“The only thing that is certain is that something terrible is going to happen.”
Ravell, who previously worked in South Sudan and several regions of Mexico, arrived in Gaza weeks before the start of the war. Uncertainty was the first feeling he experienced.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” he explained. “Every day I heard sounds of drones. There was a lot of fighting on the borders. People live with uncertainty every day. Leaving and entering Gaza is a problem. The Palestinians, my companions, live in a cage. It is a terrible uncertainty, not knowing what is going to happen and when it is going to happen, but the only thing is that something terrible is going to happen,” he says.
The morning that the conflict began was a Saturday, Ravell’s day of rest, so he had planned to go to a cafe to enjoy his day off. But the conflict surprised her. “I could hear the bombings.”
“Gaza was a very populated city, too populated, and normally in the morning I heard the sounds of cars, people, and that day not even the birds could be heard,” he said.
Little by little, the conflict approached the area where she was working. More than the sound of the bombs, what warned her of the attacks was the collapse of the buildings, since the pressure she felt on her body was “like jumping into a pool full of ice.”
He recalled that Gaza, before the bombings, “was a prison, but a very beautiful one” and that all that beauty has been destroyed in a few weeks. “During all the days of war there was not a single moment of happiness or comfort.”
Ravell asked that, rather than thinking of the war dead as a number, they be remembered as strong, resilient and brave people.
“Let’s not be indifferent, indifference kills,” he said.