All that’s left is a key: Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombs dream of home

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – A year of war, displacement and horror has not made the people of Gaza forget the homes they had to leave behind to save their families from relentless Israeli bombing.

Al Jazeera spoke to three women who are now living in a refugee camp near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. They fled with their families, but held on to the one object that unifies all Palestinians deprived of their homes and lands: the keys to their houses.

No longer the large iron keys that their forebears took with them when they were ethnically cleansed in the Nakba of 1948, these small, modern keys are just as important to a dispossessed people as ever.

Abeer

Abeer al-Salibi, 37, lives in the crowded Deir el-Balah displacement camp and still carries the key to her house, though it now lies in ruins.

She, her husband and their seven children live in a tent, a far cry from the home they built over 17 years of toil.

She dreams of home, a modest house with a small garden in al-Karama, north of Gaza City.

“We only lived in it for three years before it was [bombed] last October,” Abeer recalled. “All that’s left of it is this key.”

Since they were forced from their home, the family has been displaced five times: Nuseirat to Rafah, then Khan Younis, and finally now to Deir el-Balah.

“Home is life. I miss my life. I miss the simple routine of waking my children for school, welcoming them back,” Abeer said with a soft smile.

She dreams of returning, even if it means living on the ruins of what was once their home.

“I’ll set up a tent on the rubble if I have to. We will rebuild. The important thing is to return.”

Wafaa

Wafaa Sharaf, 20, had only been married for six months when the war erupted, derailing the dreams she had with her 20-year-old husband, Islam.

Pregnant with her first child, she was forced in November to flee her home in as-Saftawi, north of Gaza City.

Islam had lovingly prepared a small apartment on the top floor of his father’s house for the couple to live in.

“It was no more than 60sq metres (646sq feet), but to me, it was heaven,” Wafaa said.

“We had been planning the baby’s room, and my mother had prepared clothes for the newborn. We left everything behind when we fled.

“I didn’t want to leave the house. My soul was still tied to it,” Wafaa said. “But when shells started falling … we had no choice.”

She gave birth to her daughter Leen in the overcrowded camp in January, during one of Gaza’s coldest winters.

The couple do not know what happened to their home, relying on second or third-hand accounts of people who had seen it.

Regardless, Wafaa has just one wish: “To return to my home. I don’t want anything else.”

Hiba

Hiba al-Hindawi, a 29-year-old mother of three, says that if she could do it all over again, she would have never left her home.

“I left out of fear for my children and myself. The bombing was relentless.”

She wishes she had taken more from the house, precious items like her wedding photos and pictures of her children when they were young.

“It’s all gone now,” she said quietly.

Looking back, she recognises the everyday luxuries of having a refrigerator, washing machine, and beds.

“I just wish I could wash my hands from a tap or use a bathroom like normal. It feels like we’ve been thrown back to the Stone Age.”

More than anything, she just wants the war to end.

“I want this Nakba to stop,” she said desperately.

In the future, she said, she will tell her grandchildren about the horrors of war that she and her children are living through.

“If we survive, I’ll tell them what we saw,” she said.