TODAY IS CALM. No explosions so far. Everything adopts the appearance of normality. If you don’t happen to be near one of the UNRWA camps, you might not think there was a war going on at all. The sound of drones persists, but that’s normal in Gaza regardless of whether there’s a war. Everyone goes about their business just as they would in peacetime. You realize how odd this looks. You don’t trust it. There must be a catch, some kind of trick being played. A hidden fact you haven’t realized. The day feels like an oasis of calm in an endlessly wide desert of war. A mirage, perhaps.
It’s midday and nothing happens. I turn on the radio to see if there’s any news I don’t know about already—you hear every single explosion at night, but during the day their sounds are masked by other noises so you don’t hear every one. Also, the more you get used to something happening, no matter how extreme or life-threatening, the less you notice it. For these reasons, I don’t trust the silence or the calm. I don’t believe it. Likewise, when you’re in the middle of an air raid, you don’t believe it either. It’s unreal, you need to convince yourself it’s a dream, it’s going to end.
Hanna tells me there was a discussion on the radio this morning about postponing the opening of schools. School term was meant to start on 24 August, but this is impossible for the UNRWA schools at least because thousands of people are currently living in them. They’re now looking at postponing the start of the new school year until October, Hanna explains. Naeem listens to this, quietly. Unusually for a boy his age, he loves school. He complains that he doesn’t want to have to wait until October before he can go back. Then he asks suddenly: “Are there people living in my school?” Talal and Mostafa’s school is run by UNRWA and based in Jabalia Camp near where we’re staying, whilst Naeem and Yasser’s school is run by the government and located in Saftawi, near our actual home. He is happy when I explain to him there are no displaced persons living in his particular school.
“Then the new term is not going to be postponed!”
For him it’s a simple logic and people should follow it. Sadly, it is not going to be followed. I’m grateful it’s not me who made this decision. Hanna explains to Naeem that all schools are going to be delayed, but he just protests more.
“What do you miss about school?” I ask.
Everything, he says. His friends, his teachers, even the subjects.
Yasser listens to all this attentively, and then jumps into the conversation enthusiastically: “I want school! I want school!” He’s imitating Naeem, of course.
“Do you miss school, too?” I ask.
He doesn’t know what “miss” means so I explain it’s when you want something that you used to have sooooooooooooo much. He says, “Yes, I want school sooooooooooooo much.”
I was right to doubt the calm. It’s quiet here, but elsewhere, in Nuseirat Camp, an F16 has been feeding itself. The Nuseirat Mosque is now gone. Three people are reported dead. A man riding a motorcycle who happened to be driving away from the scene was killed in a separate strike. The radio goes into great detail. Other attacks are continuing, far to the south in Rafah, and up north in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. I’m just grateful it’s not here.
The heat is too much for me this afternoon; I have to lie down. I like the idea of making the most of this calm, doing nothing for a couple of hours, thinking about nothing. But in this heat, even doing nothing is unpleasant; it’s too hot to sleep.
Naeem, Yasser, and Jaffa are running around the apartment, making a racket. The three of them are requisitioning various bits of furniture for their game: mattresses, pillows, blankets, bed sheets. They construct what they call “houses”—everyone builds their own using pillows and mattresses for walls and sheets for roofs. They then sit in theirs and communicate with the others from behind the walls. The “houses” game is an old favorite. I remember playing something similar with my brother and sisters when I was a child some thirty years ago. Back then, the Israeli army would impose an endless series of curfews on the camp. Sometimes we would have to stay in our small, hot apartment for a month. The women would sneak out, now and then, in the night, breaking the curfew and risking being shot by the soldiers, just to bring back food from the neighboring town of Jabalia or Beit Lahia. (During the First Intifada the farmers would show great solidarity with the camps and would bring the produce to certain agreed meeting points outside each one.) For us kids, though, it was an unbreakable prison sentence, so the invention of pastimes and preoccupations for the most cramped of spaces became a necessity. It is this necessity that my children are responding to now. Yasser destroys Jaffa’s house and cheers at his own success. Jaffa starts crying and it’s clear she’s not going to stop. I have to get up and help her rebuild.
My recently homeless friend Nafiz is now living in a school like so many others. As the war progresses and the UNRWA schools become full again, the UN is having to rent additional government schools from the Palestinian National Authority.1 Nafiz is in one of these, near Sheikh Zayed Square, north of Jabalia Camp. He has become involved in the day-to-day running of the refugees’ lives in his school. Along with others, Nafiz has formed committees to govern things: to distribute food, to settle disputes as they arise among the displaced, to organize a rota for the guarding of the entrances (in case of thieves and intruders).
I sit with him in a classroom and we’re joined by a few friends. He makes us coffee without sugar. Life in the schools is so fraught and its day-to-day business so all-consuming, that, to its occupants, a visit from an outsider is a rare chance to get a glimpse of what’s going on in the rest of the world. I might have news or new information. I’m bombarded with questions: What have I heard? What are people saying? What’s my analysis of the situation? I tell them what I can, that I think it will need more time. “But soon,” I say, not sure if I actually believe that.
On my way back, I make a phone call, and, as I’m speaking, I’m touched on the arm suddenly by a little boy. I assume he’s asking for some money so I explain: “I’m on the phone.” The boy, around ten years old, keeps dragging at my arm. I finish the call and he starts to mime someone driving a car, turning the steering wheel. I go with him. He takes my arm and we cross the road, quite slowly. Only then do I understand; he is deaf and dumb and simply wanted help to cross safely.