Hunger by Muhammad Al-Zzouq

So this is starving. The new war that raged in the missile and bomb war, a war that was no less brutal or mighty than that burned us with fire and sent us running to escape from his destroying force. Hunger comes for us at our home, as is the case for others. We eat one time a day now, half a day; In the morning, some biscuits were first distributed among children and then adults, and at night, we are satisfied with tea.

Shortly after the flour disappeared from the market in November 2023, he began to circulate again in a sack which was originally intended to be distributed by Unrwa. This sudden appearance is the result of a mass looting action by a crowd of hungry people, which we only heard after that: they have invaded the unrwa warehouses, some knocked down the door while the others deployed the walls, and emptied it from their supplies -not only flour, but also diklamic sardines, corn oil, and use. And make it relaxed – make it relaxed – pollute sardines – in corn oil, and make it relaxed – make it relaxed – make it relaxed – pollute sardines – in paddy oil – stepping on – stepping on. Apparently, they even took wooden tables, shelves, and agency archives – all of which can be used as firewood. I bought a sack of unrwa flour which was looted at a price of more than four times the usual price and walked home as if carrying priceless treasure. My wife Ula and her sister are happy, and we are all captured by dark joy in the middle of the desert of fear and sadness that grows more broadly and more quiet from day to day when the war continues to increase. We feel comfortable for a moment and safe; We can bake our own bread now, instead of waiting under the hot sun for hours with the hope that it is uncertain to find some in a bakery. But another problem standing on our street: to turn a thin dough into bread we need an oven, and what we have in the apartment is only a gas cylinder that is almost instead of cooking our usual food. We have to find another way.

Mud oven, which is always used by the Gazan rural family for cooking and baking, is spread across the green patch located between the apartment blocks in Hamad City. The women where they are generous and donate their help when other families appear need to make something, just ask them to bring enough paper and cardboard for fuel. But we don’t have paper or cardboard at home – only my books.

Ula looked at me fearfully. “Let’s use one or two for now, and when the war ends, you can replace it,” he said, as hard as possible. “Children need more food than they have to read.” The bad thing is very destroyed. Over the years I spent time gathering my simple library, never thought of me that one day I had to weigh books on a piece of bread for my children. I was stunned by the cruelty of the choice, paralyzed by the question asked: How is this bad, so fast?

I have collected my books for many years, and I have around 200 now, including works about philosophy, society, and religion, novels, and poetry collections given to me by friends in the signing of their books, with handwriting written on the front page. The books were felt for me as if they were part of the memory of everyone’s shared memory, some of them were still in Gaza, some of them had gone abroad, and some of them had died while looking for life. The more I think about it, the clearer I feel it: my library is a bunch of flesh and blood and throbbing memories and life and task of running on the streets and halls and gaza night spent in cafes and in the sea in summer and winter.

That is why I answered, “I will not burn one page of the book. There must be another solution.”

“It’s okay,” Ula said. “We only need to get a few papers, so we can bake bread before the dough becomes bad.”

I went down and headed out, thinking I would find a pile of empty boxes lying next to the trash container or outside the grocery store. But when I walk on the road, there is no piece of paper or cardboard that can be found. People have used everything they can find in the trash container, and when I search, I realize that other people are looking with me.

Young and old are both sweeping the ground with their eyes, all looking for paper to be given to village women to bake their bread. I wondered for a moment if possible nothing was found everywhere in Hamad City, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of despair that crushed when I looked left and right, run now. Thinking how hungry the children are, I almost returned to flat and took two books from the shelves to be burned, didn’t the shop owner under our building intervened. He seemed to have watched me in my search and had decided to help me when he saw me lose hope.

“You’re looking for a cardboard box, right?” He asked.

“Do you have?”

“Here,” he said, giving me three big cardboard pieces. “Nothing is too valuable to you.”

I thanked him several times before competing back up, happy and proud, and thanked the man for saving me from the ocean regret that I would soon sink if I began to burn my library.

They are just a collection of small and humble books, but for me they are the souls of people who write them – and this is not a metaphor or poetic image, but something I always know.