IN STEREO

I think the Second Intifada started because the Israeli president entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is for the Muslims, a special place to pray. And it became not just a political resistance, because a small kid – he was maybe eight or nine years old; his name was Muhammad al-Durrah; he was from Gaza – he was shot. His father tried to protect him the whole time, because there were clashes and they were hidden. But in the end, the kid died from the Israeli bullets. So I think that started this fight. My personal vibe that I got from the Second Intifada, and I think it’s affected the generation that lived in that moment, [is that] maybe it made them more aware of their own childhood or life, and how the situation is not that safe. In general, children have a safe childhood here, but for me it was a little bit different, in a way. Because you always heard the helicopter sounds, shootings, bombs – and [there was] no electricity in the nights.

Food was expensive and you had a limited time to go into the street, when it was free to go, when they had this military order [that] no one’s shooting, so people can go to buy food. Then maybe they had a one-hour limit to get their things, and they had to go back home. So sometimes you had to bake your own bread. And you had to find different ways to make it, actually, because sometimes there was no electricity. So you had to get some wood [and] make a fire, to do the bread. And yeah, at that time there wasn’t that much food. [We were] just getting really random food, daily. A whole chicken that would [normally] serve for one meal might even be cut for three meals. We were kids, so we didn’t eat that much – that was good! I think what happened, it’s happened previously almost everywhere, and maybe it’s happening now to some [other] places – even without bullets, without helicopters. They don’t have this safe childhood with enough food, and they’re not well-raised in a way, because of these things. – Ibrahim H.