The Electronic Intifada 30 April 2024
So much has been destroyed in Khan Younis.
APA imagesI never imagined that I would write a story like this one.
I never imagined that I would go through such a painful day as 3 March this year.
That was when we received news from a neighbor that Israel had destroyed our home. It was located in Batn al-Samin, an area of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
We were all devastated. We wept.
Then one of us said, “Thank God we were not in the house.”
Thank God we had fled further south to Rafah.
Thank God we could console each other.
Ten members of our family discussed what to do.
One of my brothers said he would go and see what remained of our home. If he could find any important documents in the rubble, he would bring them back.
Hassan and Hussein – my brothers – went to Khan Younis in search of the documents.
My mother asked them to bring back family photographs.
She had a large collection. They included photographs of my grandparents, may God have mercy on them.
Some of her photographs were a few decades old.
My mother kept them. They reminded her of happy times.
I told my brothers that the photographs were inside a yellow bag. They had been stored on the top shelf of our mother’s closet.
Shocked
Hassan and Hussein were shocked when they arrived in the neighborhood where we lived. There was nothing left to mark the boundary between our house and that of our neighbors.
Everything in the neighborhood had been razed. The area looked like somewhere where no house had been built in a long time.
When my brothers came back, there were tears in their eyes and a look of agony on their faces.
One of my brothers spoke about how he had previously lived in Sudan but left it during a war.
“I escaped from Sudan with nothing,” he said. “And back here, I have escaped death but lost everything.”
He then asked God for help.
My mother cried as her collection of photographs was gone. So were the university degrees of her children.
My little sister cried for a doll she had cherished for six years.
She loved that doll. Every day, she combed the doll’s hair.
Every year, she organized a birthday celebration for the doll.
As well as our home, schools near us have been destroyed.
One of my brothers excels at football. The stadium where he played and trained has been destroyed.
Israel has destroyed not only our favorite restaurant but all the restaurants near where we lived.
The parks – where we spent so many special times – have been destroyed.
One of my brothers opened a medical clinic less than a year ago. It has been destroyed.
Another brother had a shop. It has been destroyed, along with all the stock.
So much else has been destroyed in Khan Younis.
Walls can be rebuilt. But a home means a lot more than four walls and a roof.
A home contains a lifetime of memories.
Lubna Ahmad Abu Sitta is a teacher and content writer from Gaza.
