This is Gaza, long hours without electricity and the Egyptian kerosene which only illuminates a little, and the gas cylinder in the house which is on the verge of being empty, making it join the houses cooking on kerosene or wood stoves. And the convulsions at the debate about who is responsible for pilgrims not going to Mecca, and for the gas and electricity crisis. These are the new realities that have imposed themselves on the ground. And it is the tunnels and its economy which make prices double and prevent the entry of gas. And it is those who are rich, and those who are deprived, and we are the ones standing in between, managing our lives in the way they agree.
Gaza is small details that don’t come to mind, and don't find a place in the newspapers, which don't reach Gaza. It is the salaries that are not given to the employees with no work to do, and the poverty that those with no work try to outwit with baskets of food which arrive sometimes, and with the hope that is inexhaustible, and the coupons that everyone tries to get hold of in the detention camp. It is the ability to live in silence, and barely live. It is the fear of the older brother’s power, and walking alongside the wall. It is teachers wearing niqab who go deep into the satirical poems of Ibn Muqaffa, and students who are forced to wear a veil before they reach puberty. It is Ramallah who cuts salaries and doesn’t supply the Strip with sheep for Eid, or Pakistani clothes, and who is stingy towards the Prime Minister and his entourage with their petty expenses.
Gaza is the Eid greetings and jokes which come in the form of short text messages on your mobile phone. It is the luxury cars which ferry a lot of those men with beards and women in niqab, and it is the rumours about the Minister of Tunnels buying a villa for seven million dollars. It is the cars which drive in the wrong direction on roads breaking the asphalt, and it is the thieving sharks who take their money and the money of others. It is the charity money which the professionals argue over and divide amongst themselves, and it is the fickle and the sycophants. It is the people who are call for confrontation, then explosions. It is the sowing of hope in a desert irrigated by salty sea water and it is the dream of immigrating north to fish in the bottom of a frozen lake.
By:shady mohamed elsharef
