Genocide Blog 10 – Touching Pet Tortoise Story and Bravery of Journalists
23.11.2023
At a certain time of day, the whole of Ragoo Lane is red. Cardinals fly everywhere.
In Ragoo Lane, like in any street in Gaza, there are all kinds of people. One neighbour in Ragoo Lane, for example, feeds this flock of cardinals their favourite seeds. The flock of birds now knows her and her daily schedule. It is such a happy sight. At another time of day, Ragoo Lane is bright yellow. It is time for her to feed the Cape Canaries. And at yet another time, you hear this wonderful whooshsh sound – the pigeons have all flown up as you go out to your dustbin. Their turn to be fed by the neighbour. She cares for all things living. When the rubbish lorry comes by twice a week, there she is, this caring neighbour, coming down from her upstairs house with two 1.5-litre bottles of iced water from her fridge for the workers on the lorry to drink during their work in the heat of the day. A biophile in Ragoo Lane.
People are capable of such loving care.
Once, when I heard my dogs barking in that strange bark dogs reserve for “I have seen an unclassifiable creature, come look!” – meaning an escaped sea-crab a neighbour had caught the night before, or a mole-snake, say. So, I went to see what it was. The two dogs’ faces were quizzical. It was a tortoise. A beautiful thing about 8 inches long. So, I picked it up and put it into a pail on the outdoor wash-basin stand. I went to the neighbours behind our house and asked if they kept tortoises as pets. They said yes. But had none missing. I asked another neighbour out back. They also had a tortoise, but it was not missing either. Next door, on both sides. One didn’t have a tortoise. But the others did, but none missing. Across the road, I found the same set of replies. Either no they did not have any tortoises, or they had some but none were missing. I found that we who do not keep tortoises are in the minority in Ragoo Lane. Clearly they all loved their tortoises. You live and learn. Later that day, a neighbour, who is also a close friend, across Ragoo lane and a little further up our cul-de-sac, was going past in front of our house. I called out to ask her if she kept tortoises, and she said “yes”. And she said, “Yes, there is one that’s gone missing for 10 days.” So, in she came to the back of our yard. When I lifted the lid off the pail, she cried, “Makrel!” I wondered what I had done to offend her. But, of course, she was cursing her female tortoise for her dangerous escape, having crossed the road and all. Any minibus could have run her over. Not to mention the dogs. I said how “she” had refused to eat anything I gave her – I had tried grated carrot and then finely chopped lettuce, bread crumbs and rice. No. My neighbour said she only eats “bought” tortoise food. So, I learnt that, as well as all the dogs and cats, people in Ragoo Lane keep tortoises as pets.
How scared all the pets must be in Gaza. How many are lost? Left behind? Bombed out? If adults and children are traumatized, how much more trauma for the donkeys, dogs, cats, birds, horses and tortoises. One 70-year old Palestinian woman Ms Fahr Tac Abushqir, Yahoo’s “storyful” relates via a Gazan journalist called Mohamed el Saife and also written about in a Turkish newspaper, was forced to move from her home near Khan Yunis earlier this month – Khan Yunis is one of the “safe places” that the Israeli military, in bad faith, made people move to, you may recall, before bombing there, too – and she had sought refuge in the Nasser Hospital not too far away. She had brought along her pet tortoise, shown as she held it in her hand. She used to have to go out to find food for him and for her three caged birds even during Israeli airstrikes, she says in a mini-video clip. Yesterday, by chance I came across a teeny video of a pet cat at the same Nasser hospital, being stroked by its owner and others sheltering there. When will the IDF target them all? To the last person, and to the last domestic animal – as Netanyahu threatened to do.
It is only through Palestinian journalists inside Gaza that we get these precious bits of news. The Israeli Defense Force has, however, made their work terrifying. Sometimes the IDF turns off all electricity so that journalists cannot film at night, and cannot send images out because all the networks are down. As of yesterday, 53 journalists have been killed in Gaza and in the Lebanon, nearly all of them Palestinians, nearly all of them by Israeli fire. The entire family of one top Al Jazeerah journalist was targeted by the IDF and wiped out. The wife, son, daughter and grandson of Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera Arabic’s bureau chief in Gaza, were killed in an Israeli air raid. They are not in the 53 killed. He was, at the time, reporting on a strike just like the one that annihilated his family members.
It makes us remember the Palestinian heroine, Shirin Abu Akleh, targeted and assassinated by the IDF in Jenin. Her coffin was then attacked by IDF soldiers on its way to the Church during her funeral in East Jerusalem. Even dead, she remained a threat to the Israeli occupation.
It is only now, when prisoners are being swapped that “the civilized western world” learns from the Press and TV – still trying to hide it – that the Israeli State kidnaps and imprisons women and children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It is only now that the Hamas’ war aim of taking prisoners, so as to have leverage to free the thousands of Palestinian prisoners the Israeli State has in its jails, becomes clear. Over a thousand Palestinian prisoners are extra-judiciary. A polite word, a “ghoulish euphemism” to quote from the Poetry Editor of the New York Times Magazine’s resignation letter. These Palestinians, many of them children, many of them women, are literally kidnapped and kept in dungeons by the occupying power. We need context, don’t we. On CNN this morning, there was no mention of the existence of Palestinian women and children, 150 due for release, let alone empathy for them in the prisoner swap that has been concluded. Meanwhile, Israel continues with its genocide until the truce comes into existence.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
PS: Typing error corrected in last paragraf.
