“We are not special,” Ibtisam, my mother-in-law says, and it is as if I am beside her, trembling, while she calmly pours the summakiya into the plates. The smell of it brings some comfort. It is the smell of home.
I remember my mother’s summakiya as if its smell and taste suffuse my kitchen now, although it, and she, are lost to me. I regret not writing her recipe before she died. It is 10 years since I left home in Gaza and settled in Perth, where I became a mother and learned to make all her dishes – but not her summakiya. The whole neighbourhood of Tuffah knew Huwayda’s summakiya was the best! She was invited to make the dish at every wedding. Despite being a refugee, her family displaced to Gaza in 1948, she perfected the Gazan traditional dish.
On our last visit to Gaza in July last year, it was in my mother-in-law’s kitchen that we endured an Israeli airstrike. It was not widely reported, a commonplace occurrence in Gaza. I trembled while my mother-in-law stayed calm. I did not know how to run to her for shelter. After all, she is not my mother.
I had lived through two large-scale wars in Gaza, in 2008-09 and 2012, during which I sheltered in my mother’s arms. But she died four years ago, her death not rightly documented. On record she died of cancer, but in reality, hers was one of many deaths abetted by Israel’s 16-year blockade of Gaza. My mother died from a shortage of medical supplies and countless refused applications for Israeli military permits to travel out of Gaza for a scan. Two days before she died, I put a call out on my Facebook page to find her more pain medication. None was available. Her death is not recorded as a death caused by Israel’s siege. You will not find Huwayda’s name on any of the lists compiled by human rights organisations. Hers was one of many deaths that do not make the statistics, though statistics are a poor approximation for the loss of a mother.
Back in my mother-in-law’s kitchen another blast struck; my kids ran to me. I had to remind myself I am now the mother. I am their shelter. My mother-in-law drew a plate closer, patted me on the back and reassured me that this was just a small escalation. During my visit home, every conversation with family and friends was overshadowed by the trauma of war. “It’s definitely PTSD,” I kept telling myself as they spoke repeatedly of the weaponry used against them, the way they had to evacuate their homes, not knowing whether they’d go back to them or not.
My cousin Maha, who is almost my age and was my nemesis growing up, stopped boasting about herself, and took to boasting about her perfect children instead. “Malak was chosen for an IT competition,” she crowed.
I thought, “It feels like I am back in suburban Perth”. I told her: “Maybe you should think about relieving some of the pressure on her. She doesn’t have to be perfect all the time.”
Maha’s expression softened into something like helplessness. “We try to give them the illusion of a normal life, Samiha. Nothing about life here is normal.” Maha remembers that I was not in Gaza during the last two wars in 2014 and 2021 and that I have never experienced war as a mother, so she elaborated:
“We left our houses in the dark, ya Samiha. Malak was running in front of me and I was running for my life, thinking, ‘Do we run together? Or should we leave a distance in between? So if there was an airstrike, at least one of us stays alive.’ Last year these were the decisions I was making for them.”
Often, when I hear people use the phrase Gaza is an “open-air prison”, a sense of grief overwhelms me. People have little understanding of how Israel’s siege and occupation manifest into every bit of our existence as Palestinians from Gaza. The level of control that permeates our lives. The sense of loss that we need to cope with. And the grief over loved ones, gone, mourned, mostly undocumented.
Today I stand in my kitchen in Perth, trembling. My mother-in-law is no longer in her kitchen in Gaza, cooking summakiya. Her food and water supplies are dangerously low. The calm in her voice has been supplanted by desperation. “Have you heard any news of a ceasefire?” she asks.
Today she asks me to make existential decisions for her. “Samiha, this is like nothing we experienced before. We are confused. What should we do? Should we leave home? Should we stay? Should we keep together or separate?” Her voice is shaking.
On our brief phone conversations, she tells me: “Be strong … We followed Israel’s orders and evacuated to the south, but now they are bombing here. There are families pulled from under the rubble every day. We are not special. You need to be prepared.”
But I am not prepared, and I am not ready to write her recipe for summakiya. I want my children to see their grandmother again, and to taste the comfort of family and home.
***
After I submitted this piece, Ibtisam lost her daughter Alaa’ along with her daughter’s three children, five-year-old Eman, three-year-old Fayez and seven-month-old Sara. They were killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit their home in Gaza City.
• Samiha Olwan is a researcher in literary, cultural and gender studies, with a PhD in English and comparative literature from Murdoch University, Western Australia, and a master’s degree in cultural studies from Durham University in the UK. Before arriving in Australia in 2014 she worked with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza and taught at the Islamic University of Gaza
