Atef Abu Saif - The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary

To my little Jaffa
may your future be better than my present.

WHEN IT COMES, it brings with it a smell, a fragrance even. You learn to recognize it as a kid growing up in these narrow streets. You develop a knack for detecting it, tasting it in the air. You can almost see it. Like a witchs familiar, it lurks in the shadows, follows you at a distance wherever you go. If you retain this skill, you can tell that its cominghours, sometimes days, before it actually arrives. You dont mistake it. Harb. War.

Im sitting in front of Abu Annass house with three of our friendsTarik, Sohail, and Abdallah. Abu Annas has been a headmaster for fifteen years now at the camps Ahmad al-Shokairi High School, although Ive known him since the First Intifada. He lives just a two-minute walk from my fathers place, in the same refugee camp I grew up in. The night is warm. Two shade trees stand in front of the house.

Abu Annas and Tarik are playing backgammon, from time to time breaking away from their game to contribute to the wider conversation. The sound of the dice rattling against the wooden board always mesmerizes me slightly. Ive never played backgammon. I merely love the spectacle of dice bouncing along the wood and ricocheting off the back board. An aging blue Sony radio sits between us, playing a classic Fayza Ahmad song. Oh Mother, the moon is at the door, lighting candles. Shall I lock the door or open it? Abu Annas has kept the radio in good condition since the 1970s, still wrapped in a brown leather casing it came with.

All five of us around the table were born in wartimeas Gazans, you dont get much choice about it. The crowded refugee camp we grew up in, known to Gazans as Jabaliaonce a field of tents, then a forest of shacks, now a jungle of high-rise apartment blocks crammed tightly togetherhas been beset by wars for as long as weve all been alive. Since 1948before that in fact, since the British mandate began in 1917Gaza has barely gone ten years without a war; sometimes its as little as two between each one. So everyone carries their own memories of conflict: wars stand as markers in a Gazans life: theres one planted firmly in your childhood, one or two more in your adolescence, and so on... they toll the passing of time as you grow older like rings in a tree trunk. Sadly, for many Gazans, one of these wars will also mark lifes end. Life is what we have in between these wars.

Tonight, another one is starting. SMS news updates interrupt the evenings conversation, with innocent little pings, more and more and more frequently as the night progresses, as we flinch to read them, more and more nervously. The last sustained attack on the Strip was back in November 2012 and lasted for eight days. The one before thatdubbed Cast Lead by the Israelisran from December 2008 to January 2009 and lasted for twenty-three days. How many days will this one last? How will it compare to previous assaults? These are the questions I want us to be discussing, but for Abu Annas, at least, it isnt even certain that war is coming. It will only be a small incursion, he says, a limited one.

Zohdi, Abu Annass second son, who is also my barber, prepares the shisha for all of us. When I see him I reach up out of habit and feel my hair and stubble: its only been three days since they were last trimmed. Zohdis shop is right beside Abu Annass house and seeing him appear in the doorway with a flash of steel in his hand makes me think Im about to feel razor against skin. Then I see that its just the steel tongs for the charcoal.

Tarik, a veteran workers rights activist, leans over the shisha to blow on the coals, saying that all indicators point to war. Sohail is more skeptical about it. Sohail spent much of his early life in Israeli prisons, having been a local PLO leader in the camp, and served in Fatahs secret militia during the 80s. He insists that we are already in the holy month of Ramadan and that full-on war, at least, will have to be delayed until the end of the month, although a controlled escalation of tension may be a feature of the next few weeks. Abdallah, who holds a PhD in psychology, shares this reading.

Me?

Well, I tell them, I can smell it. I sense it drawing in.

As it turns out, it has arrived already, before we even started this conversation.

At around 9 p.m. this evening, a drone attacked a group of people near Beit Hanoun, two miles north of Jabalia Camp. No one was injured. Half an hour later another drone fired on three people on the street in the western side of Gaza City. At the time, these were reported as one-offs, the way bad traffic accidents would be. Such things happen now and thenusually a lot more than half an hour apart, of course, but two drone strikes dont make a war. This is what the radio calls an escalation in tension. Then the presenter goes back to his scheduled program on youth problems in Gaza. His guest for the discussion starts to discuss the despair that hangs over so many young people, especially with regard to their futures; how trapped they feel being unable to travel, study, or make a career outside of the Strip. Then suddenly, at about 11 p.m., the guest is cut off and a nationalist song starts playing. The mood on the radio changes completely.

A few minutes later, Abu Annass mobile pings with information on a third attack. Two young men killed in attack in Bureij Camp. We look at each other. This is no escalation in tension. A moment later, the war introduces itself properly. We hear an explosion, some way to the north, echoing across the city. Hearing a bomb in real life, for the first time in a couple of years, is like having a PTSD flashback. It jolts you to exactly where you were two years ago, five years ago, four decades ago, to the most recent, or very first time you heard one. As the noise of this new explosion subsides its replaced by the inevitable whir of a drone, sounding so close it could be right beside us. Its like it wants to join us for the evening and has pulled up an invisible chair.

Because its Ramadan and we have to be awake for the suhoor and baklava. Being the height of summer, its also far better to spend this time in front of the house, under a tree, than sweat it out indoors.

When we first sat down tonight, scores of boys passed us singing Ramadan hymns and beating on plastic boxes, turning them into drums: nice hymns, the same ones I used to sing at their age. Its a tradition that starts three days before Ramadan and runs all the way to Eid; I imagine it makes any Palestinian mandevout or notwarm with nostalgia to hear them.

But now the street is empty; the sound of the explosions has grown louder. Everyone prefers to be inside. Tarik suggests that we go too, but Abu Annas insists: Dont worry, its normal. We know its normal, but we have to go. Hanna, my wife, rings me saying that the explosions are everywhere, I need to be with her. Her voice trembles: The kids are sleeping. I know she is afraid to be on her own right now.

Tarik drives me back quickly. I live in the Saftawi district, to the west of Jabalia Camp. All the inhabitants of the districts around the camp originate from inside it. Jabalia is the largest refugee camp in all of Palestine, home to over one hundred thousand Gazans in only 1.4 square kilometers. Its probably most famous as the setting of countless confrontations between occupying Israeli forces and Palestinians, in particular during the First Intifada, which broke out in its narrow streets. Now, with its increased population, it has spawned new districts around its outskirts: places like Alami, Tel Azaatar, Salaheen, Beir al-Naaja, and Saftawi. In many ways these all belong to the camp; they are its children.