‘I recorded my first song in that studio’: reflecting on the destruction of Gaza’s high-rises

Gaza Diaries

In the mid-1990s a cash infusion hit the Gaza Strip’s private sector around the time of the Oslo Accords and with it came the first luxury residential towers, high-rises with glass-walled office buildings, and modern indoor shopping malls. Locally, everyone knows the name of these towers and their developers. I even follow a few of the proprietors on social media.

Like me, Gaza’s commercial and residential towers withstood three wars between Israel and Hamas in six short years from 2008 to 2014. But in this last escalation, Israeli forces targeted a number of these buildings and I am still struggling with the mammoth loss. Gone is where I would buy my clothes, offices where friends worked, and the location of all of my aspirational activities.

I am an English teacher, but my favorite hobby is singing. I have a nice voice and enjoy using it to sing at my school or family parties. I am also a good storyteller and I have the ability to change my voice’s tone to suit a character and script, which is how I became a voice actor. My favorite type of music is classical. The first time I recorded a song, it was at studio Masharak, in Jalaa tower, which was leveled in a bombing last May.

Another tower that was bombed, the al-Shorouk tower, has the most famous falafel restaurant in the Gaza Strip, “Falafel Al-Susi.” My friends and I used to go there to eat falafel and enjoy the shopping center, which is now rubble. I once bought an expensive and wonderful gown from an evening dress store, and everyone who saw it was asking about the name of the store. “Serabella,” I proudly said. I used to visit it constantly and marvel and the designs, but this place has also become rubble.

Suzanna Qattaa (Photo courtesy of the author)

All of these escalations, including the most recent one, took place more than a decade into a crippling siege that began in 2007 when Israel and Egypt closed the checkpoints in and out of here. When people outside of Gaza think of a blockade, they may think about checkpoints blocking consumer goods. But cookies and KFC are only part of the story. What people may not realize is that our energy supply is also cut off from the global market.

During the war, when fuel lines leading to our only power plant were hit, most households had no more than four hours of electricity a day. I spent the long hours of the day with my nephews, singing to them, telling stories, trying to make my voice louder than the sound of missiles. Mothers here say, “We hope we can hide our kids in our hearts” to shield them from the sounds of artillery fire or airstrikes. When the electricity came back, life came back to our house; we felt a little safe when the power was on. My mother would whip into a hurry to wash our clothes while my brothers and I rushed to charge our phones so we could keep in touch with our other brother who lives in Germany. With every breaking news story, he would try to contact us.

Unlike our home, in those towers, there used to be electricity around the clock. They are powered by precious backup diesel generators. Because of the promise of a constant current flow, Gaza’s fledgling start-up community rented space in these buildings.

Mohammed Abu Matar and Mohammad Qadada are two high-tech entrepreneurs who lost their businesses in the destruction of the Hanadi Tower. The building was hit by Israeli missiles on May 11.

Mohammed Abu Matar founded a company called Tashkeel3D, Gaza’s first 3D printing service and a partner manufacturer of medical supplies with the Glia program. Their entire operation was destroyed, meaning we will lose access to the tourniquets his company printed that supplied all of our emergency responders.

A few days after the building collapses, Mohammed Qadada who founded a strategic marketing firm, Planet for Digital Solutions, told “Good Morning Europe” about the moments before and after the bombings.

First, “The security guard at the tower called me to grab my stuff, my hardware,” said to the French show.

“The first rocket hit during breakfast, followed by five more strikes,” he said. Because he only had a few minute’s advance notice, he was unable to secure his equipment from his first-floor office.

“We couldn’t risk our teams’ lives. We didn’t have time to do anything. So our data, our programs, our hardware are all lost in the bombing,” he said. “The last two days were the worst days in Gaza ever.”

Another high-rise that fell was known as a hub for media bureaus. The Al Jawhara tower was co-owned by Ahmed Al Zaeem and housed at least a dozen of news organizations. It was a mixed-use building and has a number of posh apartments including one where Al Zaeem and his family lived. A few days after it was struck on May 11, Al Zaeem posted a picture of him and his family at the blast site. His smiling children were wearing the new clothes they received for the Eid holiday that comes at the end of Ramadan, standing in front of the wreckage.

“My house and all my possessions were destroyed, and tomorrow, God willing, I will buy Eid clothes again for my children, and we will celebrate the victory day for Jerusalem and Palestine,” he wrote on social media.

Another building that was destroyed was the Kahil building, and when it came crashing down so did my favorite bookstore, the Samir Mansour Library was one of the largest collections of reading materials in all of Gaza. This was not just a strike against paper and ink, it was a strike against culture. The owner of the library has no political affiliations. The library was a destination for readers in the entire Gaza Strip. Anyone who went into it found rich stories, religious books, and novels from international authors. Samir Mansour, the bookshop owner, told Alaraby TV, “I used to help my father in the library when I was 14 years old. I grew up among books.”

“When my father passed away, the library became mine. The library grew and so did my dreams,” he said. “I will rebuild the library as soon as possible, and I will publish these books. The library has been destroyed, but my hopes will not be destroyed with it.”

The Israeli military has said that it is only targeting Hamas affiliate sites, but the truth is that they bombed civilians and children throughout this escalation. I watched a news segment of a man from Gaza, his house completely destroyed who somehow survived an initial airstrike on his house and was trapped under rubble for hours. He even managed to call his family from his mobile phone while he was waiting for rescue workers to find him. But hours passed and he was not brought out alive. His family could not save him.

Eid was sad this year and it’s even sadder when I think of my favorites places and that they are gone. Family visits are postponed until an unknown date. My young niece Reem, who is ten years old, says she wants to grow up to become a doctor. But she also asked me questions that lead me to believe she does not think she will live to adulthood, “will we die in this battle?” – “will our house be destroyed over us like other families?”

In total, more than 1,200 houses were destroyed, and another 50,000 sustained damage. In fact, all of the physical damage cost Gaza $380 million. But it’s not all facts and figures. We know families whose houses were completely destroyed. My mother’s friend is an 80-year-old woman who lived in an apartment in Susi Tower. While the building fell, she miraculously survived.

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