July 9, 2018
Gaza, Palestine
It was four in the morning, the time when I usually wake up. I didn’t get up quickly, I stayed in bed for like 10 minutes trying to remember what I was dreaming but I never remembered. I got up at 4:15, took a shower then I prayed Al Fajr Prayer. I am Muslim and I pray five times a day. You can say I have a prayer every hour I have to do.
I am married and I have a baby girl. They were still sleeping at that time in the morning. My wife is Kholod and the baby is Mirna. Me and my wife meet in 2013. We both were students at the university, I was in the Faculty of Accounting but she was at the Faculty of Management and sometimes we got a mutual courses where our love story started.
Mirna was born a month ago. Her Mum, my wife, struggled with her birth. In Gaza City, where I live, we have a bad health care system. It’s because we live under siege that’s made from too many countries because of some political issues. My wife was about to die in my baby birth. It was because the lack of experience of the doctors who work in many hospitals here, also it’s because the unqualified and unprepared hospitals that we got here. They have electricity shortages that make them run generators to run the hospital. It’s also because the lack of the clean water and clean operating rooms. Anyway, after I did the prayer, it takes from 10–15 minutes, I went back to bed again because it was too early. At 6:00 a.m. I woke up again and found my wife awake feeding the baby; both were beautiful.
I work in the steel company as an accountant and I needed to be at work at 7:30 a.m. My wife prepared the breakfast, I helped her by taking care of the baby. We had the breakfast which was falafel and hummus with a cup of tea, a very traditional breakfast dish in the Middle East area.
At 7:00 a.m. I left the house taking the taxi to work. I go from the north of the city to the south of the city. By taxi we take Salah Al-Din Road, which is the largest street in Gaza City that connects all the city parts together and which is close to the borders of the city, we drive by houses and two factories the first one is biscuit factory and the other one is for soda drinks factory. I was there on time at 7:30.
That day, the weather at work was so stressful because of the borders.
We live in a county where the politics affect in our lives very much. Our company depends on the steel goods that we import from outside Gaza which is most of the time imported from Israel.
That day Israeli government decided to not open the borders between their country and Gaza anymore. It was because of political issues between the government in Gaza, Hamas, and the Israeli government.
It’s 8:00 a.m. and I was still at work with this “stressful weather.” Everyone said their expectations about what will happen to our company and the city, while I had my black dark Arab coffee and worked in silent. At work I have this manager, his name is Akram, and other three workers are Hussien, Ali, and Ahmed. It’s a small working group, and it’s worth mentioning that in Gaza we have a more than 60 percent unemployment rate. I am lucky to have a work in this city. One year ago. I was working as an English Teacher. I was rarely get paid because the economic situation of the city and the institution I was working at. I was a teacher for most of the ages.
One of my students his name is Ahmed he is 12 years old told me that his father want to meet you because he needs an accountant for his company that can speak english and we all knew that you are accountant not a teacher. Here I got the chance to get a better job better paying and better life.
At 2:00 p.m. I heard a rocket launched from Gaza towards Israel as a response to the borders closing. The PARTY just started. It took 20 minutes to hear a bomb close to my company, we didn’t know where exactly, responding to the rockets. I expected that the bombs here and there would stop but it did not stop. By 3:45 p.m. Akram, the company manager, said we would close early today because of the bombing. We usually close at 6:00 p.m. At 4:00 p.m. I was taking the taxi towards home while listening to the news on the taxi’s radio. I called my wife and the family to check on them. They were afraid, and said that they had a close bomb fall down in an open area where there had been another rocket launch. At 4:45 p.m. I was a home but the roads were really crowded. I checked on the family, the baby, and my wife. Everything was Ok.
By 5:30 p.m. things got back again to where it was. We are used to such things in our life. Politics affect our life in a direct way. Like I said.
My phone was at 20 percent. I have a Samsung phone with a good battery. I needed to charge the phone but I could not due the electricity cutting. In my home I pay the electricity bills but still cannot have good service, we only have the electricity for like a four to six hours a day. We have a weekly cutting electricity table that my wife and I and all the people in Gaza know from social media and news TVs. At 7:30 p.m. I realized I forgot to do my two other prayers. I did them and spent time with my wife and my baby. She made the dinner, I helped her with the baby as always. Dinner was something called mjadara, which is lentils with olive oil. I don’t have a lot of friends who lives in the city most of my friends travelled outside the county I got a nice neighbors around they are kind. Neighbors in this city respects each others. I have a friend his name Ali he is the closest to me he will get marry next week. I am preparing for his party I have too many surprises for him.
At 8:00 p.m. our electricity was on based off the schedule. I charged the phone which was off and opened the TV to watch a movie with my wife who was feeding the kid. I live in an apartment which is built above my family’s apartment. I have two brothers and two sisters; one of my sisters is married and lives in Norway, out of the country. At 9:30 p.m. all the family met in the hall to talk about everything that happened during the day. We also took some advice from our parents. At 10:30 p.m. it was time for me to sleep and I went to bed. I had to leave my wife awake because she had not fallen asleep, but she kept watching some YouTube video with the baby.
