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We moved to Gaza at a really interesting time. It was calm when we arrived, but it still felt like a dangerous place. The second month after I came here, my cousin had an injury, and he had to go to Egypt for an operation. He came back dead because they botched the operation. But there aren’t any good hospitals in Gaza at all, so he had to make the trip. There’s one hospital in Gaza City called Shifa, which means “get well” in Arabic. But its nickname is Maut—“death.” It’s terrible. You know a hospital’s bad when there are feral cats running around inside, and that’s what Shifa looks like.

Then in November of that year, Ahmed Al-Jabari, the guy in charge of the Qassam rockets, got assassinated.⁸ I started hearing things like, “Hamas is gonna really have to retaliate for this.” Everyone knew something was gonna happen. So after that we saw eight days of bombing.⁹ At first it was kind of further away, but then they started hitting areas in the Zeitoun neighborhood where I live, and east of my neighborhood, where there are a lot of militia bases and spots where militias launch rockets. You don’t see the militias, but they’re around you. Even right around where we live, they come and set up rockets and shoot from here. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were missiles buried under these olive trees on our land. Seriously. The militias look for any open spaces they can shoot rockets from.

It was a scary time, and I remember my daughter Nada running back and forth in the apartment when she heard bombs. She couldn’t understand what was going on. I’d look at her and I’d think, Man, I really hope this doesn’t affect her psychologically as she grows up. Because you hear so many horror stories about kids losing their hearing, and you hear stories about how kids get their legs cut off, or kids that become mentally ill.

On the seventh day or eighth day, the F-16s mowed down a building about a quarter mile from here. They shot it up with machine gun fire, and my building and every other building in the neighborhood shook with the impact. An Israeli missile put a giant crater in the ground not far from our home, and that really scared us too. So during the seven or eight days, there were moments where I would be thinking, Man, did I make the right decision here? And I would be with my mom downstairs, and she would be scared too. And then we started hearing the news about how if you’re a U.S. citizen and you want to leave, give a call to a certain number. I didn’t. I thought, I’m gonna hang on, I’m gonna hang around.

I would be so scared during those strikes. I remember once or twice after a bombing, an hour or two after it calmed down, I would go outside and I would see my cousins at the corner, just chilling, you know. I was like “Hey, what are you guys doing out here?” And one of my cousins would be like, “Hey, this is nothing, man—just don’t walk too far east right now and you’ll be okay.” So to them it wasn’t a big deal, but I sensed that’s just the attitude—Hey, I’m not scared—but at heart you cannot not be scared when you hear these bombs and the building you live in starts shaking. This was like Hollywood action—it was just crazy.

But a lot of Gazans just act like it’s a normal part of life. There’s a lot of pressure on men here to be strong. Like the kids in the street, when you’re driving a car, you might honk the horn to get them to move out of the street, and they’re like, “No, you move!” Little kids have the mentality that they’re grown men, and that can’t be healthy.

I FEEL MY DAD’S PRESENCE

I admit my decision to move my family to Gaza is kind of strange. I mean, anybody here who’s well educated, when I tell them my story, they’re like, “Man, what are you doing here? Really. What are you doing here?”

I’ve had trouble finding work. I figured if I had some type of 9-to-5 job, no matter how much it paid, at least I’d feeling like I’m being productive. But I still haven’t found one. I’m not gonna lie, coming to this situation after so many years having a solid job, it brings on depression sometimes. Sometimes the stress is so much that I’ll smoke a pack of cigarettes in a night.

I’m responsible for Houda and the children. Anything happens to them, it’s my fault. It’s a lot of pressure. I’ve got gray hair. My brothers see my pictures and they’re like, “What happened to you?!” I say, “Man, a year in Gaza is like five years in the U.S.!” I had some gray hair when I arrived in Gaza, but in the last year it just started going completely gray. It’s a tough life here.

But I think the kids are comfortable. That’s why I think that I really did the best thing for them by bringing them here young. I don’t even remember when I was four or five years old, maybe I remember seven and eight. So that’s why I figured if I bring them here now, it’s gonna be easier. Harder on me, but easier for them. If I bring them here when they’re eight or nine, they’re gonna want breakfast cereal, they’re gonna want everything U.S. style.

I also think that coming here has made me feel closer to my Palestinian identity. Just ’cause when I sit with my cousins, they tell me these stories about my grandfather, about my dad while he was here. They also tell me stories about Hamas, about Fatah, what happened with them. All the crazy things that have happened in the city.

I wasn’t with my dad when he died. But when I’m fixing these olive trees and the garden, I feel I’m near him. I’ll just feel his presence, and I’ll sit down under the trees in the cool air. The breeze comes in from the sea, and it’s real nice. I can kind of sense what he wanted to get back to by returning here.

MY WIFE WANTS TO LEAVE FOR GOOD

Things are still so hard here. Recently, the electricity schedule changed, so we’d have about six hours of power, twelve hours without in a cycle. It was like that for about a month and a half. Propane gas got really scarce. We use it for cooking, heating, but people were buying it up to run their cars, because gasoline shipments from Egypt got cut off. So it was a rough couple of months, but what are you gonna do? Then there was all the rain and the flood—we were fine because we’re on high ground, but so many people we know who live more in the middle of the city were completely flooded, with raw sewage in their houses. Life in Gaza, it’s full of surprises.

And Houda, she doesn’t have anyone keeping her here. Her father is in the States now. He’s actually ill and being treated in Cleveland. He had a stroke, and he’s seventy-five. My wife wants desperately to go back and visit her father, but we can’t get her out of Gaza at the moment. The border crossing situation is horrible. We contacted the U.S. embassy to get them to help us go through the Erez crossing, but they wouldn’t do it. Their attitude was that they’d warned U.S. citizens not to travel to Gaza, and so getting stuck here is our fault.

It’s rare for people to get out through Erez, but the Rafah crossing into Egypt is shut down now, too. It’s been opened and closed off and on, but it’s been closed the last few months. To go through, you have to apply first. To apply, you have to go to an office that’s basically like the DMV, but you have to get there at four in the morning and wait in a line that’s got hundreds of people. Then after five hours in line, you register to cross on a specific day. But when that day comes and you go to the Rafah crossing, they might just say, “Sorry, border’s closed today. Try again later!” And then you have to start the whole application process over again.

When you go to the Rafah crossing, it’s amazing. There are hundreds of people waiting for the crossing to open again. Many of them are sick, and they need to get out for medical treatment. Some people have died waiting at the crossing. And then I worry about my wife’s safety, even when we do get her across. Egypt isn’t very stable right now, and that four- or five-hour trip from Rafah to Cairo is dangerous. We’ve heard of hijackings, kidnappings of people on that road.

But my wife really wants to leave for good. Her brother left the capital a few months ago, so she doesn’t really have any family in Gaza. I always tell her, “I feel for you. Just be patient. Just a couple of more years, let the kids get some Arabic in them.” But I don’t know, sometimes it gets just really frustrating for her. One day, she told me, “You see your cousins every day, you laugh with them. You have a social life, but me, I’m just here, at the house with nothing.” I said, “I know it’s a sacrifice, but look at the benefits. Your kids knowing Arabic, reading and writing—God will give you rewards for that.” I mean, I don’t consider myself a conservative Muslim, but I’m a Muslim, you know, and I believe in the Quran. I believe in the message of Muhammad. And she told me, “Yeah, but even the kids, they’re not learning the best habits here in Gaza.” I thought about that, and I remembered something that had happened a few days before. I said, “You know, a little while ago I was telling Azhar that it was the anniversary of the day my dad died. And he was like, ‘Oh, God forgives all the dead people.’ He said it in Arabic, and it made me cry.” I would never imagine him saying that in the U.S., in English. I told her, “Let’s spend a little more time here, then we can call it quits. At least they will have a base of culture to build on.”

I don’t know what the future holds, really, or where we’ll move. I’ve been to Austin, and I like the way the city is small but big at the same time. So we might move to Austin. We’d be about three and a half hours away from Houston, from my older brother, so I’d be closer to him. On the other hand, I might go to Dubai to see if I can find a job there. Because I think for the kids it’d be better in Dubai than in the States—they’d be speaking Arabic. And I’d still be close to my mom.

Throughout the spring of 2014, Fadi and his family sought a way to leave Gaza, but were unsuccessful due to border closures with Israel and Egypt. U.S. authorities refused to help. Then, on July 8, Israel launched the early stages of the bombing and ground assault in Gaza that the Israeli military called Operation Protective Edge. On July 10, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem issued an emergency message to U.S. citizens in Gaza offering assistance in leaving. Fadi quickly provided all the needed information to the consulate, and a consular representative told him to be ready to leave immediately.

However, Fadi’s wife Houda was in her third trimester of pregnancy, and in the early morning hours of July 11 she went into labor. Just after two in the morning, Fadi helped his wife into the family car and made his way to Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City.

Fadi tells us by e-mail, “My car lights [were] the only lights in the streets” due to power being out across Gaza City. “It was like telling the Israelis, please shoot me. [We heard] bombs going off to [our] left and right. But I was scared to speed up [because] I didn’t want to look like I was running away.” Houda gave birth that morning, but supplies were running short at the private Al-Quds hospital, so Fadi was forced to drive through the darkness a second time to Shifa Hospital to get glucose for his wife. The couple was able to return home safely with their newborn daughter later the same day. “[That] night was the most scared I’d ever been,” Fadi says.

In the early morning hours of July 13, the U.S. consulate called Fadi to let him know that some Gazan residents with foreign passports would be allowed through Erez crossing that day, and that he should bring his family to a rendezvous point in Gaza City. His family would be escorted across the Erez crossing into Israel and on to Jordan. Fadi brought his wife and children to the rendezvous point, but he decided to stay in Gaza City himself—at least until the military invasion was over. He wanted to ensure his mother’s safety, and he also wanted to wait until government offices opened again so that he could obtain a birth certificate for his newborn daughter and school records for his boys. His wife and children made it to Amman, Jordan. They waited there for two weeks until the newborn was medically authorized to board a plane. In the final week of July, Fadi’s family flew to the United States. They ultimately relocated to Ohio, where Houda’s father was receiving medical care.

Fadi stayed on in his mother’s apartment. “There are so many sad stories here,” he tells us. “I feel like a hypocrite for wanting to leave, but I have to be with my family. Thank God my family left. Remember our [garden]? It looks like a desert now because of all the bombs that hit it. People are dying. Some families [are] leaving their elderly behind to get to safety. There is no water. The situation is getting very dire. People here feel like nobody cares about them. God help us here in Gaza.”

¹ Approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced between 1947 and 1949, and many of them came to Gaza, which was administered by Egypt following armistice agreements in 1949. The migration of refugees dramatically altered the demographics of the Gaza Strip. Today, nearly 75 percent of the 1.7 million people living in Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees, roughly 1.2 million people. For more information, see Appendix I, page 295.

² Kuwait City is the capital of Kuwait. With a population of over 2.4 million in the greater metropolitan area, it is the largest city in Kuwait and is considered a global financial hub.

³ Iraq invaded Kuwait City in August 1990. Coalition forces led by the U.S. military drove the Iraqi military from Kuwait in February 1991 during Operation Desert Storm.

⁴ Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the coalition of militias and political parties that would establish the Palestinian Authority after the signing of the Oslo Accords. He supported Iraq during the invasion of Kuwait despite some strong disagreement within the PLO and opposition to the invasion from many other Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

⁵ The strikes that the Israeli military named Operation Cast Lead took place between December 2008 and January 2009. For more information, see the Glossary, page 304.

⁶ Ashkelon is a coastal city of approximately 120,000 people and is located in Israel, around twelve miles north of Gaza.

⁷ Zeitoun was a suburb of Gaza City built in the 1930s, but it became a densely populated urban zone after thousands of refugees settled the area following the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. It is known as the former home of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who was killed in an air strike in 2004. Yassin’s assassination is widely credited for the rise in the popularity of Hamas in Gaza, leading to its 2006 electoral wins.

⁸ Ahmed Al-Jabari was a leader of the military wing of Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. He had led military operations during Hamas’s assertion of power in Gaza in 2007 and may have helped plan the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He was also credited with acquiring Qassam rockets, which were launched from Gaza into Israel throughout the 2000s. He was killed by an Israeli air strike on November 14, 2012.

⁹ This was the series of Israeli air strikes on Gaza in November 2012, called Operation Pillar of Defense. For more information, see the Glossary, page 304.