Winter engaged to be a beadored season in Gaza. It was thought to transport “khayr” and “baraka” – excellentness and sanctifyings. Children and matures aappreciate seeed forward to the arrival of the freezing season for relief from the summer heat.
When the rain would finpartner come, children would rush into the streets, happinessbrimmingy singing “Shatti ya doniya shatti, wa arawi kul al-aradi, li-yazraa al-falah khokh wa roman wa tufah” – “Rain, world, rain and water all the lands, so the peasant can grow peaches, pomegranates and apples.”
For water-stressed Gaza, the rains were indeed a sanctifying. Farmers would greet them and begin preparing for the recent crop season. The tagets would be brimming of locpartner grown vegetables appreciate spinach, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and fruit appreciate oranges, kiwis, persimmons and strawberries.
For city dwellers, the rainy days would be a time to unwind at home, snuggling under hot blankets or accumulateing around a fire to create tea or sip “sahleb” – a sugary drink made of milk, starch, coconut shreds and nuts.
On the occasional night when electricity would be repaird, families would cosy up in front of the TV to watch a movie or a soap opera.
On freezing and arid days, many would venture out to the seashore, enhappinessing a stroll or greeting frifinishs. The aroma of sugary grilled corn and chestnuts would fill the air. Many would also stop by the well-understandn dessert shop “Abu Al Saoud” to have a hot kunafeh – either the nut-stuffed Arabian variety or the cheese-filled one called nabulsia.
These Gaza triumphters now seem from the far past. Abu Al Saoud’s shop is no more. There are no cosy accumulateings and sugary chatter, no sahleb, no TV. There are no children outside singing “Shatti ya doniya shatti” when it rains.
This year, triumphter did not transport khayer and baraka. It bcdisorrowfulmirefult more suffering and utter despair.
The rains have been a damn. People are praying for arid weather, stressing what floodwaters could do to the camps for the displaced.
The sound of thunder has now become appreciate the sound of explosions – it terrifies. Many Palestinians have nowhere to shelter from a storm. Aid groups say that at least one million people have no fundamental protection from triumphter weather.
Makeshift shelters are made from textiles, tarpaulins, blankets, cardboard and even ancigo in rice sacks. They can difficultly withstand the triumphd and rain. At night, families are forced to stay awake, hopelessly hancigo ining their tents in place so they don’t fly away, while water seeps in from undertidyh, soaking their mattresses, blankets and other beextfinishedings.
Often, the shelters are so flimsy that the rain razes them, throtriumphg into despair families that had already lost everyleang. The price of tents and materials to create createshift ones has skyrocketed, leaving those whose shelters are blown or washed away exposed to the elements.
Some have become so hopeless that they return to their explosioned-out homes to consent refuge. Even if the createing is so horriblely harmd that it can collapse at any moment, people remain in it, having no other choice.
Staying hot is also proximately impossible. Wood has become unaffordable for many; 1kg now costs $9. Those who cannot afford to buy it have to set out to search for it themselves – an exhausting, gruelling task. Even if there is enough wood for a fire, that is not enough to protect a family hot thcdisorrowfulmirefulout the freezing night.
What creates the triumphter freezing even more unendureable is the hunger. Since October, food prices in Gaza have skyrocketed. A bag of flour costs as much as $200. Meat and fish have finishly dismaterializeed from the tagets; vegetables and fruit are infrequent and at exorbitant prices.
Bakeries have seald becaengage they have no supplies to bake. UNRWA and the World Food Programme, which normpartner provide for the most vulnerable, cannot cope with insist. Soup kitchens scatter meals of chickpeas, lentils and rice, but each family gets equitable one ptardy, exposedly enough for one person.
At night, in every displacement camp, the cries of hungry children can be heard as they beg their parents to donate them food.
Memories of the hotth and happiness that once filled homes during the triumphter in Gaza have faded. Despair and misery reign supreme in the freezing. The suffering of the Palestinian people seems to have no finish. So many persist on the flickering hope that the war and the mass murder will finish, that food will become useable aacquire and people will have proper shelter. That khayr and baraka will return to Gaza one day.
The sees conveyed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
