SPECIAL FEATURE
Gaza: The Land Behind the Fence
A Photographic Essay by Eman Mohammed
I. The Path / “You have to be a man”
The path to becoming the first female photojournalist in the Gaza Strip was uncharted, dangerous and lonely. The Gaza strip is a densely populated Palestinian territory bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Egypt to the south and Israel on the east and north. It is literally fenced-in by wire, concrete and steel with rarely opened borders, giving it the feel of one of the largest prisons in the world. In the land behind the fence I wandered as a nineteen-year-old freelance photojournalist. I had no famous family name to provide protection, as living in the Gaza strip requires. I didn’t have the supportive connections that would make my career path easier.
Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a journalist. I was always curious, wanting to know the deeper and more detailed versions of stories, no matter how big or small. While attending the Islamic University of Gaza, I accepted internships at radio and television stations, then newspapers, and finally was hired and trained as a producer and editor at a local news agency. I accepted the position on the condition that I would be allowed to carry a camera on assignment, something women did not do. In Gaza it is okay to be a woman journalist – as long as you work in the office. My boss made it clear that a woman must not do a man’s job and working as a field photographer you have to be a man.
But my boss indulged me. He gave me an old, broken camera, which I fixed myself, and I started photographing in the field. This caused an uproar with my male colleagues, who said things like, “You hired a girl, she wears jeans, she goes out into the field, and she jumps all over the place with her camera.” They criticized everything I did – even the way I moved! My boss took the camera and locked it in the closet. I didn’t want to be fired from my very first job, yet I didn’t want to work without the camera. So I quit!
II. The Blast Zone / Locked Doors
After gradually saving up enough money to buy my own camera and two used lenses, I went out in the field as a freelancer and took on my male colleagues. My first big story was the 2008–2009 war between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and it happened in my home city. There was no time to think it through. There was only my desire to document it . . . immediately. Then one terrible day, I was sexually harassed by a photographer looking for a “quickie” in his car. I ran to three other colleagues and together we drove in their Jeep to cover a live air-strike zone.
We arrived amid loud whistles and explosions: the sounds of bombing. It was happening on top of us. The area was open: no protection, no large buildings, just some houses. Dust was flying in the air and the ground was shaking like a swing beneath me. I was shooting the scene when my three colleagues ran back to the Jeep and I ran after them. When I got to the Jeep, the doors were locked. They smiled at me, and then drove away. I was in shock.
I couldn’t process what had happened. Humiliation was all I felt. It was like a war from all possible sides – including from my colleagues. I was lost and had to ask many people for directions; their faces blur in my memory, as well as all the details of what followed. All I could do was walk and walk and I kept walking until I was out of the air strike blast zone. The distance wasn’t very long, yet they felt like the longest hours of my life.
III. Mothers and daughters / “Many women died in the kitchen”
Of all the books about parenting, none give you a clue as to how to raise your child in a war zone. I couldn’t possibly understand this as a child and still struggle with it as a mother of two. As a young girl, I just wanted to document the history being made before my eyes. But being raised in Gaza by a single mother was my harsh reality. As a Palestinian refugee, like many caught up in events larger than themselves, the future can feel preordained, with little light at the end of the tunnel. My future certainly did not feel full of opportunity or hope.
My mother – traditional yet wanting a bright future for her daughter – kept sending me mixed signals of how unstoppable I could choose to be. She helped me reject the strict standards of my community that labeled me as “not good enough.” Yet I was still a part of this community. We traveled a lot when I was young – to places like Romania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. It exposed me to different cultures and lifestyles and I learned things they don’t teach in the Gaza schools. As a young girl, I was filled with a confusing mix of curiosity and frustration and at times it felt like we were a small family of Martians living on Planet Gaza.
My mother and I shared the same passion in totally different ways. We loved the camera, our city of Gaza, and the freedom of traveling away from the sound of bombs, only to come back running and longing to see how much had changed in our once-beautiful city.
I was photographing right up through the ninth month of my second pregnancy. I had gained 30 kilos and I felt like a huge ball with two cameras rolling down the street! I had a daughter back home and an unborn child, but while I knew I would be blessed enough to see my baby soon, other mothers were losing theirs. It was this unfair dilemma that kept bringing me back to the field. The echo of a young Syrian girl’s words were so loud; they reminded me that “many women died in the kitchen,” and it was my obligation to keep shooting for those who trusted me with their privacy and to tell their story.
I started paying closer attention to women’s lives in Gaza. Because of my gender, I had access to worlds where my male colleagues were forbidden. Beyond the obvious pain and struggle there was also a healthy dose of laughter and many accomplishments. I was inspired to continue – pressing my unwelcomed female presence in a male-dominated field – by stories that could only be found in the darkest corners of the city, behind closed doors. The camera revealed mysterious stories behind the news headlines.
IV. Defining Moment / Broken Things
Every news event has a defining moment for those reporting from the middle of it. Such a moment came for me in 2008 when over 40 Israeli warplanes were dropping bombs on Gaza. As smoke rose and buildings collapsed, I slowly realized this was total war. It wasn’t a temporary invasion or a single air strike. Within one hour the face of Gaza, my home, was flattened to the ground and my whole world changed.
In war photography, what follows the loud explosions is what defines you as a photojournalist – or not. I choose to keep on clicking with my camera, as I hold it both as a shield to all the horrors I have witnessed as well as a window to the world. Growing up in an atmosphere of hate surrounding the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, “peace” has become a meaningless noun in the dictionary of those who lived through war.
One day, I was in the middle of an Israeli airstrike that managed to destroy a compound, and I broke my nose. The pressure that results from an air strike is enormous. I didn’t know that. When the blast hit, my camera bounced off my face, crushing my nose. I could hear things crashing and for a moment, all I could see was white – bright white. I thought to myself that I either went blind or I was in Heaven. Once I could see again, I kept shooting.
Later I photographed a Palestinian man who worked in Israel for two decades. He didn’t think about revenge or enemies. He saw Israelis as his neighbors as he worked side-by-side with them for years. He had his retirement dream house built in the north Gaza strip area of Izzbet Abed Rabo, which was targeted by the Israeli army during their field operations. His house was blown up with dynamite. Everything was destroyed except a Jacuzzi tub that he got in Tel Aviv. All of his memories were buried beneath him but he placed the tub on top of the rubble and gave his kids a bubble bath every morning to cheer them up.
V. The Hole Inside My Heart
By the time the bombings had ended, the hole inside my heart that was left from the huge number of losses pushed me to embrace life as never before. Ironically, that positive push forward was motivated by the horrifying smells of burning flesh and the odor of blood which kept those dark memories alive. The urge within me to honor those memories started to form my future photo projects. One after another, they revolved around the strength and survival of victims who weren’t voiceless, but were just sadly unheard.
My story, “What Lies Beneath the Rubble,” was the changing point of my career. After the first war in Gaza ended, one couldn’t see anything but the rubble. Entire parts of the city were buried under the concrete along with what was left of people’s lives: clothes, furniture, little bits of family photos and kids’ toys. The trauma of losing everything made people even more attached, staying next to the rubble of their houses or digging into the destruction for days trying to recover anything possible.
In this situation, I saw the stereotypical mold of victimized survivors break. Most of the stories about the aftermath showed the weakness and suffering of victims to such an extent that barely any hopeful documentation existed of their journey afterwards. I instead saw strength and the determination to move on. I wished to show more than just the suffering . . . the hope that still existed.
Cameras are just advanced inventions that help us freeze moments and document history. But the subjects are the main storytellers who generously turn their private moments public, and in doing so, make the risks we take seem so small.
Surviving war gives you stronger roots in the ground that you choose to call home or can rip you out of that ground to some unknown destination, like many who are forced to flee. War forces you to fall in love or breaks your heart. Survival isn’t the trickiest phase for those who live through war. Explaining it to the younger generation – and sometimes to themselves – is the harder, emotionally draining process.
The pain of knowing your loved one is in danger is greater than any other feeling. The protective instinct of motherhood gave my mom sleepless nights as I photographed the conflict. I have had my own sleepless nights. The losses are beyond imagination.
And when the whole world collapses, in a blink of an eye, no one is immune.
All photographs © Eman Mohammed.
A Palestinian girl recites verses from the Qura’an at a mosque in Gaza City. 2009
Palestinian children looking through their house window where the laundry is hanging, as a funeral goes by in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. 2008
Mohammed Khader feeds pigeons in front of the remains of his house, which was destroyed during Israel’s 22-day offensive in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip. 2009
Children of Mohammed Khader’s family enjoying a bubble bath on the top of the rubble of their destroyed house in Ezbet Abed-Rabbo. 2009
A Palestinian woman holding her child passes a severely damaged house in the Sheikh Al Rdwan neighborhood of Gaza, which was targeted by an Israeli air strike. 2014
Islam Qreqe, 14 months old, sits on a burnt motorcycle where three of her family members were killed by a rocket fired from an Israeli aircraft drone. 2013
Saadi Abo Zour, 28, with his son Ehab and daughter Rawan are pictured with their mother’s abaya (cloak) in the background. Saadi’s wife, Samar, was killed in an airstrike in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. 2014
Safia Abo Zour, 25, holds her five-month-old baby (Mohammed) with one hand. In her other, she displays the shirt that her older son, Mohammed, aged 4, wore the last time he went to kindergarten. Mohammed was killed during an airstrike in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. 2014
Palestinian artist Ziad Deeb. All twelve members of his family were killed when an Israeli missile hit their front yard. Ziad was the only survivor and lost both his legs. 2014
Raghad, 5, holding her youngest brother, Rakan, inside the tent where they had been living for the past two years after the government evacuated them from a former police compound. 2014
A Palestinian girl waits while her mother cooks in their tent made from wooden sticks and bed sheets; their home was badly damaged by Israeli missiles. The family lives by pasturing goats in one of the poorest areas of Gaza city in the southern Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. 2009
Baraa Azam lying in front of his destroyed house after an Israeli airstrike in the Al-Zaytoun area in Gaza City. 2012
Palestinian children gathering around a fire during a power outage in Gaza City. 2011
An Israeli airstrike with white phosphorous bombs exploding in the heart of Gaza city during Operation Cast Lead. 2008
A Palestinian family on a carriage after their neighborhood was targeted during an Israeli airstrike on Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip. 2009
Destroyed houses in Ezbet Abed-Rabbo, northern Gaza Strip, after the Israeli field operation ended on the 20th of January, 2009
A Palestinian family passes the rubble of destroyed homes in Ezbet Abed-Rabbo, northern Gaza Strip. 2009
Mohammed Khader’s family breaking their fast at sunset during Ramadan next to their destroyed house in Ezbet Abed-Rabbo, northern Gaza Strip. 2009
A Palestinian policeman secures a training location in Gaza City while smoke rises after a rocket was launched. 2007
Palestinians flee their homes to take shelter at the United Nations school in Gaza City. 2014
A Palestinian girl mourns as she carries the body of her six-year-old sister during her burial ceremony. Five members of the Balousha family were killed during an Israeli airstrike. 2008
The feet of one of three Palestinian siblings from the Al-Samoni family, who were killed by an Israeli tank shell, are seen in the mortuary of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. 2009
Palestinians holding the body of Lana Hamdan, 4, after she was killed by an Israeli missile while playing on the side of the road by her house in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Mohammed Jelo, 5, doing his homework while sitting on one of the graves at a cemetery in Gaza City where he lives with his family. 2009
A Palestinian boy holding a toy wooden rifle as he takes part in a children’s military training program at a local summer camp in Gaza City. 2009
A militant of the Al-Qassam brigade takes cover during field training in Khan Younis, southern Gaza City. 2009
Militants of Al-Qassam brigade during field training in Khan Younis, southern Gaza City. 2009
Palestinian youths holding the Palestinian flag at a demonstration against the occupation at the buffer zone in northern Gaza City. 2009
Palestinian girls sitting on the beach in Gaza. 2010
Palestinian children play in the rubble of a mosque in Gaza City. 2009
Young Palestinian boys playing with their family’s donkey as they arrive at the United Nations school in Gaza City to take shelter from airstrikes. 2014
A Palestinian girl reciting verses from the Qura’an at a mosque in Gaza City. 2009
A Palestinian youth dives into the sea at sunset near the port in Gaza City. 2009
This photographic essay is only available in the printed edition. It is not available for online viewing.
Eman Mohammed is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Saudi Arabia and educated in Gaza City, where she started her career in 2006. As the first female photojournalist in Gaza at the age of 19, she faced discrimination and sexual harassment as she covered the region. Her work has focused on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Observer, GEO, Mother Jones, Le Monde, and Haartez. Other clients have included Save the Children, UNESCO, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Ms. Mohammed has had several exhibitions including the British Museum in London in 2012, and Den Hagg in the Netherlands in 2011 as well as galleries in Israel, Jordan, Dubai, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Canada and the US. She has been recognized in a number of worldwide competitions and was named one of 30 “New and Emerging Photographers to Watch” by Photo District News in 2010. In 2014, she was accepted to participate in the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop. She was also chosen that same year as a TED Fellow: (http://www.ted.com/talks/eman_mohammed_the_courage_to_tell_a_hidden_story?language=en)
Now, as a mother of two young daughters, Eman Mohammed continues to shed light on hidden stories by documenting not only the war, but its aftermath and its effect on the people of the region.
James K. Colton (jimcolton.com) and AQR Contributing Editor Benjamin J. Spatz contributed to the preparation of this feature. Grateful acknowledgement is also made to Alyssa Adams (www.eddieadamsworkshop.com) for her invaluable support and assistance.