This is the most precious thing I own – the key to our house in the north. It is the key to the house that the occupation forces bulldozed. They flattened it: the house, the trees, the well, even a pen full of animals – they bulldozed it all. We couldn’t take anything with us, no money, no livestock.
I lived through wars before this. None was as bad as this one. During the 52-day war, we sheltered in schools, and we were OK – there wasn’t bombing like this, not the level of killing, and not the destruction of homes. But this war is extremely difficult. The destruction is enormous, the devastation is enormous – and all without any benefit. All of this is for nothing.
Life has become very different. Our family never knew hunger before, never knew displacement, bombardment, missiles, killing and destruction in this way or on this scale. The other thing I keep in this bag is a bullet – it was pulled from my son’s back. During the famine, he had nothing to eat and nothing to feed his seven children, so he went to get a bag of flour to feed his children from the aid stations, and they shot him. I keep this as a reminder of what happened – all for the sake of getting food.
‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
