The Electronic Intifada 3 December 2024
A man holds up a Quran salvaged from the rubble of the Khalid ibn Walid mosque in Khan Younis, which was targeted in an Israeli bombing in November 2023.
APA imagesMy mother Samar’s birthday fell on 31 October.
Last year, she was meant to celebrate her 55th birthday, but by the time it came around we had already been displaced by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment.
So my siblings and I promised my mother that we would make it up to her once we were back home. But on 15 October this year, a year to the day when we were forced to flee our home in the north, we were no closer to any return.
At the time, I pointed out this unwanted anniversary to my mother, who was writing in a notebook.
“Really?” she queried and then stopped writing while her eyes zoned out a little.
As she seemingly daydreamed, I asked whether she finally allowed herself to process a whole year of forcible displacement.
“My journey with the Quran,” she said in reply.
“Of course I didn’t,” she continued. “I thought of a title for my next article. I will be writing about my journey teaching the Quran over the past year.”
I was baffled by the steadfastness of my mother – once again. She is a diligent teacher and learner by nature. Once she decides to do something, she gives her all to it. Back at home, her days were occupied with writing, studying, learning, teaching and enjoying the whole process.
“Teaching is my mission. I am a teacher by nature,” she will always say, seeing in each family gathering a possible classroom.
She has a master’s degree in pedagogy and applies it mainly to teaching women, young and old, how to study the Quran, recite it properly and understand it well.
“Die working”
The Israeli genocide has left Mama jobless of course, but it couldn’t kill the teacher inside her.
“I’d rather die working,” Mama said firmly every time any sense of fear hit her.
When we – my mother, my dad, younger siblings Misk and Emad, my brother Muhammad and his wife and kids – fled to Rafah last year, we sought shelter in my uncles’ building.
Reuniting with my cousins after living horrible experiences, I spent long nights recounting these terrifying stories over and over again.
But women, Mama believes, shouldn’t be wasting their lives with fear. Our storytelling circle looked like a perfect new Quran halaqa, or religious study group, to her.
And so it was that during the darkest nights of Israel’s bombardments, my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles would all gather on the ground floor and, led by my mother, start to recite various Quranic verses.
My mother’s mission was to work. More specifically, her mission was to continue the work she had at home as a Quran teacher and supervisor, moving her “school” with her through three forced displacements so far.
When the Rafah ground invasion started in May, we had to flee to central Gaza. Four months later, we moved to Khan Younis, where we are now. We live in a crammed camp, of which little nice can be said other than that it provides students for my mother’s new Quran studies groups.
Sometimes we yearn for our home in Gaza. My mum does too. But while we remember our “fancy” beds and belongings, she misses her local masjid and her former students the most.
She prefers not to talk about what we left behind.
“If I allow myself to think, I would drown in despair. I keep myself busy with learning and teaching instead,” she once told me after I had asked her if she misses our pomegranate, olive and lemon trees, or the roses Baba had planted in our garden.
Mama misses home, too
On a mission
As a teacher of hundreds, a mother of ten and a grandmother of more than 20, my mother is not shy of impressing upon everyone she meets that they must not surrender to Israel’s plans to eliminate our existence.
She calls our forcible expulsion “a journey.” She never describes herself as “displaced,” instead she tries to treat it as a camping excursion or a work mission, a chance, as she once put it, for her to meet new students from around the Gaza Strip.
Adapting to new situations, making a home out of nothing and spreading hope in such chaos has given my mother purpose. Not because she doesn’t care about all we left behind, but because she cares too much. Because merely “thinking” about this insanity will never change a thing.
Finding beauty in discord is her secret to pursuing her mission.
“It’s the peace of mind that no occupation force can ever take from us,” she once told me.
And it is that spirit that enables her to overcome all the challenges constantly put in her way.
My mother’s tent in Khan Younis – in a huge camp for the displaced called Buraq – is her home and her workplace. Her bags and pockets are where she keeps gifts to encourage her students.
Teaching the Quran is her full-time job.
“Read for me while I cook,” she tells her granddaughters in the morning while she fixes breakfast.
She always multitasks.
She never said “no,” or “later,” to anyone at the door of her tent wanting to learn the Quran.
An eager learner is always her top priority, even on a night when she has already retired to bed and another “Aunt Samar?” query invades the tent.
Her response: “Sure, come in.”
“They want us busy providing for our basic needs,” my mother once said about the siege Israel has imposed on Gaza. “But I want to build souls as well as bodies.”
Baking bread, sowing seeds, mending every torn piece of clothing handed to her and teaching the Quran – that’s how my mother has spent a year under Israel’s genocidal aggression.
During this horrid time, my mother managed to create and supervise more than 15 Quran halaqas across the Gaza Strip, keeping in touch online with her students whenever possible.
We never did celebrate her birthday this year, a day that saw us away from our home for one year and 15 days, and now nearly 14 months.
But my mother’s mission continues.
Amna Shabana is a freelance writer, translator and trainer from Gaza City.
