Samia al-Atrash: ‘We are prisoners here, we can't work, we can’t travel’
File October Body Via Picture: Said Year Al Samia Khatib/afp Massah Getty Two The Her Old Last Niece In Images Rafah Of Atrash Holds
What do you say to somebody the first time you meet them, and the reason for that meeting is because their sister is dead. Killed. Blown to pieces by an Israeli airstrike eight months ago?
Do you begin by acknowledging that loss, and the loss of her sister’s infant children? Or her sister’s husband, all killed in the same airstrike?
Or the death of the grandmother that raised her, a woman who lived through every iteration of occupation and intifada, only to die in a tent, deprived of the medicine she needed, mourning the murder of her granddaughter and great grandchildren?
Do you sympathise with them for being displaced, forced to flee their home, their life, their friends and remaining family?
Do you reconcile that loss with the fact they are now ‘safe’ in Cairo, one of the lucky few who got out, one of the privileged who could afford to do so.
Do you placate your own shame by asking how grateful do they feel for the financial help they received to be able to buy their freedom?
A freedom that now sees them prisoners in a new city, uncared for by anybody, unable to work or travel or do anything really, other than wake everyday and check their phone to see what fresh horror has been visited upon the family they left behind?
I chose the latter. To preface a conversation with Samia al-Atrash with token pleasantries seemed reductive and obsolete.
She is young, 26, so her anger seems personal and internalised, but the more you listen, the more you realise she is articulating the grief of a people. A race. A nation on the verge of extinction.
“I do not feel lucky to be here (in Cairo),” she tells me when we finally meet face to face. “What should I feel lucky about? They picked up my sister’s body in pieces. They picked up my niece’s body in pieces.”
We meet at a service station at the side of a busy motorway on the outskirts of Cairo on Friday evening.
She’s joined by her cousins Soha and Al Abdham. We were supposed to meet in the apartment the three share, but with no air conditioning and 44-degree heat, the service station was a welcome compromise.
Soha and Samia were able to leave Gaza on the back of donations received from Irish people who connected with her after an image of her cradling her murdered niece Massah went viral on Instagram.
“Yes, I am so grateful for the help of our Irish friends. Without them I couldn’t pay the money I needed to leave, to come here and get medicine.
“But, we are prisoners here. We can’t work. We can’t travel. All we do is spend our days thinking about home, checking our phones, hoping to hear something.
“I had a happy life before October. A simple life. I want it back. But it’s gone with my sister. It’s never coming back.”
Her older cousin Soha listens on. Her English is impeccable, owing to her job in Gaza city as an English and maths teacher in a private school there.
She is less angry than Samia, yet somehow more pointed in her desperation.
“I did not have a simple life before October 7. I had a complicated one. Like you. Like everyone else,” she says.
“I had a job I loved, students I loved. I was building towards something. I’ve lived through wars before, but very quickly I knew this was different.
“When they attacked the hospitals, and nobody stopped them, then I knew this was not going to stop.
“Samia came to stay with me after her sister was killed. One day, maybe after a month, they knocked on our door and told us to leave. So we left. With nothing.
“We walked for hours, not knowing where we were going. We walked with our arms raised, in silence, through checkpoints. It was then I knew my old life was over.
“I wish I was back there,” says Samia, and both her cousins agree.
Al Abdham, her first cousin, finished high school in Gaza last June. He has six sisters, but was chosen as the only boy to leave Gaza, his parents spending all of their money to get him through the Rafah crossing the day before the IDF closed it in March.
“We fought a lot about it,” he says, sadly. “But as the only boy I had to come.”
We sit in silence, the sun setting between the tower blocks. Less than 400km to the east of us, their families huddle in tents in 40 degree heat.
“What are you going to do?” Soha says directly to me after a time, her words serious, and demanding an answer.
I think about telling them about the government recognising the Palestinian state. I think about showing them pictures of Dalymount Park bedecked in keffiyehs and Palestinian flags.
I think of telling them about the Trinity encampment and the activism of ordinary people. Instead, I stop myself, suddenly aware how little we speak and write about Gaza anymore.
How elections and the Euros and the Olympics and summer holidays have interrupted our consciences like needy children.
Unaware that, as we sat there, the IDF were about to launch another attack that would kill 70 people.
In the end, all I can think to do is say ‘I’m sorry’.