I first learned of my grandparents' home being demolished a few months after it actually happened in October 2003. Rafah was under siege by the Israeli Army at that time and phone calls to Gaza were nearly impossible. Al-Barazil housing project was hit especially hard because it was alongside the Gazan-Egyptian border. I remember I was driving to school in Pennsylvania when my mother called to tell me. She was very calm, and reported it to me like she reported every other piece of news that came out of Gaza. I could not comprehend what she was saying. The shock did not allow for me to make sense of anything she was telling me. It didn't make sense that the house my grandfather built was no longer a house, but just rubble. And when I asked her how she felt, she replied like she did with everything else, "We're no different than the other Palestinians." My grandfather died in that same house a year before it was destroyed. Since that time my uncle and his 10 family members had been living there.
Now, almost two months of being in Rafah, I worked up the courage to go visit the Al-Barazil Housing Project to pay respects to my grandparents' demolished home. It was time to come to terms with the reality of the situation. I think it was also important for me to see where the house I spent so many summers used to stand. Perhaps to understand why it was demolished in the first place, or to make sense of yet another one of Israel's unjust and inhumane acts.
I took my cousin with me because I didn't think I would be able to find it on my own. The entire area around by the border and around the house area was demolished in October 2003. I read in the news, and my uncle confirmed that Israel destroyed all the homes because they apparently were looking for tunnels between Rafah to Egypt that they said were used for smuggling weapons. So basically Israel was doing its job in reportedly, "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure."
After walking around in what felt like circles around the flat land looking for the remnants of the house, we found it! There right in front of me sat but a small piece of land with a few strings of grass growing on it. The house my mother grew up in no longer stood there. And there I stood staring at the land wondering how or what could have wiped away an entire house from the ground up. And neither did the garden my grandmother grew, or the fig trees, or the olive trees. What about the small shop my grandfather had inside the house he built to keep himself busy? Or the gate that I hated for the many times it shut on my fingers. Or the backyard where my mother had her wedding? Where was the room that I saw my grandmother for the last time before she died … Gone too?
I felt lost; I couldn't make out exactly where I used to sleep during the summers, or where the steps that I played on used to be. It was all gone, and all that was left of it was flat land with a few strings of green grass. "Are you sure this is it? Are you sure, maybe there were still some parts left to it," I asked my cousin. "Yes, of course," he replied. There wasn't any way to come to terms with what I was looking at. It was hard for the land to mean anything to me. I had no relation to it. It was nothing to me if it did not have my grandparents house, just land alongside the border of Rafah. Without the walls, or the rooms, or the gardens, it meant nothing to me. All my rationale was suddenly gone, and I felt like a child again wondering and in denial if I would ever see my grandparents' house again.
We continued to walk alongside the Wall, over empty lands and I imagined the houses that stood under my feet as I walked over it. I wondered whose homes I was stepping on, whose memories I was walking over, and whose lives were shattered with the demolition of their homes. I imagined as my cousin described where the tanks stood just two years ago and shot 10 children dead, and where the Israeli snipers hid in a hole they dug in the rubble. It was still there. I imagined the shelling of the houses, and where people must have run to with their children. But I didn't recognize any part of El-Barazil, for it wasn't houses I was looking at, only empty flat land. The school my parents met and feel in love was gone, and I stood face to face with the Wall, in the same spot I used to stand over 10 years ago, but it was barbed wire then. The same barbed wire that my grandfather stood in front of and spoke to his son who was on the other side in Egypt, with wires between them. All of Gaza used to be surrounded by barbwire, but it was now a Wall. And Palestinians in Egypt who are not allowed in Palestine cannot meet us at the Wall, and if my grandfather were alive, he wouldn't be able to see or speak to his son through this 25-foot Wall like he used to.
I cried at what was left. I had nothing left to imagine, nothing but memories of my grandparents home. The house ceased to exist and there was no way to get it back. I am left along with many other Palestinians trying to come to terms with the reality of our situation. And we are supposed to accept unquestioningly that this is what the world has willed for us as life goes on regardless.
This is where the house used to be
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