My grandfather, Hamdi, was just eight when his family fled Bir al-Sabaa, a town in southern Palestine once known for its fertile land and agricultural life. His father, Abdelraouf, was a farmer who owned nearly 1,000 dunams of land and cultivated wheat, selling the harvest to merchants in Gaza.
Seventy-five years after my grandfather's experience of painful displacement, sorrow, and a struggle to survive, my family and I fell victim to the Nakba as well. At 4am on October 13, 2023, my mother's phone rang.
We left our home, land, and animals behind, thinking we'd return. But that never happened. Hamdi's family fled on foot and by horse-drawn cart. What they thought would be a few weeks of displacement turned into permanent exile.
Fear gripped us as we were all sleeping in one room... It was a prerecorded message from the Israeli military warning us that our home was in a danger zone, and we were being ordered to move south.
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