One child’s journey through genocide: the story of Tala Dallul
10-year-old Tala Dallul has seen and survived so much during the Gaza genocide. Here she tells her story.
“He left. He’s gone.”
June, 2024. Deir Al Balah. Tents. A circle of little girls playing. Among them, I saw a girl with golden hair, a sunburnt complexion, and a wide-open smile.
Getting closer to the circle, I noticed that I hadn’t met this kid before. She seemed brave, extroverted, and sociable.
“He left. He’s gone,” she sang with an angelic voice, bringing tears to my eyes and leaving me wondering what fate made her tone that sad.
Tala Salama Dallul, 10, had recently started a new chapter in her displacement.
“Tala stays with her paternal uncle. Her father was killed. Her mother and siblings are still in the northern Gaza Strip,” children in the camp told me, narrating what Tala had revealed to them.
“How would I live without him?”
August 2024. Two months later, I have befriended Tala. One day, she visits our tent to play with the girls.
When I talk to her, she takes me back to one of her hardest days during this ongoing genocide against Gaza.
It was December 5, 2023. She is in the Al Zaitoun neighborhood, at the entrance of an UNRWA school.
There is News.
A car is approaching, and people are frantic. “This is the body of Salama Dallul. Move away!” Tala’s uncles cried.
“My mother, running out of the school, heard their voice, and started weeping,” Tala tells me. “Then she received the real news.”
“They said he was injured. My mother said he would get well soon. They said he was imprisoned. She said he will be free soon.”
Tala wanted to bid her father a last farewell but was afraid to look. “I saw him from his back. I saw his trousers and sweater. I was afraid and stepped back. I stumbled on a stone and fell.”
Tears start falling from her eyes, and I try to distract her. I ask her how she spends her time. “Thinking,” she says, and my heart is hit even harder. “How will we live without him? What will our life look like after war finally ends? How to comprehend this?”
Lonely, but “lucky”
The death of her father wasn’t the only tragedy Tala had to face. The ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza has also forced her to live away from her mother, Mai, 27, and her siblings, Yara, 8, Lana, 7, Obaida, 3, and Inaam, 2.
They were faced with forcible displacement multiple times, and just like hundreds of thousands of Gaza families, they are fighting famine.
“My mother has a round face. How did her face turn into a rectangular shape? She has lost much weight,” Tala told me after her mother sent her a photo when they finally managed to connect to the internet.
One day, Tala talked to her mother on the phone, and asked her mother for an explanation of the photo she saw. “I’m afraid you feed my siblings and stay hungry yourself,” she told her.
Jokingly, I tell Tala that she’s the luckiest among her siblings because she lives in the South, a safer place where food supplies can be found. “It’s fate,” she replies with unexpected serenity.
Untold stories
More recently when I spent time with Tala, we called her mother. I thought that Tala yearned to tell her mother more stories from her forcible displacement to the southern Gaza Strip. But, when she held the phone, it became clear she really needed to hear her mother’s voice. “Stories should be told face to face,” she told me. “I’ll tell her when I go back home and see her.”
But she tells me the story of her displacement and separation, which is random, tragic, and terrifying like so many other stories during the genocide.
“In early February, I stayed in my grandparent’s house in the Al Zaitoun neighborhood, some meters away from my parents’ house, for four days,” Tala’s memory always surprises me.
On the last day, her mother came over to make sure she was okay, and to take her back home. But her cousins insisted that Tala stay, just one more day.
Who knew that a 10-year-old girl visiting her grandparents in the same neighborhood during wartime would mean she would be separated from her mother and siblings for more than six months?
“The night my mother went back home without taking me back was the hardest. Fire belts exploded one after the other until dawn broke,” Tala trembled recalling the night when she last saw her mother.
A sleepless night
Israeli tanks fired shells toward Hajj Abul Abed Tutah’s house. Fire broke out, turning the night into a day. “Blaze!” Tala’s uncles cried for help.
“The shell fell in the home’s yard after hitting the window. We slept for a few hours. More fire belts invaded our sleep,” Tala explains to me the terror of the night.
No sleep. The sound of live bullets frightened the women and kids in the Hajj’s house along with all the people of the neighborhood.
“I remember that I wanted to go to the bathroom. When I approached it, I noticed that the broken window which was covered with a sheet was already uncovered. White dust filled the place. I didn’t want to go to the bathroom anymore, I decided.”
“My grandfather told us to wear face masks and took us all to the ground floor as it was safer, trying to distract our fear until the sun rises.”
“To the South!”
Morning. Going down to the yard, Tala noticed that her uncle had already prepared tea and breakfast.
“Soldiers!” Her uncle cried moments after preparing the meal in a rush.
“Abul Abed Tutah!” Soldiers called the name of Tala’s grandfather, ordering him to leave his house. The Hajj called all of his grandsons, gathering them all away from the house. “We will stay together and whatever happens will happen,” Tala quoted him as saying.
The fearful girl’s eyes beheld 20 soldiers. Her ears heard Hebrew voices. “They surrounded us and counted the men who were in the house with numbers I didn’t learn at school,” Tala described the scene, adding that the soldiers entered the home to search it.
Dozens of sleepless people gathered outside of their homes. Dropped leaflets filled the ground. Fear prevailed. No one was allowed to read what was written.
“Residents of Al Zaitoun neighborhood must evacuate the region and head to the southern strip,” the leaflets ordered, as one of the women standing in the crowd was allowed to read.
Tala’s little eyes could do nothing but cry. The blurred eyes saw nothing but soldiers.
“There is no heart here,” Tala quotes one of the soldiers as saying, adding that he pointed at his chest. This was in reply to someone asking to get their belongings before they fled.
Loud live bullets and the soldiers’ harsh order “To the south!” were all that they heard.
Tala tells me they managed to bring some of their belongings despite the Israeli orders.
“My grandmother managed to take her medicine and my aunt took some diapers for her newborn baby.”
Scattered broken glass. A crowd, standing still. Breaking the silence, “Walk!” A soldier ordered. Barefoot men, women, kids. The destination was Gaza’s Kuwait roundabout.
“It seems I was lucky. I wore a pink T-shirt and a jacket I borrowed from my cousin. And I wore my jeans trousers and the slippers my mother bought me back then.”
The little girl, Tala, wasn’t aware of how long it would take her to reach it, but it was long enough to make her cry for a sip of water or a piece of bread.
“Snipers got closer to us. We all ran until animal-drawn carts carried us. It took us to a nearby school.”
Nuseirat refugee camp. A dozen children and women sought shelter in a UNRWA school. They were thirsty, hungry, and dusty.
“Feed your kids,” some good person called out of nowhere while on the cart, throwing us some bread and tomatoes. I didn’t eat. I covered myself with a blanket, and I wept. I thought of my mother.”
Uprooted
I could not believe it when Tala told me about the journey she took, the relatives she visited, and the places she stayed in all over the strip after leaving the Nuseirat refugee camp.
“I spent one month with my maternal aunts Hiyam and Rania in Rafah. Then, I stayed with my grandparents who sought shelter in a mosque in Khan Younis for three months. I also visited my maternal uncle who stayed in a barracks in Khan Younis for some days.”
Then, in June, Tala arrives in Deir Al Balah. She is on Al Hikr Street in a camp where olive trees shadow the tents. A circle of men, women, and children gathers around a peacefully lit fire. Tala approaches, wondering where she is and whom she will meet now.
When they arrived at the place, Tala’s cousin Yousef, with whom she traveled to this point, called in a loud voice, “Ahmad Dallul!”
Tala finally realizes that they found her paternal uncle Ahmad. “I love and missed him the most,” Tala told me, explaining that she hadn’t met him since the beginning of the genocide.
Tala runs to her uncle Ahmad, who hugs her and kisses her forehead. “Salama, go ahead! Great job! Well done!’ I heard my mother’s voice supporting my dad as we watched a video of my father playing football,” Tala tells me. She was reunited with family and wept as her uncle Ahmad showed her a video of her late father that she had never seen.
Once the little girl made sure her uncle and his wife were safe, her eyes sparkled a bit and she felt solace.
She was surrounded by olive trees, a blanket, and a new circle of children: Razan, Tulin, Somaya, Rahaf, Roaa, Ghina, Ritaj, Zain, and Bisan.
“When I first saw the olive trees, my heart danced with joy as I remembered my home in Gaza. And meeting these lovely girls, I felt that we would get along. I decided that I would love to stay with them.”
Tala found her new home for now.
“I can’t wait to meet my mother to tell her about all these stories.”
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