By Khaled Al-Qershali: I wake up at 7 am and immediately head outside to the street to check our water supplies.
In front of the warehouse where my family lives are our three buckets. Only half of one of them is filled with water, and I know I will need to replenish our supply.
I wash my face and start to walk over to the school next door to see if a water shipment has come. Along the way, I see my neighbor Fayez Shabaat and he tells me that the water shipment did not come.
During the week, only one water shipment came.
I return to the warehouse where my mother, father, brother and I have been displaced since February, in Deir al-Balah, in southern Gaza.
My mother is awake, kneading dough.
I ask her what she wants from the market, and she asks me in turn what I want to eat.
We ate canned meat yesterday, I say, so it is better to eat something cheaper today.
It has been a while since we last ate rice, so she asks me to try and find 1 kilo of rice.
My grandmother is listening to us, so I ask her if she wants anything from the market for my grandfather. She asks me to bring tomatoes if there are any – and to only bring four or five, as 1 kilogram costs around $50.
I put on my sewn slippers and head to the market.
My grandfather Ahmad, who is 82, sits in his wheelchair in a shaded area of the street. I say good morning to him and continue walking.
After five minutes of walking, I pass by a neighborhood that has been completely destroyed. I pass by the ruins of a building where a massacre was committed by the Israeli occupation against the al-Hawajri family.
On a wall near the massacre site is a message written in red: “Jood is under the rubble 31 October 2023. Hasbi Allah wa Nim al-Wakeel.”
God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs.
Jood has since been pulled out from the rubble, though, as another message on the wall tells us this much.
Twenty meters from the massacre, I enter the spice shop, and I ask the seller for the spices and the rice. The shop is crowded.
The shopkeeper creates and mixes his own spice mixtures, and they are popular.
When he gives me what I ordered, I ask him to give me his phone number to transfer the money to his Bank of Palestine account. I pay $4.
I go to a grocery store on the other side of the street.
Adel Odah, the owner of the shop, accepted online payments during the famine. I greet Adel and look for onion, garlic, tomatoes and green pepper, but I do not find any.
When I ask Adel about it, he says that no vegetables have entered the Strip yet.
I exit the store and walk for 20 minutes until I reach al-Bohasi market.
I go there because, at one time, I could find everything I needed in that market. But this time I cannot find all that I need.
The place is crowded with people, most of them paying with their bank accounts as well. I pay $11 for a kilo of rice and $1 for ice cream.
I exit the market and walk rapidly for half an hour in search of the vegetables. By 8:30 am, I have reached al-Birka crossroads, where I know a vegetable seller who will accept a bank payment.
The man tells me that tomatoes are nonexistent in the market, and that the prices of onions and garlic have skyrocketed again. He also does not have green pepper.
$10 for an onion
I have around $37 cash in my wallet.
I go to a grocery store on the other side of the street and buy less than 200 grams of green pepper for $5; garlic for $5; and one small onion for $10.
Then I return to the warehouse and give my mother what I’ve bought.
My mother’s aunt is visiting us and I welcome her and sit with her. She says that she came here thinking that my uncle Mahmoud had an empty extra tent.
My uncle told her that the tent was destroyed last winter due to the bad weather.
When I ask her why she wants the tent, she replies that her home in Shujaiya has been completely destroyed.
My mother calls for me.
She says I need to return to the market because we’ll need more than a kilo of rice, since my aunt is here.
I am quick this time because I want to charge my phone at the school, since the school’s generator has finally been repaired. I go back to al-Bohasi market, buy the rice, pay with my phone and return to the warehouse.
After I enter the warehouse, I put my phone on the charger. The water has returned to the spout in the bathroom – a luxury that we experience only once or twice a week – and I take a shower and go to make myself breakfast.
I make two cheese sandwiches and a cup of coffee, and all the while I do the math in my head: $5 for the cheese; $18 for 250 grams of coffee.
I make the coffee over the fire, which is made up of the wood my brother Omar chopped yesterday.
While I eat, Omar is chopping even more firewood and my mother is preparing the rice.
When I finish, I go to the school in search of a lighter for the fire. Earlier, I could not find one at the market, and even if I had, it would’ve cost $20.
I cannot find anyone with a lighter at the school, but I do find my neighbor who owns a clay oven and I ask him to light a piece of cardboard I have so that we can light our fire to cook.
He takes the cardboard, lights it and gives it to me.
I light the fire back at home; the smoke makes me sneeze and my eyes tear up.
Guilt and hesitation
After we cook the rice, I do ablution for al-Zuhr, or noon prayer. I then take my phone, connect to the internet and start working.
I reply to emails, send out new pitches and scroll my Instagram. I see posts from friends who have obtained scholarships and have been evacuated out of Gaza.
My friend Khaled had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to a university in Ireland or the UK to complete my education. But I was afraid to apply and travel abroad without my parents, so I went to my mom to ask her opinion on traveling alone.
She supported me, saying that it is my life and I should do what I believe is best for me.
Yet the idea of leaving my family behind to suffer in Gaza while being abroad fills me with guilt and hesitation.
Why should my younger siblings remain in Gaza without any chance to complete their education while I might have the chance to complete mine?
Other posts on social media are about some protests in Europe; how people around the world know the truth about the Palestinian cause.
Even more posts are from people in Gaza, about their suffering. I look at these posts and think of how I can document this suffering.
I open my Google Docs app and start work on one of my accepted articles.
My family usually eats lunch when my father returns from work at the hospital around 2:30 pm.
My family sits to eat together, but I do not sit with them. For many months, I have delayed my lunch till dusk, since we do not have the luxury of eating a meal called dinner.
At 6 pm, I take my phone to a charging point near the warehouse and then return to eat my “lunch.”
After eating, I pray al-Maghreb prayer and go to the school to see my friends and neighbors.
Mohammed al-Ghoz and Yehya Yehya tell me they want to play cards after al-Aish prayer, and I tell them I will be there.
Before the genocide, I was not a sociable person. I lived mostly in my room, an orderly space with an eight-drawer desk and two monitors connected to my laptop, a bed behind me covered by a heavy blanket, and a view of the sea from the window.
I would play computer games, watch movies or study for university classes.
I visited my grandparents and uncles only once a month, and then once or twice a week I got together with friends.
I think often of the time when my friend Mohammed Hamo asked me to go out with him to a café to watch the World Cup final in December 2022, Argentina vs. France, playing in Qatar.
“No, I won’t be able to come,” I said. “I have to study for my poetry class.”
I did not know how much I would regret that moment. I wish I had watched the match with Mohammed.
The murder of Mohammed Hamo and my other dear friend Abdallah al-Khaldi on 24 November 2023 by Israel taught me to value every minute of my life I spend with my family and friends.
Now I spend all my days either with my family or my new friends, whom I’ve met after being displaced to Deir al-Balah.
At 8 pm, I pick up my phone from the charging point and then go to the school to see friends.
We gather in a small tent where a few of the guys live. We sit on a mat on the ground and play a game called Trex.
It’s a game for four players, and it’s played in teams of two; so every round when a team loses, another team rotates in.
We play for over four hours.
At 12:45 am, Mohammed and Yehya are ready to go to sleep, so I return to the warehouse to do the same.
I look at my phone for a while and read a novel, No One Sleeps in Alexandria, by Egyptian writer Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, and then fall asleep.
Khaled Al-Qershali is an English graduate working as a journalist in Gaza.
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