Dr Gabriel UguruMy name is or rather was Nuruddin Mustafa – I am dead now. I was born in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, a third generation of refugees since the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. In other words, my grandfather was born a refugee and so was my father.
In any case, I shall not bore you with details of my life for it is or rather was – remember I am dead now – the life of a typical Palestinian who was born, raised and died in a Palestinian refugee camp. Such a life is not edifying and is simply a living hell with no prospects but drudgery and a good dose of certainty of a violent death.
Today was such a beautiful day for those who had the luxury to appreciate life. The sky was blue, and the sun was beginning to peak out of the clouds. But for us Palestinians, we could not appreciate such little gifts of nature for we were busy dying from the Israeli bombs, and those of us that had survived so far were wondering when it would be our time to have the life blown out of our bodies.
Of a certainty, I knew that today was my turn to add to the statistics of death, assuming my body was ever found and recovered, and not atomised or left rotting under the rubbles. Don’t ask me how I knew I was going to die today, for I felt it in my bones and somehow, I just knew.
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This morning, I made my way to a hospital ground to seek an illusory shelter from the Israeli bombs. And as I huddled on the grounds of the hospital along with hundreds of other wretched people, including babies in their mother’s arms whining for nonexistent food and drink, the sound of an approaching Israeli bomber filled the air. I looked up and saw the bombs dropping on us. I did not panic and run like others, for I knew that it was a hopeless exercise as there was nowhere to run to or to hide. I merely prayed to God for a quick death.
It was a reflexive prayer borne out of years of indoctrination to believe and pray to God, a God whom many of us no longer believed in, otherwise, how could a God who professes to be caring and loving, allow to happen such a massive slaughter as we are witnessing? And how could those who profess to worship and believe in the same God carry out such a slaughter of Biblical proportion, and be financially, militarily, and diplomatically supported by those who also worship and believe in the same God?
The bombs hit the hospital building. One moment I heard cries of anguish and panic, and saw masonry and body parts flying around me, and the next instant, nothing, just a void. I must have blacked out for when I regained consciousness, I was disoriented. My surroundings were dimly lit as if I was in a cave. There was a piteous whimpering from a dog, which as I managed to twist my neck around, saw it impelled on a fallen beam with an iron rod sticking out of its stomach.
I tried to move my limbs but could not. A huge boulder was crushing my legs and another boulder equally as big pinned my left arm. Blood was pumping out of my body, and I immediately knew that without an urgent rescue and medical treatment, my life would drip out of me. I was also wise enough to know that such a hope borders on a miracle, and miracles only happen in the Bible – but if they still do, Palestinians are exempted from such divine interventions.
Slowly but surely my life drifted away from my body. I suddenly felt my spirit hovering above my wretched and twisted body. I tried to move the boulders but could not. I was a spirit and had no matter. Already, a hungry dog and even a hungrier brood of rats were beginning to fight for the right to have my body for breakfast. I shoved them away, but they took no notice of me, for I was merely a spirit.
I looked around me and saw several hundreds of other spirits, of children, women and men, floating about just like me. I floated outside of the destroyed structure, only to see thousands of other spirits floating about in mid-air. Our number was about 30,000, including more than 12,660 children, 8,570 women, 126 journalists, and 627 health workers, including medics, paramedics and ambulance personnel.
I looked and saw something shaped like a dome that covered the whole of Gaza just like in “The Simpsons Movie”. In the centre of the dome structure was a bright light. I asked those around me why could our spirits not ascend to heaven towards the bright light instead of hovering around this land of horrors. The reply was that we are destined to roam the land until such a day that Palestine is free.
I cried in anguish for I knew that it might never happen, and if by a “miracle” it did happen, it would be a long time coming, for the world has been conditioned to normalise our deaths and accept them as everyday occurrences and of no consequences.
Oh, woe is me. But more woes and damnation are my murderers who make long and fine speeches and do nothing, who provide the bombs, and money, who by their vetoes prevent the world from stopping the carnage, and who propagandise the public and cause them to look the other way while we are being massacred.
These hypocrites are the same people who preach freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and who in their various constitutions enshrine the sanctity of life. These same hypocrites are the people who made such a din when an obscure political activist with less than 2% rating in Russia, and who was originally convicted of fraud, died in prison, yet no squeak from them when thousands of defenceless people are being massacred in Palestine. The lies, hypocrisies, cruelty and depravity inherent in humanity beggar belief. And the moral high ground is forever lost!
As the world turns its back on the horrors unfolding in Palestine in today’s 21st Century while speechifying and moralising about which side is right and which side is wrong, so did the world turn its back on the same horrors in the 20th Century when Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews and other Undesirables. The more things change, the more they remain the same, indeed! Woe, woe, woe!
