Of little egrets in Kota Bharu and Palestinian sunbirds in Gaza

 

From Zalina Ismail

I was at home on the deck that extends into the Pengkalan Datu river in Kota Bharu when a flock of white birds crossed my line of vision.

My untrained eyes say they are little egrets, symbols of good fortune, purity, and grace. They are said to symbolise new beginnings and prosperity.

My mind drifts to more than 7,600km away. Are there any birds in Gaza I wonder? I’m told that the national bird of Palestine is the Palestinian Sunbird, small in size but bold in existence and holds a beautiful representation of resilience and undying presence in Palestine.

I glance at my iPhone and the images I see from North Gaza, a complete juxtaposition, almost incomprehensible in magnitude.

There is a message from Hatem Abu Zaydeh, my former PhD student, now a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza or whatever is left of it.

His message is heartrending. Despite everything, he starts by asking if I am OK.

His entire world is collapsing, and he asks if I am OK. Then he says “Until now, I still have life (sic). My family is OK. I lost my sister’s family, two still missing,” and in the spirit that is symbolic of Hatem and all that he represents, he says “Alhamdulillah”.

Hatem was born and bred in Gaza City. As a child of the Gaza Strip, he knows very well what suffering is.

From the time he was born, he has lived under a partial Israeli blockade, poverty, and violence. As a young boy of 14, he was imprisoned for five years for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. And now, with the escalation of the Israeli offensive and a total blockade following the rocket and ground attacks by Hamas fighters, his suffering will likely only get worse.

Where can Hatem go? Where will his wife and five children run to?

In an unprecedented order to civilians like Hatem, his family and 1.1 million other Palestinians living in North Gaza, the Israeli military gave them 24 hours to leave North Gaza or stay and face the thousands of Israeli troops and massive firepower waiting at Gaza’s northern border.

To go or to stay, is an existential question for which there seems to be no answer. Is there a safe haven when even the border with Egypt at Rafah remains closed? There is nowhere to go.

Hatem became my PhD student in 2013. He took longer than most to complete his work, mainly because he could only come here for short periods of time. He did not want to study the psychological impact of war on the psychological profile of students.

In his own words, “we have many many people who study the impact of war on our children. I want to know if there is a way to evaluate our children’s minds and how to overcome this.”

Hatem wanted to find a way to assess neurocognitive functions in children, to evaluate their brain-mind interface and he wanted to rise above the psychological damage and provide hope for the children of Gaza.

I was not sure what we could do. I was raised in scientific institutions that use EEG (electroencephalogram), MRI, fMRI, and CT scans to achieve this.

It was a challenge for him as well as for me. Until Hatem became my student, and while I was aware of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I was blissfully oblivious of the day-to-day difficulties that were faced by the people of Gaza. Hatem challenged every concept I had about my work and my beliefs.

While he was my student, we did make some inroads into neurocognitive research. We actually had a few Brain-Mind Centres set up in schools in Ramallah, Khan Younis and Gaza City.

Along the way, I realised that I learned as much from Hatem as he did from me.

He learned that in Kota Bharu, not every shadow behind every large tree was someone out to get him. Nor was the sound of a car backfiring, becoming a signal to drop flat on the ground (which he did at the USM carpark).

I learned that you do not need all your fancy machines and laboratories to make a difference. I learned that research was not just about getting enough points to make you a professor, or get more grants, or get to travel to conferences around the world.

It was about making a difference in communities that do not have anything to hope for. The research you do may not make it into high-indexed journals all the time, but if it touches the heart of the community, then you have succeeded in what you do.

Closer to home, is the story of Nadir Al Nuri Kamaruzzaman, a Malaysian who is currently in Malaysia while his wife is in Gaza along with his children. He talks of rocket attacks close to his home in Gaza although for the moment, his family is safe. At least for now.

These are real stories of real people caught in this war.

Hatem also told me about Dar Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex and central hospital situated in North Gaza. It is grossly understaffed, lacking in medical supplies, the electricity supply is almost zero and hospital beds are overwhelmed.

The director-general of Dar Al-Shifa Hospital has said that there was no way to evacuate the hospital. There is simply no other safe place in Gaza to put more than six hundred patients, many of them in serious condition from the Israeli attacks.

Some of us have doctor friends working in this hospital, many of whom were our Palestinian postgraduate students.

So, it was distressing to get this message from a colleague: “We are still alive but our beloved colleagues were murdered yesterday. Dr Omar Ferwan, the ex-dean of the faculty of medicine was killed at his house, with all of his family, even his grandchildren. Dr Mohamed Dabour the head of the pathology department was killed with his family too. Dr Medhat Sedam, a plastic surgeon was murdered with his family, after working at Shifa hospital for 7 days….”

These are friends and colleagues… the war just became real.

The more than two million people in Gaza live in what human rights groups have called an “open-air prison”. The territory’s airspace, borders, and sea are under Israeli control, and neighbouring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.

I do not know how this war will play out or what tomorrow will bring. Conditions change by the hour as I anxiously await news from Hatem and other friends in Gaza.

There is only one sure thing in this conflict: the suffering will continue if there is no significant international effort behind a political solution.

Yet, amazingly enough, last year was unique for the three Abrahamic religions. In a rare confluence of celebrations, the Jews observed Passover, while Christians celebrated Easter and Muslims began their holy month of Ramadan simultaneously on April 20.

In the holy land of Jerusalem, pilgrims from the three monotheistic religions came together peacefully in large numbers. Perhaps, we need to look at this again, bury our differences and embrace our similarities.

We have no other choice. Perhaps someday, Palestinians will be like their sunbird, travelling without restrictions from the beaches of Gaza to the plains, forests, mountains, and villages of Palestine’s central and northern lands. - FMT

Zalina Ismail is a former professor of Universiti Sains Malaysia.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.