* Exodus to the south We packed only two emergency suitcases—one with IDs, documents, and certificates, and the other with a few changes of clothes. It wasn’t easy, compressing your life into a suitcase, but these are the things we have to do. On Friday night, the streets were crowded with displaced people from other parts of Gaza.
We tried to sleep after an agonizing day. Warplanes had bombed the home of some relatives in Khan Younis, neighbors of my parents. We wept for Mhannad, his siblings, his mother and father.
That night we made a lot of sandwiches for those displaced in our building. It was, as they say, the Last Supper. In the middle of the night, rumors started to circulate as everyone exchanged messages about orders to evacuate Gaza City.
We ignored them, doubted their veracity, exhausted every possible discussion topic, and tried to get some sleep. In the morning we found out that the rumors were true. Messages had continued to circulate, and they were confirmed when we watched the officer on television order Gaza residents to evacuate within 24 hours.
I found myself weeping, bitterly, in disbelief. How could we possibly make the decision to stay or leave? How could we leave our house, our city? We emptied suitcases of textbooks, notebooks, coloring books, and replaced them with underwear, a change of clothes, a towel, and other supplies. I crammed as much as I could into each bag.
I was looking around the house, crying, then cramming in some more. We don’t .
