I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey Read Online Free Page A

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey
Book: I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey Read Online Free
Author: Izzeldin Abuelaish
Tags: General, History, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, middle east
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shape every few metres as one child ran ahead and two others stopped to examine an object on the path and three girls walking together became five, arms linked. But eventually we made it to the sand.
    Despite the cool day, the children ran straight for the water, where they swam and splashed each other for hours, taking breaks to play in the sand. These children of mine—my offspring, my progeny—were the joy of my life. And they’d meant the world to Nadia.
    I’d known Nadia’s family before we were married in 1987, when she was twenty-four and I was thirty-two. It was an arranged marriage, as is the custom in our culture, but of the young women my family arranged for me to meet, Nadia seemed the most suitable. She was a quiet, intelligent woman who had studied to become a dental technician in Ramallah, on the West Bank. Our families rejoiced at our union but were not as happy when we left Gaza almost immediately after our marriage for Saudi Arabia, where I had been working as a general practitioner. Nadia, too, felt the anxiety of dislocation. Though Bessan andDalal were born there, Nadia never adjusted to living in Saudi Arabia, never felt that she belonged. The customs were different to the ones we were used to, and she keenly felt the separation from our extended family and wanted to return home, which we eventually did in 1991.
    I travelled a lot after we settled again in Gaza—to Africa and Afghanistan for work and to Belgium and the United States for more medical training—but Nadia stayed at home with the children. We were a very traditional family, surrounded by my brothers and their families as well as my mother, who lived next door, and Nadia’s mother and father, who lived nearby. Since I had to be away quite often, both Nadia and I felt the need to be close to other family members. She never complained about my frequent absences during the twenty-two years we were married. I could never have studied at Harvard or worked for the World Health Organization in Kabul, Afghanistan, or even done my obstetrics and gynecology residency in Israel, without the support she gave me.
    It seemed surreal that she was gone. I watched my children and wondered what would become of them without their beloved mother. How does anyone come to terms with this sort of pain?
    In the weeks since Nadia died, Bessan, our first-born, my oldest daughter, had assumed the role of mother as well as older sister. It was a particular relief this day to see her dashing into the sea, the surf soaking her jeans, her laughter carried away on the wind. She was a remarkable girl, my Bessan. She was on track to graduate from the Islamic University in Gaza at the end of the academic year with a business degree. She seemed to be able to handle anything: mothering the children, taking care of the house, getting high marks at school. Since her mother died, though, she’d begun to see that exams are the easiest part, that there were other, harsher realities. It was a lot for a twenty-one-year-old to bear.
    Dalal, my second-oldest daughter, was named after my mother. She was a second-year student at the same university as Bessan, where she was studying architectural engineering. She was a quiet, studious girl, shy like most of my daughters. Her architectural drawings were remarkable to me—a sign of the precision she demanded of herself.
    Shatha was in her last year of high school and hoping to score the top marks in the class when they wrote their exams in June so she could fulfill her dream to become an engineer. The three girls were best friends and slept in the same room of our house in Jabalia City, a five-storey building that my brothers and I had built. Each of us had a floor for his family; my children and I lived on the third floor. One brother lived apart from us in a separate house. He’d had his own house in Jabalia Camp, and when we constructed the apartment building, he said he wanted to be near but in his own place. So we built another
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