Gaza has been burning at both ends for twenty months. But the fires are not only burning houses, but also consuming what remains of people’s dreams and dignity, in a continuous war of extermination in which Israel’s occupation has engineered starvation to the point where people wish for a loaf of bread.

In Gaza, cameras are for sale, balls are kicked for the last time in abandoned playgrounds, and a loaf of bread has become a greater goal than glory.

The journalist who became the image in Gaza

Palestinian journalist Bashir Abu Al-Shair, who spent years documenting the suffering of others, suddenly found himself becoming the image. He no longer holds the camera to convey the pain of the Gazans, but wrote a brief and poignant post on his Facebook account in which he offered to sell or exchange his camera for a bag of flour to feed his children.

The journalist also said in his post:

We no longer have the energy to endure the hardship of life and the oppression of famine, and I will not wait for my children to die before my eyes because of hunger.

His camera, which had witnessed war, pain, and siege, the crying of children under the rubble, and the faces of mothers drenched in patience, did not help him when his children’s strength failed them from hunger:

The decision to sell was not an easy one. He sold his livelihood, his dream, his means of survival from poverty, just to save his family from another night without food.

When former glory is sold for a bag of flour

In another neighborhood of besieged Gaza, soccer player Mohamed Salah was closing the last chapter of his dream when he wrote a post on Facebook whispering: “The last of my soccer memories” for sale, attaching the soccer shoes that had taken him to every stadium and accompanied him from the beginning of his unfulfilled dream:

“I’m selling the last thing I own… for a bag of flour.” Mohammed, who used to be cheered on by the whole of Gaza at every match, is now forced to knock on his friends’ doors, not to ask for encouragement, but to offer them his possessions.

The ball he loved since childhood did not satisfy his family, the stadiums where he dreamed of shining have become rubble, and the crowd is busy and hungry and does not cheer for anyone.

No one in Gaza has the luxury of choice. Sell your dream to stay alive.

Gaza today offers its people no choice. People are selling what remains of the symbols of their lives, not because they want to, but because they have no alternative. Journalists are selling their cameras, athletes their memorabilia. Everything is for sale in the markets of hunger, even dignity.

Many stories are now being told, not on television screens, but in timid posts on social media, in pictures of men ashamed to sell the tools of their dreams, women hiding their faces at the doors of soup kitchens, and children asking for bread more than they ask for toys.

Elsewhere in the world, success is measured by the number of achievements, the number of photos, the number of goals scored. In Gaza, however, success today means waking up alive, returning to your children with a bag of bread or a box of food.

Featured image and additional images via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

This post was originally published on Canary.