{"id":7561,"date":"2011-06-05T22:45:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-05T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=7561"},"modified":"2011-07-16T13:17:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T09:17:11","slug":"return-to-gaza-memories-tears-and-the-wonderful-taste-of-barrad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/return-to-gaza-memories-tears-and-the-wonderful-taste-of-barrad\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Gaza: Memories, Tears… and Barrad"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u201cDo you remember Mahmoud?\u201d asked Abu Nidal, my neighbor from nearly 20 years ago,\u00a0when I lived in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, of course, I do,\u201d I answered. I remembered him as yet another troublemaking\u00a0child among the Nuseirat Refugee Camp\u2019s numerous rabble-rousers. He was defined by\u00a0a stream of snot that never seemed to dry. Although loud at times, he had always been helpful and pleasant. But now, unlike so many others who emerged from the\u00a0camp\u2019s rusty doors and narrow alleyways to greet me after my long absence, Mahmoud\u00a0was nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is in heaven now,\u201d said Abu Nidal. His voice, which had been so cheerful about\u00a0my arrival, suddenly became muffled. The years of hurt over the loss of his son had\u00a0culminated into one moment. He paused and wiped tears. A poster on the wall showed\u00a0the face of a handsome, bearded man. He had been killed during an Israeli army raid\u00a0into Gaza a few years ago. The poster dubbed him, \u201cThe Great Martyr Mahmoud Fa\u2019iq\u00a0al-Hajj.\u201d<\/p>\n

I placed my right hand on Abu Nidal\u2019s shoulder and said, as is customary in these\u00a0situations: \u201cWe are all your children.\u201d Abu Nidal nodded gratefully, and the\u00a0neighbors began recalling the names of other Martyrs. Soon, we began to read\u00a0al-Fatiha, asking God to bless the souls of all those who had perished in Gaza.<\/p>\n

It has been many years since I last stood here, in the Red Square. Named after the\u00a0many people who were killed at the hands of Israeli soldiers during the First\u00a0Uprising of 1987, the once open area has shrunk, like many other spaces in and\u00a0around the refugee camp. The population of the Gaza Strip has grown significantly,\u00a0as has poverty. Surrounded and besieged by Israel, 1.6 million people living in 360\u00a0square kilometers (139 square miles) are now exploiting every inch of this tiny and\u00a0continually shrinking space. Still, Gaza persists.<\/p>\n

I began my journey in Nuseirat at my old aunt\u2019s house. She gazed at me in disbelief\u00a0and cried intermittently throughout my visit. \u201cOh Allah, George is back,\u201d she\u00a0repeated, referring to me by my old name. When it was time to go she chased after me\u00a0down the street for a last kiss, a hug and shed more tears.<\/p>\n

The Martyrs Graveyard is now full to capacity. Desperately lacking space, some\u00a0people had to resort to burying their loved ones on top of others, until the\u00a0practice was stopped by the government.<\/p>\n

My father was buried in an area called Zawydeh. In 2008, I was told he was buried in\u00a0a \u2018small graveyard,\u2019 which encouraged me to attempt to find the grave on my own.\u00a0However, the graveyard is no longer small and I spent over an hour trying to locate\u00a0it. In the process, I learned that some of my friends and relatives have also died.<\/p>\n

They include: my geography teacher, my Arabic and religion teacher, the kindly man\u00a0with one eye who sold the strangest mix of items on a donkey cart, and a 13-year-old\u00a0girl by the name of Fida, meaning \u2018sacrifice\u2019.<\/p>\n

I found my father\u2019s grave at last. My dad, Mohammed. The wonderful, loving,\u00a0resourceful, angry, thundering and warm man. He never imagined he would one day be\u00a0buried in Gaza. He wanted to go home to Beit Daras, his long destroyed village in\u00a0Palestine. \u201cI will see you soon, son,\u201d he had told me many years ago, when I last\u00a0saw him. I now wrote him a note, and buried it in the Gaza earth by his headstone.<\/p>\n

\u201cO peaceful and fully satisfied soul, return to your Lord\u2026\u201d read a verse of the\u00a0Quran atop the white grave. No Cast Lead, no massacre could possibly interrupt the\u00a0peaceful rest of the dead – not even in Gaza.<\/p>\n

My mother Zarefah\u2019s grave was in a different graveyard. It appeared much older than\u00a0I remembered it. It lay close to my grandparents, and my two-year-old brother\u00a0Anwar\u2019s tiny grave.<\/p>\n

My old house, which once stood relatively tall amid the other impoverished homes in\u00a0my neighborhood, is now almost hidden from view. Its white walls have been dirtied\u00a0by years and neglect. Abu Abdullah, the new owner, welcomed me in. A large man with\u00a0a humble demeanor and a friendly but cheerless face, he walked me through the house.<\/p>\n

While very little had changed after all these years, the \u2018basketball rim\u2019 my\u00a0brothers and I concocted from rubber hose and fastened high on the wall was gone. I\u00a0could almost hear my mother yelling as her five boys ran wild in the small space.\u00a0\u201cMay Allah help me cope with all of this,\u201d she would bellow, as she tried\u00a0frantically to fix whatever we ruthlessly ruined.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t check to see if the bullet holes left by the rampages of Israeli troops\u00a0remained where I last saw them. While I had dreamed of seeing this place again for\u00a0so many years, it was now just too much to bear. I left hurriedly, despite Abu\u00a0Abdullah\u2019s repeated pleas to stay longer.<\/p>\n

My English teacher, Mohammed Nofal, remained as I had left him, funny and\u00a0hospitable. A few of my friends have been killed, but many others have remained\u00a0steadfast, building, repairing, educating and surviving. The astonishing level of\u00a0determination that has always defined Gaza is much stronger than I remember it. No\u00a0one seeks pity in this place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a large building here,\u201d I remarked inquisitively to a cousin at one point\u00a0in my journey.<\/p>\n

He replied casually. \u201cIt\u2019s been destroyed in the latest war, but the people crushed\u00a0the rubble, processed it into concrete and the building now stands on the other side\u00a0of the street\u201d. In Gaza, few discuss what has been destroyed, but many speak of\u00a0rebuilding.<\/p>\n

As I waited for a taxi to take me to the town of Khan Younis, I spotted the Akel\u00a0falafel stand. Here we had once spent my dad\u2019s loose change on Falafel sandwiches\u00a0and Barrad-flavored crushed yellow ice.<\/p>\n

I held onto my plastic cup of Barrad all the way to Khan Younis in the south of\u00a0Gaza, taking careful, slow sips. It tasted exactly as I remembered it from when I\u00a0was six years old. Since then, nothing in the world has tasted better.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the Egypt border will be open for good, you should come back to Nuseirat for\u00a0more Barrad,\u201d said a friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cInshallah,\u201d \u2013 God willing – I said. \u201cInshallah.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAMZY BAROUD: It was the visit to my former home which stirred some of the most poignant memories – a house full of unruly boys, an exasperated mother and a loving, resourceful, thundering father. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":7576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,171,119],"tags":[18300,278,861,18311,2605,18297,1747],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}