"Food Has Become a Memory": My Hunger Diary in Gaza

This is my attempt to document what it feels like when your stomach rumbles becoming louder than your thoughts Here in Gaza we are enduring the suffocating siege imposed by the Israeli executive in order to make us starve in a deliberate attack against us Gazans Currently marks the th day of the starvation war I woke up with a dizzy feeling in my head as I had not eaten anything since on the previous day morning My stomach needed its sense of normalcy Related Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Head Boasts Success as Palestinians Starve My family and I poured our force into securing the only meal of the day We often spend approximately half a day only thinking about what our meal will be My family is making every practicable effort to fill our hungry stomachs but I can see their powerlessness on their faces My thoughts go promptly to my youngest siblings Ahmed and Yame just years old They cannot endure or understand that no food is available to eat and I feel helpless when I do not have anything to offer them I have perpetually wondered why children must suffer What do they do to deserve this denial The only food for the day for a family of eight Photo Sara Awad My mom baked eight pieces of bread one for each of our family members and each one of us chooses the way to eat it For me I choose to separate it into two portions the second is for dinner Very small portions for a person who does not eat enough for months And we do not know when the next bread will come along After spending hours lost in thoughts and planning on what we will do for food my family gave in to paying impossible prices A single kilo of flour if we are lucky to find it now costs us nearly shekels around U S dollars when it used to be only shekels This price doesn t stay stable several days it reaches more than for a kilo These are unthinkable prices for majority Gazan families already overwhelmed by the destroyed economic activity living without livelihood for months Just to secure our only meal of the day we have to sacrifice more and more to get our basic requirements met Even if we can reach that one kilo of flour to fill our stomachs reaching paper cash is an impossible task ATM machines and bank branches have been mostly destroyed by Israeli bombs and mobile payments are hardly used So we have to exchange money and are forced to pay the enormous commission fees which nowadays reach up to or percent Just to secure our only meal of the day we have to sacrifice more and more to get our basic requirements met I hope our suffering ends with bread yet even bread is no longer enough Our bodies need more The largest part luxurious food available in Gaza s markets come in just a limited varieties Eggplant rice unripe tomatoes and little else All the items I mentioned are overpriced and families who have the luxury of putting the food on tables are very rare and lucky Food itself is now luxurious and the greater part of it has vanished in Gaza Milk meat vegetables fruits have all become a daily dream not a daily reality Only particular beans and lentils remain in Gaza s streets They absolutely will run out at any given moment just like everything else does Read our complete coverage Israel s War on Gaza My Body Speaks From the body s perspective we are all off-balance dizzying with foggy eyesight Not from illness but from the feeling of hunger I am at present working as a freelance writer beside my studies at university yet I cannot pour ability into fulfilling my duties My brain is forgetting more than I remember my body is constantly weak from the lack of essential nutrients and vitamins I have lost throughout this ongoing starvation Studying and writing is costing me a lot of vigor and I m trying my best to save my energies for studying and writing but all my trying is just getting failed by hunger I tend to be silent rather than talking as talking requires power that I do not have these days And that is about my body just years old but what about the elderly people the injured in hospitals and the disabled people who are dying of this hunger What is happening to their bodies My thoughts are on those people starved by the hour The daily bread baked Photo Sara Awad My mother is one of the injured She had spinal cord surgery back in February and she is going through a physical therapy session so she is in the the majority serious condition to require healthy food The fact that I do not even have the option to provide her with food is killing me every single time I see her in her fragile body Then there is my father He has hypertension and he must balance his food but he refuses to eat all his portions of bread he sacrifices it to my mother Even in war love is stronger than suffering itself Food has become a memory I dream of a big family meal multiple meals filled with meat and chicken and I dream of cooking my favorite meal again I am fed up with empty plates I am tired tired of looking at past meals on my photo albums I long for my past days when food was a routine not a matter of bare survival The post Food Has Become a Memory My Hunger Diary in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept