FROM THE FIELD
Oxfam’s Mohammed Ali reflects on his first weeks living in the UK after working under fire in his homeland for the past 2 years.The moment I left Gaza I felt like I’d been let out of prison. It’s like the feeling a bird must have when all of a sudden, after years of living in a cage, someone opens the door. It flies away into the world, finally able to go where it wants and explore new things. That is how I feel as I write these words from a desk in Oxford.I’ve now been here in the UK for nearly two weeks. It still feels like a dream! I waited two years to leave and I can’t believe I’m finally here. I keep thinking I’ll wake up back in Gaza, trapped, and unable to escape the misery we have all endured there since the Israeli blockade began two years ago. Watch my interview below. I’m happy to be in the UK. At the same time I’m devastated to have left behind my family, my friends and all my colleagues struggling to find the basic things like food and water. But I came here to study so I can some how, some way find a way to help bring an end to the endless suffering by spreading the message of what’s going on there as far and wide as I can.I know I’m one of the fortunate ones. Hundreds of students with scholarships like me are trapped in Gaza losing hope. When I went to the Rafah border crossing point, I saw sick people, families and children on the Gaza side screaming to get out and into Egypt which lay just a few metres away. But to leave Gaza has become almost impossible.Here in the UK it’s a totally different world. People laugh in the streets and enjoy the sweet things in life. In Gaza, people are exhausted, tired and deflated. Many families are living in tents, struggling to find cooking gas or fuel for their cars. My family used to spend the weekend in my uncle’s olive groves but now nothing is left because they were destroyed in Israel’s military attack on Gaza last January. My grandmother cries day and night not only for the loss of the olive trees. She also weeps for the destruction of the place of our family’s happiest memories.The people of Gaza who are suffering are not terrorists. They are just ordinary civilians who deserve a better life, like the father I once spoke to who had lost his job and was struggling to feed his seven children. His main concern in life was to find clothes, water, food and shelter for his family, not to harm Israelis.  Stories like this haunt me as I walk along the streets of Oxford. I ask myself over and over why is the Israeli government punishing my family, friends and the ordinary people of Gaza? It’s like paradise here in the UK. Every day in Oxford I wake up in peace. There are no Israeli planes flying overhead. Beautiful rivers flow through the city instead of the daily sewage that is pumped into the sea back home. Here I can turn on the light every day. In Gaza there is often no electricity, only darkness.Each morning I’m surprised to find clear water flowing abundantly from the taps. As I try to wash away the mental scars left by the last two years in Gaza, my mind returns to my family and friends affected by the contaminated water that pollutes their everyday lives. The concerns of people here are completely different to those of my family and friends living in Gaza. Walking through the university campuses of Oxford, students are occupied with thoughts of how to achieve good marks, pass their exams or read more books. In Gaza, students are struggling just to find a pen, a notebook or a t-shirt. Sometimes when I walk down the street I feel different. To come from the prison that Gaza has become, to a world of diversity and culture, is shocking but truly wonderful! Here I can converse in coffee shops with Italians, Germans and people from around the globe while listening to the local mosque call to prayer.I don’t recognize myself. I walk in the streets and I feel liberated. I’m just here with a message about the reality in Gaza, hoping that things will change for everyone.More from Mohammed: Leaving Gaza (blog, 21 August 2009)More on this: Oxfam’s response to the crisis in Gaza[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
