There were children of all age groups in the line waiting for a handout of rice.
Lamees Mohammad Al Mizar’i is 16 and originally from Gaza City. She now lives in a tent with eight family members. Lamees looks back, almost disbelievingly, at her pre-war attitude to food.
“I was picky, when my mum used to make cauliflower, I used to complain about it, saying ‘we are eating cauliflower every day, I want a different meal with meat or chicken,’ but now I eat everything, the good and the bad. Animals do not eat the food we eat.”
She explained how hunger creates family tensions.
“When I tell my mom I’m not going to queue today, she tells me, ‘What would we eat then? Should we keep looking to the sky, then?’ I have to come here. I keep thinking that if I don’t come we won’t find anything to eat. In the past, I used to think daily where to go out, what to play, what to study, when to go to bed. I had my own room, kitchen. There was a living room and I used to receive guests.”
After collecting her pot of rice, Lamees walks home, past a line of adults and children who have arrived at the kitchen. She is muttering to herself as she disappears into the morning crowds.
Back in Amman, they are preparing more aid for delivery to Gaza. The Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organisation says it could load 150 trucks a day for Gaza if given the go-ahead. There is no shortage of willingness. Aid agencies, the UN and other groups are ready. They are – all of them – waiting for the full opening of Gaza to aid, and for peace.
Additional reporting by Alice Doyard, Suha Kawar and Moose Campbell
