Poor but sweet childhood

I was born in a refugees camp here in the Gaza strip on the 29th October 1961.  Refugees camps here have a different meaning than the common ones known in Europe of other areas in the world as people there see them as camps where immigrants live in, we are immigrants who have been forced to leave their home land in 1948 after the jews came to Palestine and forced Palestinians to leave the places where they lived and come to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank . At that time the UN offered Palestinians tents to live in and then replaced tents with small houses, in one of those houses I was born, lived and grew up. The Un established schools and small clinics for us, I remember my childhood and how we succeeded to create our toys and how girls made their dolls. Yes we did all ourselves using all available materials . I remember how I made small cars and how we used socks of ladies to make footballs , I remember also my beloved cat Sameer who lived 8 years with me and how he used to wait for me at the door when I came back from school . I remember how we kids, went to bring water from the well in the area as we had no water at home, I won't forget how we all ran of fear seeing the Israeli jeeps coming and how scared we felt when they came in the middle of the night to arrest elder people , they used to break the doors of the houses and then go inside to take adults. Those were horrible moments for all in the area hearing the mothers crying out loud, I don’t love to recall those moments. On the other side of the scene, we enjoyed as kids the groups of singers we made and the folks dance we practiced, we used to do that on mar, riage occasions.  I grew up in this camp and I still live in the same place. and I was a teacher of English at the same school I once studied at . But the school is all changed as the Belgium government offered my school a donation and rebuilt the school all new in the year 1996 . I remember when the Belgium Ambassador came from Tel Aviv to start the school, he visited me in my English class and stood in my class for about 15 minutes, he enjoyed the time there and was happy with my performance. I thanked  him much for what his government did for Palestinians and he was happy with my words. In that school, I taught for 10 years before I left my job as a teacher.

To be continued