MINDFULNESS | GAZA | SOLIDARITY
Seven Hours Without Water!
A water service interruption turns into a mindful meditation about Gaza.
“The county will be shutting off your water at 9 AM on Monday, for seven hours,” warned a notice on my door. This is the USA, mind you, but fine. Any mounting grumble was quickly assuaged by the thought of two million people in Gaza without adequate water. If they can manage for weeks under such condition, I can handle 7 hours while workers replaced the old fire hydrant by the corner. By Monday morning, the idea even appealed to me. It’s an opportunity to learn what it’s like, to feel their pain. A kind of Advent, if you will.
(Photo by the author, Dec. 2016).
8AM I filled my reusable bottles, a tea kettle, and two pots of water. The notice reminded us to store enough water for our needs. Needs? Wait … washing. So I filled the bathtub at the last minute before shutting the mains. At least, I did get a warning. Plus, I have a safe place to store the water. For the two million Gazans pushed out of their homes, on the move, without shelter, none could carry as much water as I hoarded for seven hours. I could not imagine how.
9AM I had little time left after my morning coffee for a shower, so I had to make do with a quick wash that left me imagining how Gazans survive for days without showering.
10AM Ready for another dose of caffeine, I boil the water waiting in the kettle, grateful for having a working stove, and electricity. I go back to work on my computer, internet fully intact, power normal, the heat running in the home. So many privileges of modern life that we take for granted, that can be taken away in a flash by the same technology that purports to serve us.
11AM I used a bathroom one time too many, only to discover that the toilet tank is empty. I had forgotten that it won’t refill. Lucky it was #2. To think of it, I used one of the other two toilets, too, so I only have one toilet with a working flush left in the house. A statistic I heard on the news this morning floated onto my conscious mind. “They have 400 people per toilet in the southern Gaza strip, if they have access to any toilet, that is.”
12NOON It’s getting old. “Definitely getting old,” I mumble, as I peek for the tenth time at the uniformed workers outside. They seem to know what they’re doing. I have no doubt the water will be back by 4 PM, if not earlier. Their objective is to upgrade the fire hydrants — something constructive to society and that benefits me. My inconvenience is unintended, and they had taken steps to minimize it, like having all their equipment on site the night before. I ponder how, in Gaza, the destruction of civilian life seems to be objective of the uniformed men. The Israelis did not stop at bombing residential buildings, but hit roads, hospitals, schools, and shelters.
1PM I boil my pasta as I think about Gaza’s shortage of working stoves. Without boiling the water, there’s no guarantee it’s free from germs. We’re at the mere foot of an impending public health catastrophe in Gaza, with 2 million people drinking contaminated water. I wash hands with a tumbler-full of bathtub water. No need to spend the water I have on washing dishes, so I scrape them clean with a paper towel. I recall a story I read on Medium, from a man in Gaza who refused to leave his home. Water was so scarce, he was saving his urine in bottles.
2PM I enjoy the privilege of a microwave oven to heat milk for my coffee. In Gaza people have no electricity, if they have any shelter at all. Even if they had internet, there’s few places to charge a phone. I panic momentarily at the thought that the crew outside might not finish today. I look outside. Those men in uniform are not that callous. They appear humanly conscientious and will not leave us stranded. I contemplate my emergency scenario. A five-minute walk brings me to a convenience store where I can buy water by the gallon, and there’s another one a little further away. I can walk with good confidence that I won’t be shot on the way there or back, although nowadays in America, you never know. I think of all those who lost their lives in Gaza just to bring water for their families.
3PM A stink wafts through the drain in the kitchen sink. Great! I have a direct line to the sewers. A few runs to the bathtub with a cup take care of that. I imagine what it must smell like in Gaza, with the rotting bodies in the street and still under the rubble; the stench of blood; or the sulfurous dust cloud from all the explosions. What is it like in the hospitals without water or supplies? How can they clean and disinfect? What’s Israel’s plan? Instill the conditions for widespread disease then claim, like mainstream American historians do with indigenous Americans, that “disease killed 90% of them?”
4PM The crew is still working outside. They seem to be wrapping up. I don’t mind that they’re late, just hope they don’t leave us stranded. I look up the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. At 4 pages, a rather slim document, and right there on page 1, Article II has a clear definition of ‘genocide’:
“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:”
…
“(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;”
…”
I wonder if, suddenly, I got a warning of the kind they get in Gaza. “You have five minutes to leave.” What will I take in 5 minutes? The elderly, the young, the disabled, the sick — the weakest members of society are the ones that end up under the rubble. The rest run to look for shelter in a world with no clean water and death towering around them.
Never mind the death toll, now nearing 20,000 Palestinian civilians. Never mind that Israel has killed 1 in every 100 Gazans. That alone could be a headline, but the fate of the 99 that so far have survived is what makes me shudder.
With love,
Ramsey Hanhan
