Maha Hussaini
I’ve always believed that taxis are a reflection of what’s going on in a society. You get in, and you’re immediately immersed in endless conversations,; drivers and passengers talking about soaring prices, complaints about the unbearable heat, and, inevitably, an elderly man offering his political analysis of the day. Once he starts, you know his monologue will outlast the journey.
Back when I still had my car, before the fuel crisis, I used to miss this kind of unfiltered connection with people. Every now and then, I’d leave my car parked and take a taxi, just to experience that atmosphere again.
This morning, on my way to work, I got into a taxi where a young woman was carrying what seemed to be a newborn baby. In the scorching sun and stifling heat, I looked at the child sleeping on his mother’s lap and said, “Poor baby, he looks hot.”
“He’s just sleepy,” she replied. “He hasn’t slept all night.” I asked why. “He never gets enough from breastfeeding,” she said. “I’m taking him to the doctor.”
She went on to explain that her one-month-old baby is suffering from severe malnutrition. The baby weighed about 3.8 kg, but instead of gaining weight, he’s now down to 3.3 kg. Her breast milk, she told me, no longer carries enough nutrients because she herself is malnourished and she cannot find baby formula anywhere.
A few weeks earlier, I shared a taxi with a woman and her daughter. The little girl, curious and playful, kept touching my bag and glancing up at me for a reaction. I smiled and interacted with her for a while before turning to her mother and saying, “God bless her, how old is she?”
“Five,” the woman answered. I smiled again, then turned to look out the window, thinking, "That’s not the hand of a five-year-old." Her hand was far too small and thin, even for a three-year-old.
These are Gaza's taxi stories now, snapshots of an entire society being starved.
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