Gaza 1st-Hand: "We are Trapped. That is Where Our Story Begins and Ends" (Aburamadan)
A Gazan woman in front of a destroyed house in Gaza City today (Photo: Mohammad Salem/Reuters)
Gaza, after all, is a very small place. Pick a point, any point, along its 25-mile coastline, and you’re seven or so miles — never more — from the other side. The other side is where my grandparents were born, in a village that has since become someone else’s country, off limits to me. You call it Israel. I call it the place where the bombs come from. One thundered to earth just now, as I was writing this.
I hear there are children there — like Hiba, Omar, Ranana — who might appreciate the simple textures of a day spent outside, of a sky that beckons and does not bellow. I wonder: would these children trade places with me now? No, I would not wish that upon them. Better yet, let us take a trip together, to some other shore, where there is not a single pockmark — not one.
But that is the stuff of movies.
Gaza, Lara Aburamadan, New York Times