You would think, “think” being the keyword here, that at the age of five your parents would surprise you with a trip to Disneyland, the beach, or something exciting. That is, something exciting for the right reasons—because let’s face it: Gaza was exciting.
August 20th, 2011. I remember it like yesterday. I remember it all too well. From the first day to the last day in Gaza, I remember details that I will never forget. But August 20th wouldn’t resonate with me just because it’s my mother’s birthday. It would resonate with me for the rest of my life because of the terror I survived. Some would say it’s trauma, and that is true to an extent. But what happened that day will forever change my life and I didn’t even know it. Who would’ve thought that at the age of 5, my life course would be altered.
We landed in Egypt in early May where we would go through the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza where all seven of us were interrogated for hours. Apparently being from Gaza makes you a risk? I didn’t understand much at the time, but what I do know is that sleeping on chairs in the heat for hours was not ideal.
“What connections do you have to the Muslim Brotherhood?”
“What business do you have in Gaza?”
After hours of interrogations by Egyptian officials (that led them nowhere), we passed through and were able to go to my father’s family home where over twenty people were waiting for our arrival. You see, being from America, everyone gets so excited to see you-except for my cousins who would call us “America’s daughters” for speaking English and not being accustomed to the conditions in Gaza. Don’t get me wrong, Gaza is beautiful, one of the most beautiful places I have been to. Our homes had roofs with rooms where kids longed to play as there were majestic views. From the beaches to the rich dishes, it was just beautiful. And so are its people and I don’t say this just because I am Palestinian but truly I have not seen a more resilient group of people in my life. To our defense, we weren’t used to seeing kids playing shoeless in the streets, sand everywhere, and most of all: destruction. Some buildings were barely standing. Oh and another thing: we weren’t used to being told not to play on the roof of our family’s home because we would get shot. The fact that we didn’t know that one seemed to surprise them.
But the occupation was visible on the streets and within every home. Every family had members who had been martyred. There were nights when my sisters and I would wake up screaming and crying from the sounds of bombings. “They are a mile away, we are fine” my grandmother would tell us. And after a couple of times, it became normal to see and hear the drones. It’s almost as if we just accepted it, just like everyone else. Everyone in Gaza was a survivor of terror. I didn’t think I would be there long enough to say that, but I was proven wrong, a common theme throughout my life it seems.
That night, we had broken our fast at sunset as it was Ramadan. We sat all around the fountain in the courtyard in the most Arab way possible: on white plastic chairs, with hookah in everyone’s hand, and of course tea and sunflower seeds. My mother’s cousin’s fiancé wanted to come over to spend the night with us. As we are in Gaza, there are no streetlights and there are no other homes on our road except our own. I, along with my sisters and another cousin of my mother’s, decided we would wait for the fiance outside the gate so he could see the house. As we stood there, bored, my mom’s cousin decided to take pictures of us with the camera we brought.
“Look at the camera, guys,” he said, in an attempt to get our attention. But something else caught our eye. “A shooting star!” we said. Or we thought, at least. It seems that I was proven wrong on multiple accounts during my time in Gaza. But this was the one time I wished I wasn’t wrong. Before we knew it, the “shooting star” kept getting closer until it blew up in front of us. With the sound of the airstrike came the screams and cries of my sisters and me.
“RUN!” they all shouted from the inside of the house. I don’t think we have run faster in our lives. It was like we were a bunch of Olympian runners running for a prize. We were running for a very important prize: life.
“Grab the passports and get in the car!” my mom said. Our extended family had come to get us so that we could quickly leave. At this point, we were just silent. We went from laughing to crying then to silence. Later I came to realize that it was not a shooting star and that it wouldn’t be a one-and-done thing. After a couple of weeks of negotiations between the US and Egypt, we were able to leave. The airstrike that almost killed us was the first of what would be months of bombing.
Twelve years later, some people are still silent, and not for the same reason I was after the attack on my home. Palestine has been under illegal occupation since 1948, so the current events happening in Gaza are nothing new. The Nakba, also known as “catastrophe” in English, took place in 1948. During the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes and many were massacred. The UN’s partition proposal back in 1947 led to fighting between the Palestinians and Israelis which caused the Nakba. Since October 7th, 2023, there has been constant bombing that has killed over 18,000 people, half being children. In addition to the bombardment, many Palestinians are being taken and assaulted by Israeli Forces. Food, water, and any form of electricity have been cut off, leaving over two million people on the brink of starvation. Women no longer have access to feminine hygiene products. Cholera along with other diseases that have yet to be identified have been rampant. There are millions of Palestinians displaced and are being pushed further south so that they can be easily targeted by Israeli Occupation Forces. Gaza has been destroyed with no end to the bombardment in sight. In the West Bank, there are women and children being killed by Israeli soldiers. Families are being forcibly removed from their homes so settlers can take them. The effects of the genocide can be seen in the West as well. There are Palestinians who are being stabbed and killed for simply being of Arab background. Muslim and Arab crime rates have climbed significantly since October 7th in the United States.
Mass protests in support of a call for a ceasefire have taken place all over the world. People are showing support for the Palestinian cause by boycotting companies like Starbucks that are supporting Israel in the war. Political pressure continues to grow as more countries begin to call for a ceasefire.
A reflection of a memoir
When reading a memoir such as Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood, one might think that writing a memoir is easy, especially if they are writing about a story they enjoy telling or they’re talking about an important event in their life. Ironically, it looks a lot easier than it really is. There is a lot of thought that has to go into writing a memoir because you have to convey specific emotions that are sometimes hard to express on paper.
As I began writing my memoir, I became very emotional. I didn’t think I would be like that considering I have told this story a million times. However, something about this time seemed a little different. Perhaps because of everything going on in Gaza, I feel as though my wound has been reopened. Watching the videos and images being released of the children takes me right back to my own photos of my time there as a child. I am left devastated and utterly speechless which is something not apparent in Lockwood’s memoir.
In Priestdaddy, Lockwood speaks about traumatic events like her rape. It’s quite interesting to see that for the first time, I relate to Lockwood. When talking about ‘Rape Joke,’ she explains how “Poetry is a companion: you sit with it mostly in silence, and look up from your reading every once in a while and nod to it, and sometimes there are great rushes of like-minded, sentence-finishing conversation. It came all at once, the lines racing off the edges of the pages as if to jump back into the stream of present time: all of it happened again, red and fresh, but I could move my body through the narration as I could not move it through that night” (Chapter 7). Although I am not writing poetry and I am not speaking about being raped, writing the memoir about a traumatic event produced a very similar emotion for me. As I wrote my memoir, I was sitting in London, a couple of weeks after losing my grandmother in Gaza, and here I am again writing this reflection a day after my cousin was killed. In both cases, I just write whatever comes to my mind and take my eyes off the paper in an attempt to collect my thoughts.
Throughout my memoir, I attempt to incorporate humor. I do this when I share this story in general, whether it be spoken or written. This is another way in which Lockwood and I share another writing component. We both use humor as a coping mechanism. Back to the rape story, Lockwood says “This would be the wrong moment to laugh, but I almost do, remembering the time we drove past a bridge in Cincinnati that was famous for being painted purple, and my mother turned to me with enormous, electrified eyes and said, ‘Someone got raped, Tricia. Someone got raped on the Purple People Bridge’”(Chapter 7). In a different manner, I use humor while speaking about my experience when I say “You would think, think being the keyword here, that at the age of five your parents would surprise you with a trip to Disneyland, the beach, or something exciting. That is, something exciting for the right reasons because let’s face it: Gaza was exciting.” Both cases can be described as humorous but we use it differently. Lockwood is better at using humor in her situations than I am. She tends to use it as a separate idea or thought whereas my humor is used when I talk about specific parts of the story, instead of adding a humorous comment.. For example, she said “Rules about waiting a half hour after lunch to go swimming were to be as strenuously disobeyed as the laws of Bill Clinton” (Chapter 10) when speaking about how she was learning to swim under her father’s questionable approach. I, on the other hand, don’t use my humor in that manner, as I mentioned.
In regard to the genocide happening in Gaza, I would say I am quite educated, considering I experienced it firsthand. The genocide is nothing new,but began in 1948 when thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, as mentioned earlier. As Haifa Rashid and Dr Damien Short put it: “There is a very strong argument that Zionist Israel has committed, and continues to commit, genocide against Palestine and the Palestinians in terms of Lemkin’s famous passage on the opening page of chapter nine of Axis Rule” (Page 3). There is this idea that the “conflict” is “complicated” which can easily be debunked if one were to educate themselves about the conditions of Gaza and the West Bank, where Palestinians are deemed inferior. “Palestinians in the occupied territories did not have their basic rights including citizenship, self-determination, or even recognised borders” (Nijim 3).
Then comes the question of: well what about the other side? Isn’t there some type of reason for Israel to continue their aggression? There is an answer to this. Israel claims their religious right to the land. Israelis can receive Israeli citizenship in many ways. They can receive it through marriage, naturalization, by birth, residence, and by Law of Return. Law of Return offers anyone of the Jewish faith citizenship as long as they are able to prove it, which is usually the most popular way of getting citizenship. This leads to programs like Birthright where the Israeli government offers any Jewish person a trip to the homeland. “On the basis of Pew’s data, it is estimated that nearly 20% of American Jews ages 18–46 (the age group that was eligible to participate in the program at some point) have participated in Birthright Israel. It is also estimated that, among Jewish parents with a grown child, nearly 30% have an adult child who participated in the program” (Saxe 2) . This program being spoken about is an educational program that is offered to Jewish people about their faith and their ties to the land. It is offered to any Jew of any background. Birthright is the way in which Israel is able to express their idea that Palestine is the Jewish holy land. By pushing their agenda of birthright and offering citizenships to all Jews, they forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians who then left refugees in their own country.
The topic of my homeland will never not be something I talk about, as it is a part of me. Now, more than ever, education about this topic continues, and I myself continue to learn more every day. I am eighteen and a survivor of genocide. And to exist is to resist. Ever since that bomb missed me, I have not stopped talking about Palestine and my people. I came back from Gaza and began to attend protests to stop the very aggression that almost killed me. Twelve years later, I take on a larger role in the community as an activist as I confront politicians and continue to protest for my right to live. As long as I live, I will continue to tell my story–Palestine’s story.
Works Cited
Lockwood, Patricia. Priestdaddy . Penguin Books Ltd., 2018.
Nijim, Mohammed. “Genocide in Palestine: Gaza as a case study.” The International Journal of Human Rights , vol. 27, no. 1, 2022, pp. 165–200, https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2022.2065261.
Rashed, Haifa, et al. “Nakba memoricide: Genocide studies and the Zionist/Israeli genocide of Palestine.” Holy Land Studies , vol. 13, no. 1, 1 May 2014, pp. 1–23, https://doi.org/10.3366/hls.2014.0076.
Saxe, Leonard, et al. “The reach and impact of Birthright Israel: What we can learn from Pew’s ‘Jewish Americans in 2020.’” Contemporary Jewry, vol. 43, no. 2, 2022, pp. 321–341, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-022-09467-6.