Over the past harrowing three weeks, the world has witnessed the screams and cries of Gazans for help. These desperate pleas have been so widely broadcast across our TVs and social media channels, and not one of us can pretend not to know something of the unfolding apocalyptic disaster.
On Friday evening, Gaza went dark. Already scrambling for basic medical supplies, electricity, food or water, Israel severed internet, wi-fi and phone connections, creating an almost complete communications blackout and cutting Gaza off from the outside world. While some connectivity has returned, the uncertainty around communication has added another element for this desperate population.
Inside Gaza, people are struggling to contact each other, separated families have no way of knowing if their loved ones are still alive, and those rescuing the severely injured from under rubble cannot call for ambulances. Through and beyond this blackout, heavy military bombardments have intensified, including in areas surrounding major hospitals, the tragic loss of civilian lives continues, and Gazans are cowering in unfathomable fear.
The Observer wrote this on Saturday morning “Gaza’s inhabitants are descending into hell…day by dreadful day, these people are becoming invisible, as if in a land of ghosts, stumbling through the rubble, unseen, unaided, abandoned”.
My colleagues and I have stayed in regular contact with our friends and colleagues in Gaza. The below is written with the permission of those who shared what they were going through — when we could still hear their voices.
These voices include healthcare colleagues, academics, translators and interpreters, taxi drivers, mums, dads, grandparents, and children.
As the voices out of Gaza stopped over the weekend, it created a thunderous silence from Gaza that should now only make the rest of us scream even louder for this hell to end.
VOICES
“We are dying here.”
“The sounds of death are everywhere.”
“The spectre of death looms ever closer.”
“We smell death on every breath.”
“Who is the next who will die?”
“Last night we died one hundred times.”
A death from bombs that whistle causing panic ‘is it us?’ and then they scatter bodies and shatter family generations that sat together eating pecan knafeh on plush crimson couches
a death from powders that plummet from the sky and blacken and dissolve the soft flesh of children with their newly painted golden fingernails
a death when there is nothing left to mend a bloody wound but medieval stitches and stinging splashes from vinegar bottles standing lonely at Saqer market
a death from inhaling the damp thick culture broth of hospital corridors
a death in the safe surrounds of schools that used to buzz with painting and marbles and siblings who lie together now in red-stained shrouds
a death when the cribs can no longer beep in clinical rhythm and the precious newborn takes its last gasp and has no idea what it did wrong
a death from the cancer tumours that prosper in you without chemicals to starve them
a death as the whir of dialysers comes to a halt
a death of a mother giving birth too soon because her body screams with trauma and her PhD can’t help her now
a death because you drove an ambulance
a death because your ageing body was too frail to leave
a death because you remained to hug your grandfather
a death because you stayed
a death because you ran
a death because the trucks were too little too late to wet your cracked lips that once paraded juicy colour but now lick only gritty air.
“My birthday wish is for my birthday not to be my death day.”
“We write their names on palms and legs hoping their identities will not be forgotten.”
“We will not give up until the last breath of the youngest Palestinian child.”
“The worst thing that could happen to us is that the world becomes indifferent to the scene of our death and annihilation.”
A slow-motion death with two million cries into every darkened night because the world has failed to hear you
has blamed you
has animalised you.
Sorry we have failed you.
“We are alive without life waiting for God’s relief.”
“Don’t leave Gaza alone.”
“Thank you. I hope our voice reaches all the world.”
Are you still there?
Photo above: Palestinians search a house after an Israeli air strike, in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on October 12 2023. Photo by Anas-Mohammed