A Gaza granny keeps family and hope alive

With no shoes to protect their tiny dust-covered feet, Hiam Muqdad’s grandchildren toddled unfazed through the bombed-out ruins of their Gaza City neighbourhood in search of clean water.

Clutching large black buckets and their grandmother’s hand, the infant trio seemed not to notice the scars left by two years of war, barely registering the enormous piles of rubble, warped metal and toppled buildings lining their path.

Muqdad, 62, told reporters she went out every morning with the children to search for water, sometimes finding enough for a few days and sometimes not at all.

“Children no longer say ‘I want to go to nursery or school’ but rather ‘I want to go get water or food or a food parcel’,” she said. “The child’s dream is gone.”

“In the past they used to go to the park but today children play on the rubble.”

Reaching a mound of broken breeze blocks, the children, whose parents live in the southern city of Khan Yunis, diligently scrambled for scraps that could be used to make a fire.

Torn pieces of cardboard, a discarded milk carton, a plastic bottle and a few thin twigs made up the haul.

Fuel secured, the group began their walk back through the hazy ruins to their makeshift home.

Muqdad lost both her house and relatives during the gruelling war between Israel and Hamas, which flattened vast swathes of the Palestinian territory and displaced most of its population at least once.

After the US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on Oct.10, the family returned from the south to the Al Nasr neighbourhood of Gaza City to pitch a tent in the rubble of their ruined home.

“When they said there was a truce, oh my God, a tear of joy and a tear of sadness fell from my eye,” Muqdad said, recalling those she had lost.

Muqdad’s house was entirely destroyed by a bulldozer, she said, explaining that afterwards she “couldn’t even find a mattress in it.”

Sheets of battered corrugated metal mark out the small patch of sand the family now calls home, forming an island of life in the ruins.

Outside, the street is flattened, and only the skeletons of collapsed buildings remain.

Early each morning, with the sun still low in the sky, Muqdad emerges from the family’s igloo-shaped tent to set about instilling order into the chaos of displacement.

Sitting in front of a large Palestinian flag, she delights in showing her grandchildren the pasta they are going to cook on an open fire.

Agence France-Presse