The war in my head
Reporter Tareq Hajjaj shares how his family barely escaped two Israeli attacks in Gaza, revealing the trauma reporters experience when they cover the wars they are also trying to survive.
By Tareq S. Hajjaj - June 4, 2021 – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/the-war-in-my-head
For the first time, I’m not sure I can manage to finish a dispatch. Last month, death loomed closer than a walk to the bathroom. It did not matter where I was inside Gaza, every place in this small territory of 140.9 square miles was proximal to shelling and airstrikes.
Hostilities escalated on May 10, 2021, and came to a close in a ceasefire brokered by Egypt 11 days later, but I am still thinking about the six days after I fled my home in Shuja’iyya, a neighborhood in the east of Gaza. In total, my family and I were uprooted twice during the fighting. Each time with more relatives in tow, we rushed out the door with only a moment’s notice and joined the exodus in the streets that spanned as far as the eye could see across Gaza’s flat roads.
I live in a residential area that is adjacent to the buffer zone with Israel. Days into what started as strikes from Israeli jets and rockets from Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire from the ground and sea. Explosives rained from the west and east, and of course the sky. My sister, who lives closer to the border, came to take shelter in my home.
In the first days of the war, the adults and older teenagers taught the kids a few tricks to attempt to block out the sounds of the blasts. We could dilute the noise, but the impact shook the walls and floors and us on them. (...)
#GAZA