Dispatch from Gaza: Hind Khoudary

Hind Khoudary: Marhaba! (Hello) Let me show you where I am right now: I’m on a rooftop because it’s very hot and we don’t have any electricity, so this is the only way we can get some fresh air. I’m displaced in Deir al Balah right now and I have been displaced since November.

EIP: You said that it’s 8pm right now and that you’re on a rooftop; can you describe where you are and what it looks like and what it feels like and what you smell and take us to Gaza for a second?

HIND: So the main reason we’re on this rooftop is because this is the house of Motaz Al Azaiza, our colleague, who is hosting a group of journalists and friends at his house because we were displaced. He’s originally from Der El Balach.

After Motaz left, we stayed in his house. We’re a group of friends and journalists who have been covering this together since day one and have been displaced together. It’s our support system; we report in the morning and then we sit down and watch the sunset—here, I’ll show you the sunset— watching it is something I do every single day because it’s the only thing that keeps me going and revives my soul. We have not been eating for the past couple of weeks, especially after the Rafah invasion. No food is coming in, so every single day at this time we start searching for food. We ate noodles for the first week and then we started eating bread with cheese from another supermarket that started making dairy like cheese, goat cheese and lebneh.

The boys went grocery shopping and then we’re going to start eating in the next hour. We report all day and then just hang out here at night because it’s the only thing we can do. We can’t go out; we don’t have anywhere safe. Anything could happen any minute, so we try to find calmness and peace in those times where we’re sitting and not doing anything.

I think I’ve been dehydrated the past couple of months, which is so hard in the summer. We don’t drink a lot of water not only because we can’t find drinking water, but because there’s no access to bathrooms, we try not to eat or drink as much as possible. These are very small details that we don’t really say when we’re reporting, but it’s not just reporting this, but about living it and I think this is the hardest part.

I have been away from my family for for eight months now. They all left Gaza because it was unbearable for them to stay and they had the opportunity to leave so they left. I’m the only person who stayed in Gaza and I feel so sad, and so homesick. I miss my family. I miss my husband. I miss everything before October 7 actually.

EIP: Can you take us to that moment? Maybe it was October 7th, or maybe it was a few weeks later, but those first few weeks where this happened; where were you? What were you doing? What were the conversations?

HIND: On October 7, I was at home. I didn’t do any reporting; I was just shocked, you know? Then I went out reporting on the third day of this war because I’m a freelance journalist so I didn’t know who I wanted to work with or what I was gonna do. I didn’t know what was happening— no one did. I lived with my husband in Istanbul for the past four years, and we chose to settle back in Gaza in August. We shipped everything— we brought all our furniture and everything from Istanbul, so we were shocked that this happened.

Since the second or third day, when I started reporting, I did not see my family for an entire hour. I used to grab some moments with them, but, for example, my mom traveled without me seeing her. My husband traveled when I was in the north and he was in the south. There was no way to evacuate, so he left without me seeing him. My mom, the same thing. I was only able to see my brothers before they left. But it was very hard.

I left the house not thinking that I would never go back. I remember taking a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and that’s it, you know? I always thought that I’d go back home — and in the first couple of weeks I did go back home, but every time I went home, I never thought ‘okay, this is it.’ The last time I left, I took a couple of socks and a couple more t -shirts, because I felt like I was going to be stationed in another place. That was the last time I went home, and then when I evacuated south, I found this random Instagram reel, where I saw my house bombed. Khalas, ya3ni. It’s not there anymore. That’s when I started reminding myself, ‘okay, so I don’t have anything to wear. I don’t have a closet. I don’t have anything left. All I have right now is my phone and my laptop.

EIP: You saw it on a reel? You were just on the internet, and that’s how you found out?

HIND: Exactly. I never imagined that this is how I’d know that my house was bombed. I cried so much that day. I remember my heart crying, it was so painful, because it’s something my father built, and my father passed away in 2012, and it was the only thing that reminds me of him.

Since then, every time I go to a place, and it’s wiped off and reduced to rubble, I remember the house, and I remember that I’m not even able to go and see my house —even if it was just rubble— because we’re not allowed to go there.

It’s a cycle of violence, a cycle of heartaches and heartbreaks. But at the same time, I continue to report because I feel like people need to know what’s going on, but it’s not easy. There were a couple of times that I was mentally collapsing and physically collapsing and emotionally collapsing— it’s not easy, it’s very hard but I need to do this.

EIP: Do you remember the last conversation you had with your husband when he was still in Gaza? What was going through your head when you talked last?

HIND: laughing I think we were fighting about the fact that he didn’t want me to report and go to the field because he was terrified. He found me in the middle of a battlefield, like literally in the middle of a battlefield, and he could not do anything about it. I’m a very stubborn person, and of course you wouldn’t like your partner to be in the middle of airstrikes and bombs and everything. He was terrified. That was the last conversation we had, that I wanted to go report and this was it. I remember the last time I saw him in Gaza, I wanted to visit him and it had been a month without seeing him. This was November and I went to see him and hug him, then we learned one of our best friends was killed. I literally had only an hour to see him before my friend was going to pick me up to go back to the office. I spent the hour crying with him and then I went back to the office.

Even having time to enjoy with the people close to you, you can’t because you’re overwhelmed with everything going on. We lost a lot of dear people, you know? It’s very hard and I think we did not have time to grieve, and to express or process the amount of loss. This is all going to start showing in the next few years because we have been squeezed emotionally—we’re trapped. I’m very happy that my family is not here because I won’t feel worried about them. I won’t feel like anything’s going to hurt them. This is the only thing that’s giving me a little bit of comfort, let’s say.

EIP: This all seems so intense and I’m a journalist and have never even come close to covering something like this. What is a day in the life for you in terms of your job? Like, how do you choose which sort of event to cover?

HIND: It depends. For example, a couple of days ago, it was 5am when my colleagues woke me up, like ‘Hind, they [Israel] targeted a UN school.’ There’s no coffee, there’s no wake up, there’s no ‘wash your face’, there’s no ‘comb your hair’— nothing. You just start running.

Even now as I’m talking to you, there could be some huge explosion or a huge event and I’d leave you and go. I don’t ever remember choosing what to cover. It comes to you. You don’t choose it; it happens, you go there, you start reporting and this is how it works.

EIP: Do you have any sort of anecdotes or memories or stories of people that come to mind?

HIND: My uncle. My cousin. My friend— my friends. The people I used to hang out with— like shisha hangouts every night— they were killed. My uncle, when we had Eid Al Adha in Ramadan, used to call me, I used to call him. We used to gather. He’s not there. My uncle was killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I remember that they said that he was killed, but they do not know where or how, then there was a photo circulating on social media of people killed in the Al Shifa operation, and I zoomed into the picture, like ‘This looks like my uncle! Is that him? No, no no, it’s not him.’ After they withdrew from the area, my mom was like this photo is your uncle, and I see him killed laying on the floor and on his lap is my cousin, and beside him is his sister in law, and a group of people. This is my uncle. Now every time I see people killed I don’t look at the photos; I don’t want to recognize anyone.

EIP: Do you get a chance to talk about this with the people you’re working with, or the friends you’re living with?

HIND: All the time when we’re sitting together on the rooftop, we ask, ‘okay, so if we get an airstrike what’s gonna happen?’ I had this conversation yesterday with one of my friends, who said, ‘No, maybe you’re gonna fly to another street, ‘ and I’m like ‘Okay, but are we gonna hear anything if it happens? Then I’m like ‘no no it’s not gonna happen.’ We’re traumatized, and all of these scenes and all of these memories come to you every single time.

I remember when we were in the office back in Gaza City, I always had a bottle of water with me because if anything happened and the building was bombed, I wanted to have some water with me. Many civilians were trapped under the rubble, but I could have sips of water and I could live more. That’s how I used to think.

Every time you see someone, bil sudfa (by coincidence) in the market or something, we do not recognize each other. Everyone’s pale, everyone lost a lot of weight, everyone’s sad and overwhelmed. It’s so heartbreaking actually.

EIP: You kind of mentioned it before, but I’d like to go into it a little more. What is the reason you stayed? What is the importance of being a journalist in Gaza in this moment?

HIND: The first thing is the fact of loving Gaza itself. Like, I’m in love with Gaza. Like, everyone knows that and always tells me, enti bint Gazeh (you are a daughter of Gaza) I’m a Gazzeweya, as in I’m originally a Gazan. I’m so connected to this place; I’m connected to the sea. I’m connected to the sky, I’m connected to the people, to the clouds, to everything. When I was away in Istanbul, I used to tell my husband every single day, ‘I want to go back to Gaza’. Every single day, ‘I want to go back. I want to go back.’

So, the thing that’s making me report is my connection to Gaza. The second thing is that I wanted to report about Gaza and about the Gazan people. I always wanted to uplift their voice.

The third thing is when people interact and are engaging with everything we’re doing, and the amount of solidarity we’re receiving, it really gives us a very big push to keep going.

I think these are the three main reasons. The biggest reason is to continue the journey of our fellows that were killed by the Israeli forces.

I remember posting and then going to report or posting something and then not having internet connection, then when we opened our Instagrams, and saw the amount of engagement and the amount of interaction and the amount of followers we received, we were shocked, to be honest.

I never imagined that a fifteen second video would really change people’s thinking and how they perceive it [the situation]. For me, I tried to do very short videos or talk on Instagram very normally and naturally [candidly]. I never overthought what I wanted to say and I think that was the reason why I really connected to the people. It’s because I’m a very normal person; I’m just saying what’s happening, you know? When we found people were really talking about us, like if you had no internet for one day, you’d find people asking about you.

We found how important it was; people are not relying on news outlets and TVs anymore, they’re relying on us and that’s where the responsibility increased, we found that we had weight on our shoulders. We have to write, we have to report, we have to tweet. We’re the source for a lot of people. There has been a very big impact and the reason, the main thing is, Gazan journalists were able to be the voice, and despite the fact that no foreign journalists or international journalists are coming in, we’re doing a great job.