On this last day of Ramadan, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, my mom has already made the special Eid al-Fitr sweets. We make this kind of sweets only on this Eid.

Yesterday, I went with my sister to the clothing store to purchase new dresses, shoes and other things. The streets were overcrowded; you could hear the car horns and watch fireworks going off. Many children were dressed in colorful clothes and played in the streets. When we arrived at the clothing store, we were surprised by the amount of people. Can you imagine Gaza these days? This is a wonderful time and how I wish it to be repeated. The beautiful things in life – the days that we love – pass quickly and come to us only as visitors. Does Santa Claus come to you more than once in a year?

On the night before the Eid, lights flow out of Gaza, people don’t sleep for joy and anticipation of the wonderful morning of Eid. In the morning, the mosques start takbi’r (exclaiming “Allahu Akbar -means God is Greatest”). You can hear the happy takbi’r of people: ” ِAllahu Akbar…”

I spend these Eid days with my family in Gaza: we wake up early, eat fried fish as our tradition breakfast each morning, put on new clothes, and go to kiss our father’s forehead and mother as an expression of respect and filial piety – and as the role of our parents, they shall pray for us and give us some money. Relatives visit each other and exchange coins, which called in Arabic ‘Al-Eidiah’.

I like to spend the Eid days watching kids while they are having fun with each other, which brings me back to my childhood. I was a very quiet child but at the same time very noisy. After having the fried fish, I would go to my mother’s garden, water the plants and then pick some flowers to put among my papers in order to spread the smell of perfume between the sheets. Then I start writing my memoirs.

On the third and last day of the Eid, I rip up my memoirs and throw them into the sea. I think that the waves will read my words and love me, or maybe the fish will eat my stories!

Happy Eid, my family and my friends everywhere.

عيد سعيد لعائلتي و لكل أصدقائي أينما كانوا .

Eid Sa’id  🙂

 

In this small spot in this big world, Gaza lives and roses from the eyes of the dawn.. Sunrise at 6:00 Am and sunset about 18:10.

Nowadays, I  used to wake up at 10:00 Am, it is too late, of course!. Often people tend to rise about 7:00 Am; but if I do the same, I might get a long day with a lot of boredom, that’s my routine since I graduated from IUG university.

Here, we love coffee, make it in a small Arab pot with a green cardamom, for me, yeah, I love it!. In the morning, I make mine a cup of coffee and sip it with Fairuz songs (a famous Lebanese singer). The bad thing in my days is that I should comb my hair, and this task makes me grumble because I don’t like to remember that I have curly hair!!.

My daily routine depends on two things: Books and Love, if I lose one of them, my day will be unbalanced: Books give me the power I need, Love stimulates me!. Love is very important to keep you alive, it is the essence of life. Other than this there are my friends, specially: Nida’a, Ala’a and Nadia, we’ve been meeting in Gaza and talking with each other, they have a great stories, sometimes talking to me candidly with concern of writing down/ publishing their “personal stories”. Indeed, I would to do that, at least that will help somehow in knowing the reality of women’s life in Gaza; they are still my best friends anyway, always inspire me..

Friendships are based on cooperation and altruism, your neighbor is like your brother, such one of your family, it is really great when you open your window by chance with your neighbor at  the same time and greet him spontaneously with happy mien. In my city, all people are such a lovely beehive, you can not live without a good neighbor, otherwise you would be a stranger!.

Written by: Kawther AbuHani
Edited by: Ghosson Rahhal, Jordan.

“I  don’t like that I was born at a Swedish hospital “, I was hallucinating, then I wouldn’t to stop tossing and turning.. I felt like I’m going to die.

I wore my clothes quickly then my father took me to the hospital. They put me in a very bad room, my breath dropped slowly from my lungs, almost I suffocating .. I thought that the doctors were hiding in a corner.. there waiting for me to die .. No one in the room, my father looking for a nurse, but they were busy in other rooms with other patients.. What a hospital!, they don’t  take a good care of the sick one. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t, because I felt a very bad pain in the middle of my chest, which spread, and a dizzy such I sink into a huge storm.. I could hear a woman screaming in the next room, call out for the doctors, and in other rooms there were children screaming..

I felt as if I’m in hell .. I felt like I’m in those hospitals that had cared for the wounded persons transported during the America’s war in Vietnam, where rats were running under the beds, the wounded getting more bad injury due to that ill-attention .. Like that I was, at the dark night. I wreaked my curse upon the doctors, they were such a physicians wars, lacks humanity .. my breath choked, my father were still looking for a doctor, then after all, a doctor came with surly face, not smiling at all, he came just such a blind and a dumb, he placed the stethoscope on my chest stupidly and said, “Nothing, your breathing is well.” .. And I was choking, he lied, I was really suffering from dyspnea. The doctors here are paralleling the doctors in Israel, to take well care of you, you must bribe them a large sums of money!.

 My health was deteriorating more and more, so I preferred to die at home better than to die at that hospital, the idea that you’ll die in a dirty hospital, the idea that you’ll die between a stupid doctors, the idea that you’ll die in a place you does not love him .. This is the “Perdition“.

I went home, washed myself from the smell of the hospital, the water poured down my body.. I would love to peel my skin to get rid of the trace of that stethoscope.
Now, I’m fine and my health is excellent, the birds eat the crumbs of bread from my hand and fly near my balcony !

On the shore.. there was a young writing a word on the wet sand, I peeped at what he wrote, it seemed a girl’s name, I perceived that he was in love with her!. After few minutes, a strange man came and erased  that name with his shoes, it almost disappeared. What a pity!. The young scared and throw himself into the sea.. he was swimming sadly.. while the strange man went away from him.
Later, I knew that he was one of the intelligence agency. Love in Gaza is forbidden for political, traditional and religious reasons..

I have mentioned the story of that lover young because I actually felt so sorry about him until now, and all lover in Gaza. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no one enjoy love with the “opposite sex” ( I can’t say boyfriend or girlfriend because in Gaza we have never used these expressions, we just say: habibi (means: my beloved) or hayati (means: my life).. and such that ).

Love in Gaza characterized by humbleness and shyness, it’s about to become obscure.. the Islamic spirit surround Gazans lovers considerably. You could not touch your beloved’s hand!, just smile at him/ her, or call him/ her secretly.
On the other hand, if you walk with your wife in the street, you can’t kiss her, otherwise people will consider that immoral.

With respect to sex, it’s very critical issue, you cannot argue or talk about sex openly, just between your friend as a secret and that needs to be bolder.. and you can’t have sex with your beloved only after a legal marriage in the Syariah Court..

In spite of that, there’s many things have been happening like a trysts between tow lovers and like the swift kisses in the lanes of the refugee camps… ect. But if you can’t bear that anymore and find your free way in love by internet, the secret service will block your way.. like if you open porn websites/ videos, it’ll not work!.

Anyhow, there are secret love stories go in Gaza, there are men and women plan and devise effective ways to keep their life in order and be successful !