The life of the displaced people of Gaza: from home to a tent without privacy or necessities for life

Umm Ahmed Hamouda lives with her family in a camp in the west of Gaza City. She arrived there after a displacement journey that she was forced to undertake 4 times, during which the family moved to different areas as displaced people from Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.

Umm Ahmed enters the simple tent and says: “This tent broke our backs. We cannot even stand upright in it. I feel like I am in a prison.”

Pointing to a bag of bread hanging at the entrance to the tent, she says: “Hang food so it is away from mice. Mice and rodents sleep among us in the tent. “This is a suffering more difficult than the war itself.”

In a narrow corridor between the tents, Umm Ahmed stands in front of a small table on which she has placed a bowl of water and soap to wash plates and cups. Due to water scarcity, families rely on manual storage of plastic gallons in quantities that do not meet daily use.

She talks about water scarcity, saying: “Water is very scarce. When it is available, we can clean. The capabilities are limited, as you can see, and the conditions are disgusting. This is the life of the tents.”

Umm Ahmed sits on a small plastic barrel in front of the tent, scanning her eyes as she recalls in her mind the image of her home and the way her life was as it was. She says: “We lived in a five-story house equipped with all the necessities of life, including apartments for our children to get married in, but it was destroyed in the war. By God, we lived like kings in our house. We had everything, we were living in luxury, and suddenly our lives turned upside down and we were living in tents. This is our fourth displacement, and we have spent 3 years on the streets.”

She was overcome with frustration and sadness as she told our correspondent: “No matter what I tell you, I will not be able to describe what life was like in the tents. In the winter, the rain would flood the tent every day, and the wind would blow it and it would fall and we would put it back up, and we could not dry our clothes or our mattresses. In the summer, the suffering was more severe because of mice, other rodents, and insects. It is a life of humiliation. I can no longer bear this situation.”

When our correspondent asked her about privacy in the tents, Umm Ahmed said: “There is no privacy. We are all crowded together in the tent. Now two of my sons are getting married. We are trying to set up two tents for them, but the place is not large. No matter how I try to describe, you will not imagine what we are suffering from. Bathrooms and sanitation are another matter.”

Umm Ahmed did not smile until her two grandchildren came and she began to caress them. Then she said goodbye to our correspondent and got up to worry about managing her family’s affairs, as all the details of Khayyam’s life require a continuous struggle even to secure the simplest necessities of life.