet.

Safe haven

I always play the sound of the radio and the news, waiting and waiting for news. This waiting causes me extreme insomnia.

Depression seeps into my mind. I remembered my favourite Palestinian writer, Ghassan Kanafani, said: “Death may not be merely a cessation of the pulse. Waiting is death, boredom is death, despair is death, and the darkness of the unknown future is death”.

Despite that, I found my safe haven in reading and writing. As Mahmoud Darwish says: “We no longer want to be heroes, nor we want… to be more victims, we want nothing more than to be ordinary human beings.”

There was a war going on inside me between surrendering to reality or resisting it with tools that would make me not surrender to this bitter reality, and I always remain optimistic about the end of this time, which I consider to be the most difficult disaster, war, and genocide in the twenty-first century.

My days were fickle, like February, when the weather is fickle. Sometimes you find me optimistic and other times pessimistic, but my friend, in my dictionary, I do not know how to give up. If I said in my mind (before you surrender, think about why you lasted so long?), this occupation stole everything from us: our city, our loved ones, our friends, our dreams, our dreams.

It stole my ambitions, everything that is beautiful, but I will not allow them to steal my soul and my pen. My soul is the one that loves life, roses, achieving successes and dreams, and my pen is the one in which I find paradise.

My days were passing and writing was a project to resist the ugliness of this occupation.

Daring to dream

Despair, waiting and depression are normal in such conditions. But we, the people of Palestine, never know how to surrender, and there will come a day when this pain ends and we will dream again, there is energy, and we must see this end.

My days would pass and pass and pass, as our ultimate dream was to obtain the necessities of life. And yet I was finding and trying to invest.

It is my time to write what is happening to me in this genocide in which we see death a thousand times a day.

This is how I write, and perhaps the day will come when I look at my diaries when the war and genocide are over, and it becomes a memory to remind every free and honourable person in this world that the most horrific occupation is the Israeli occupation.

The nights of Israeli terror must end, and the chain must be broken. The day will come when Palestine and its people will see the light at the end of the road.

One day all roads will lead to Palestine, which is the capital of all beauty, hope, love, roses and non-surrender. Will the day come? When will I look at it?

To these memoirs, I say and title them: “The Memoirs of a Genocide Survivor”. This is one of them.

This is one of my writings and one of my hardest days that I lived at the beginning of the genocide. The day will come when we will write about everything, so that the world knows the suffering of my people.

So that the world knows that we only want a life like the rest of the peoples of the world. Enjoying freedom, security, peace and independence. Gaza will unite the world on the words of freedom, unity and hope.

I have still not found an end to this hell that more than 2.3 million people are living in the Gaza Strip, with an area of 365 km.

The world is still watching and Israel is still practicing the ugliest methods of killing civilians and killing all laws, agreements, customs and morals.

Free Palestine.

God Bless You,

Yahya Al-Hamarna

Some of the biggest names in Welsh music including Charlotte Church, Dafydd Iwan and Mari Mathias have joined together for a musical project to support Palestinian fundraisers including one for Yahya.

‘When I Survive’ is a musical compilation and project that was created following Israel’s war on Gaza in 2024. Find out more here.