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This article first appeared on our partner site, Independent Arabia
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article → log → site
In Gaza, we never needed a map to find our way.
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we → need → way
We knew where we were by the landmarks of everyday life: an ancient tree, a neighbourhood bakery, a bank on a street corner, the distant view of a tower block that meant we had found the place we were looking for.
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we → know → place
It was made up of cities and refugee camps, markets that welcomed people every morning, farmland stretching along the edges of towns, factories and small workshops, universities and hospitals.
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that → make → towns
Its built environment was diverse too, with high-rise and low-rise buildings, historic and religious sites, refugee camps that had evolved over decades, industrial facilities and agricultural land.
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that → build → decades
But the place was familiar to its residents: every neighbourhood had its landmarks, and every street had its own memory.
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street → have → memory
I knew I had reached Tal al-Hawa when I came to the bank at the beginning of the street.
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I → know → street
To me, the bank was more than a building; it was a landmark marking the entrance to the neighbourhood of Tal al-Hawa.
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it → mark → Hawa
It was a prominent building with a distinctive facade, and a large doorstep in front where we would sometimes sit.
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we → sit → front
Beside it was a vegetable seller, and from there began the scene I had known for years.
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I → begin → years
Rows of closely packed, uniform, adjoining towers, each around seven storeys high, alongside markets, restaurants, schools and mosques, and a street I often walked.
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I → pack → markets
From the bank’s doorstep, I could watch the life of the place unfold: the vegetable seller calling out his wares, people leaving the bank and walking along the street, cars moving constantly, with a garden in the background and the towers forming the familiar scene I knew.
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I → watch → scene
At the time, none of this seemed extraordinary.
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none → seem → this
This is how we remember our cities: through what we see as we move through them, and through what we know will be there when we arrive.
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we → remember → them
When Israel allowed people to return to Tal al-Hawa, I went back to the place I loved.
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I → allow → place
The first thing I saw, however, was not the neighbourhood I knew.
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I → see → ?
In front of me was an entire row of towers whose shapes I had known for years, but which had now fallen.
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which → know → years
Six or seven towers, roughly, were no longer standing as they once had been.
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they → stand → ?
Part of one tower remained upright, blocking the view of what had once been behind it.
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what → remain → it
I looked at the scene and said to myself: “This can’t possibly be Tal al-Hawa.”
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This → look → myself
I was not looking only for my home.
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I → look → home
I was looking for the landmarks by which I had always recognised the place: the bank, the towers, the bakery, the street.
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I → look → place
But the scene I knew was no longer there in the same form.
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I → know → form
The street I remembered had been dug up and its route had changed; sand covered parts of it, the streetlights had disappeared, and the facade of the bank whose appearance I knew so well had been shattered.
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I → remember → appearance
The building that had once been an unmistakable marker of the beginning of Tal al-Hawa no longer looked as it once did.
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it → look → Hawa
Even the colour of the place had changed.
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colour → change → place
The area I used to see from the bank’s doorstep, with its stone, facades and bustle, now appeared grey, barren and open to the void.
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I → use → void
I walked on, asking people: “Where am I?
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I → walk → people
I was asking about places I had once known without ever having to ask where they were.
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they → ask → places
It was at that moment, precisely, that I understood that something greater than the buildings had changed.
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something → understand → buildings
Three years of war had erased the landmarks that helped people in Gaza recognise where they were.
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they → erase → Gaza
Architectural researcher Yara Sharif told Independent Arabia: “After three years of war, it became clear that Gaza had lost more than its historic buildings.
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Gaza → tell → buildings
The destruction had also reached the cultural and social practices that took place within neighbourhoods, as well as the small details of everyday life.
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that → reach → life
“The visual memory of the place had been overwhelmed by images of destruction, rubble and emptiness.”
What happened in Tal al-Hawa was not something that affected me alone.
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that → overwhelm → me
In Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest neighbourhoods, residents returned to a place they had known for decades only to find large parts of it altered beyond recognition.
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parts → return → recognition
Ferial Ahmed spoke of the roof of her home collapsing on her family, and of how the features of her street had changed after most of the landmarks she remembered were destroyed.
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she → speak → landmarks
“The neighbourhood was known for its markets, its olive groves and the relationships that bound its families together,” she says.
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she → know → families
The scale of destruction
Satellite images captured by the United Nations Satellite Centre offer another perspective on the scale of this transformation.
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images → capture → transformation
The assessment estimated that around 83 per cent of the buildings in Gaza City had been damaged, and 81 per cent of buildings across the Gaza Strip.
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cent → estimate → Strip
It also recorded damage to around 200,000 buildings, including around 123,000 classified as destroyed.
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It → record → 123,000
…and 93 more, not listed.
The Aporia
