What freedom feels like after Gaza

"I wasn't allowed to take anything with me when I left Gaza," Omar tells me.

"You were only allowed to go out with your T-shirt and trousers. Otherwise, I wanted to bring you a gift: a home blessing made of wood from Gaza - something we put at the entrance to bless our homes.

"You know, home means a lot to me, especially after our house, where I was born and grew up, was bombed.

"So, instead, I brought you a traditional Irish home blessing from Dublin. It has a meaning, too," he says, as he hands it to me.

I meet with Omar and Saleem at King's Cross in London. Both survived the genocide and managed to leave Gaza; one went to Dublin and one to London.

Freedom is beautiful, I say, as we walk.

But the same cloud hangs over the three of us. It is bewilderment at a world that appears normal, yet has also normalised the hellhole all three of us have left behind.

When Omar arrived at Dublin airport, he kept looking around himself, wondering if anyone was going to beat or arrest him.

He doesn't like airports.

Hiding our passports

"When I'm in line at the airport, I hide my passport. It's a refugee passport and has a different colour from others.

"The moment they see it, their faces change. And they treat you differently. As if they are paying for the air you breathe."

I know the feeling. When I fly through Ben Gurion Airport, everything goes fine until they look at my passport and find out I am a class B citizen.

'When I'm in line at the airport, I hide my passport. It's a refugee passport... The moment they see it, their faces change. And they treat you differently.'

Saleem hides his passport until the last moment.

When he flew from Berlin to London, the German border guard kept asking for more documents.

"He shouted at me loudly and, in front of everyone, said: 'You are not a British citizen'," Saleem recalls.

"I never wanted to be a British citizen. I loved my life in Gaza. I miss my parents, the Friday gatherings, and my friends. I miss speaking my language, going to the beach, and hanging out with my friends.

"I didn't take any money from the UK. I am working and paying taxes. All I want is for Britain to stop funding the genocide so I can go home."

News from Palestine

Omar and Saleem ask me about news from Palestine.

A week before I visited London, I was stuck on the road from Ramallah to Jerusalem for four hours. It is a drive that usually takes 20 minutes in normal cities.

It was the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid, and many families were on their way to visit relatives.

Still, the army decided to close the gate without prior notice, and hundreds of cars were stuck all evening, with no way to move forward or backwards.

Mothers decided to leave their cars and set off on foot, weaving through cars and leading their children, who were dressed in their Eid clothing, to nearby villages.

Desperate drivers of different ages, some of them maybe on their way to the hospital, were stuck for hours, while no one told them how long it would take.

There are now nearly 1,000 documented barriers in cities and towns in the West Bank, gates at the exits of villages and towns, creating ghettos that make daily life impossible for more than three million Palestinians.

The army closes and opens the gates on a whim. Palestinians have to manage life around it and find alternative ways.

I look around me in London. I half expect to see Israeli flags, armed groups in the streets, slogans about winning the war: "With God's help, we will win."

This morning, among the thousand news updates and messages I received, I come across a photo of three children aged between two and five. They were soaked in their own blood after being killed during the night while they slept in their tent.

No one has spoken about Gaza since the ceasefire. At the same time, Israel keeps bombing and killing civilians day and night.

Another family, another piece of news, gets lost in the summertime, with people rushing to plan their summer holidays.

Night raids

In the West Bank, I speak with a young mother of five in the village of Tell.

This village made the news after a settler raid that ended with the killing of four Palestinians, as well as an Israeli army officer and a settlement security guard.

Since the incident, Naheel's family and her five children have not left the house. Not even for the yard, she says.

They all sit in one room, awake all night, and go to sleep in the morning.

"Nights are a time of settler and army raids, and we must stay awake," she tells me.

They update each other by WhatsApp on where the night raids are happening. They all know there is no one to protect them.

"What do you tell your five-year-old son?" I ask her.

"I tell my five-year-old son the truth. I do not hide reality from him. If there is something he cannot fully understand, I explain it more simply. I tell him that the settlers have come into the area and might attack people.

"When he asks why they beat or attacked people, I try to explain it through a simple story that he can understand. I do not want him to be disconnected from reality, because he could find himself in the middle of such an event, and that would affect him even more psychologically. If he understands, even to some extent, what is happening, I believe it is easier on him emotionally.

"My children have already experienced an army raid and the arrest of their father. When he was released two years later, the children looked at him and said: 'Dad, you don't look like yourself'."

Omar, Saleem and I look at the families sitting with their children, watching a film on a public screen by the canal. Other children are playing in the water fountains.

The three of us stand and look at the scene, almost in incomprehension.

Omar then tells me: "When I first moved to Dublin, I found one sock in my clothes that belonged to my mother; it may have got into my suitcase by mistake.

"But then for the whole year I couldn't sleep without it. I put it under my pillow.

"Sometimes I was like a little boy, holding this sock and weeping," he says. "I miss my mother and my life in Gaza."

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.