I was exhausted, dragging my suitcase as if it was a heavy stone. I think it was a bad idea to choose the Schiphol airport, I regretted that for some reasons; the worst one is that I couldn’t walk anymore to my departure gate, because it was a big airport and I dropped off from that Egyptian plan in a hall which was very far away!. I got lost, so I had to ask strange people about my gate direction, and it took almost an hour to reach it.

When I passed by the airport security checkpoint, the employer took my passport and she gave it to a police. He asked me to wait close to a room full with polices and telephones!. There I found myself surrounded by that blurry question: Why am I here?.

‘Do you speak English?’, the police asked me.

‘Yes’, I replied. But he repeated the question adding,

‘We can bring a translator for you’

‘I don’t need.. I know English’, I said!

He wanted to make sure that I would understand him when he spoke English with me, so he started throwing questions at me, most of them were personal. I got angry with him, so I said:

‘Why do you treat me this way?’

He smiled saying,

‘Well, if I want to visit your country, you would do the same what I’m doing with you right now!’

I was a little disappointed with his answer, and said to myself,

‘Damn, diplomacy is not my business’.

I was still waiting to get back my passport when an hour had passed by, and that police was still coming back to me with more and more questions.  When only ten minutes were left to catch my plan, I got confused.

‘What’s wrong?’

I was sitting on a seat waiting for good news from that police, I felt sad when I was watching people pass by me happily waiting their turn to go into the departure gate.. I felt how much Palestinians struggle when they travel. I was like a little girl wanting to cry in her mom’s arms.

Two hours later, I went to the police and shouted:

‘You’re annoying me a lot, why do you do this?’

He quietly replied;

‘It’s my job!’

I smiled and went back to my seat waiting.

Then, that police came to me holding my passport.

I felt like things proceeded seemingly fine, he gave me it with a new ticket to Sweden. I felt like ‘WOW’, although I asked him about his name, he answered me with a wondering ‘Why?’

And I said:

‘Because I want to write about how bad you treated me’, and he murmured:

‘Ok, but why?’

‘It’s my job’, I said!

He sat beside me and explained me the matter of such ‘dangerous’ passports from countries like Palestine, and then he wished me a good trip saying:

‘When you write about what happened, don’t mention my name’.

I headed off to catch my flight. I was going through mixed feelings.

Memories Of Operation Cast Lead: December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009

 Turn on your reaction,

 stand up for Gaza.

Those wars will never be drafted

those martyrs are not numbers

we are still present

strong like mountain.

27th of December, 2008. 11:00 AM

I was 18 years old. I was stressed and need to sleep too much, though I got up early to revise for my exam in Arabic inflectional morphology. Then I went to my university..   It was a sunny day, people were having their normal routines in my city. When I finished that exam, I left the university quickly to catch my friend and go back home together. Nothing was strange or dangerous!.

At the same day, at 11: 25 AM. Exactly when I entered my home, the Israeli massive and deadly explosions heard everywhere in Gaza Strip. My eyes watched warplanes when they began lunching air raids, and obliterated places in my neighborhood. The lights went out, and with the toxic smoke, we couldn’t breath. Everybody was absolutely terrified.

11:35 AM

Radio on, breaking news from my room:

Israel Started the war (Operation Cast Lead), they attacked 100 targets within a 3 min. At least 250  people have been killed so far.

OMG! They lost their mind. What is going, dad?.

The six day of Operation Cast Lead:

We, my family and I, moved to a flat in Tal Al-Hawa area. It was just indescribable. I was in need, I needed some sleep.. I haven’t slept for 30 hours. Suddenly there was a massive explosion. I’ve got glass in my hair and I heard my brother screaming “my ear hurts”. I heard people out in the street shouting things like I’m dying, my child is injured, please help me. I put my finger in my ear so that I couldn’t hear they anymore.. Very silent and my family was panicked..

After the hell:

I am now on one of Gaza’s pavements; from this point exactly the Red Crescent ambulance came and rescued us. The warplanes were striking the area. We hadn’t believed the pamphlets that they had dropped on us from the air. We were looking for any simple, common saviour. We did not believe the pamphlets that had ordered us to evacuate the area, but they [the Israeli warplanes] fired at us. The sky was raining bullets, and the sea opposite our home had turned into the fire of hell on Judgment Day… The people of the area gathered at the Abraaj Al-Kramah roundabout, and the cars and ambulances started to rescue us. I was afraid, terrified – but not because of the explosion which reverberated near me, but because of my book which I had seen recite poetry… Lorca, Lorca, Lorca…Who is the soldier whose glance killed me then? Was it a kiss, a rose, or a glance doing the work of a revolver?