The Electronic Intifada 5 July 2024
School uniforms used to signify refugee status in Gaza. Since the start of Israel’s genocide, 625,000 schoolchildren have gone without any education. Schools, like this one in Deir al-Balah, are now instead used as shelters for the displaced.
APA imagesOne of the first things I noticed about schools growing up in Gaza is that we have two different uniforms.
With a child’s curiosity I asked my family about the girls’ outfits.
A brief answer was often offered to this innocent question: Girls who go to government schools wear dark green uniforms while those who attend United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees schools wear blue-and-white striped ones. (Boys wear blue shirts or T-shirts and jeans, no matter what school they attend.)
When I attended school, I eventually came to understand the actual reason for wearing different uniforms. This was brutally revealed when I was asked a frequent question while in elementary school, a question that declared my status in Gaza: Where are you originally from?
Let me clarify something first. I was born in my family’s old house in Bani Suhaila, about 5 kilometers east of the city of Khan Younis.
However, the answer to that seemingly straightforward question is neither Bani Suhaila nor Khan Younis. The question “Where are you originally from?” is not even about my birthplace. It is about my ancestors’, my grandparents’.
Three of my grandparents were refugees who were ethnically cleansed from Yaffa by Zionist gangs in 1948.
My paternal grandmother was born and raised in Abasan al-Kabira, east of Khan Younis.
UNRWA schools were first built in 1950 for our grandparents and great-grandparents who were forcibly exiled from their places of origin to Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Most of them lived in refugee camps either in or out of Palestine.
Those of my grandparents’ generation who were allowed to study went to UNRWA schools. My parents went to UNRWA schools. My siblings and I went to UNRWA schools. My nieces and nephews go to UNRWA schools.
The distinction became clear — students in government schools are citizens while students of UNRWA schools are refugees.
I have to admit, the first time I heard the words “citizens” and “refugees” I did not understand them at all. To my young ears, they sounded like vague words, maybe related to some traditions people made up that I was unaware of, just as how east of Khan Younis people from Bani Suhaila are called Silawiyya and people from downtown Khan Younis are called Qlaiyya (people of the citadel).
The routine question
At the beginning of the first semester in grades one through nine, students are asked: Where are you originally from?
My family’s answer is Yaffa.
Our family record, issued by the UN’s Relief & Social Services Program, states “origin: JAFFA SAKNET DARWICH.”
At first, this was merely an answer I memorized to give without thinking too much about its significance. But it did not take long for me to understand that I am a refugee in Gaza. As the years passed, the routine question was asked by the homeroom teacher, and my classmates began repeating the question.
And so, each of my classmates would proudly announce her ancestors’ origin. We started hearing names of towns and villages we had never been to; towns and villages that were partially or completely destroyed by the occupation; town and villages whose names were changed by the occupation: Yaffa, al-Majdal, Bir al-Saba, Asqalan, Hamama, Beit Daras, al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, etc.
Over the years, the oft-repeated question came to signify my family’s history. A longing to know the Yaffa-related history began to take shape in my heart. A permanent ache for the Yaffa I had never been to tugged at my heartstrings. I love that my ancestors lived by the beach as I feel I belong to the sea, here in Gaza and also in Yaffa.
My grandfathers died when I was a child before I could ask them about their lives in Yaffa. My maternal grandmother was only a toddler in 1948. Unlike many Palestinian refugees, I do not have stories about what life in Yaffa was like for my family before the occupation. I suspect my grandfathers, like many refugees, could not bring themselves to talk about what they had lost.
Without knowing much about my treasured family history, I often felt adrift, without the anchor of our past.
As an adult, I get asked this question outside the school gates. Sometimes people ask it out of curiosity when they get to know my family’s surname, wondering if I descend from farmers or not. Some people ask it when they try to locate my dialect.
In response, I smile and tell them that I do not talk like a Yaffawiyya (particularly because I pronounce the ‘q’ sound as ‘g’). The answer is sometimes very important because there are people who only marry within their original hometown. Although, in my experience, people from the city of Gaza and the north of Gaza tend to ask it more than people who live in Khan Younis.
Maybe the integration between refugees and citizens of Khan Younis was stronger than that in Gaza and the north.
Same question, different circumstances
On 5 December 2023, day 60 of the ongoing genocide on Gaza, my family and thousands of families from Khan Younis were forcibly displaced to Rafah where people from all over the Gaza Strip had been already displaced.
Later that morning, I took our empty water bottles and stood in line with my nephew to get potable water for my family members, displaced with only a few pieces of clothes and a small amount of canned food.
I was still shaken from the terrifying night we’d had to endure and trying to understand that the genocide forced me for the first time to be displaced out of Khan Younis.
I was still thinking about the guy who was killed by the Israeli occupation forces at the school gate as we were evacuating.
I was also still trying to wrap my mind around everything that we had gone through when, unexpectedly, the “where are you originally from” question caught me off guard.
The answer to the question this time was not Yaffa. It was Khan Younis to those who didn’t know the city and its areas and Bani Suhaila and Abasan al-Kabira to those who knew the city.
Displaced people from places all over the Gaza Strip were standing in line. Almost everyone voluntarily stated which part of the Gaza Strip they were forcibly displaced from by the occupation forces. If you have been around Gaza enough, the dialects of the displaced are also an indicator of their birthplace.
Ever since that moment, it became a constant question, following me everywhere I could move. I heard it whenever and wherever I stood in line to get water or buy something. I heard this question directed at me or others whenever I encountered new people, which was almost every day.
Over the last six months, the now-familiar question came to signify our displacement. A lot of displaced people from the north had never been to the south prior to the genocidal war. Many of them were learning about Khan Younis and Rafah for the first time. It was the worst time to get to know the two cities as they could barely offer anything.
After a while, we started expecting the question, and when no one voiced it, the displaced spoke of what they had gone through that had forcibly led them to Rafah.
Shared experiences of genocide, pain, and atrocities make people open up and start conversations with each other. Because, after all, we are not strangers to one another — every face mirrors similar stories of grief, sadness, anguish, and anxiety. The question is asked to let the other person know that you are like them, going through the same pain.
The occupation made me a refugee in my own country, the birthplace of my ancestors. The occupation made me displaced in Gaza, my birthplace.
In the city of our displacement, we connected over a shared history.
As a refugee living in Khan Younis, I have a shared history with the citizens of the city. One way or another, we are the places we inhabit.
But are we the places our grandparents inhabited?
Isn’t their birthplace part of my family’s collective memory?
Or do we only inherit generational trauma?
Shaimaa Abulebda is a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator based in Gaza.
