Genocide changed Gaza's shape. But it also twisted time itself by the neck, rewired daily routines, and pressed itself into our language. Old words have been given meanings they were never intended to have.
*This article was written in December 2025 under the prevailing conditions at that time.
The first is tawajah (هَجَّوت). Originally an imperative form of a verb in Arabic meaning 'head towards' or 'go to', this word no longer means something as simple as 'movement'. Instead, people ask, "Do you have a tawajah?" and they mean – "Do you have a permit to travel to access aid?" So, the word now carries the connotation of something else, of humanitarian relief – a fragile guarantee of rice, flour, or canned food for the next week or two.
To get your aid, you go to baraks (سكرب). That word used to refer to simple storage sheds. But now these are spaces where survival itself is tallied out, parcel by parcel. Where you are decides how much you get. If you can get anything at all, that is. In shamal (لماش) – the North – packages are smaller and waits are longer. In janoub (بونجَّ) – the South – aid may arrive faster and slightly better: but nothing is ever guaranteed.
'North' and 'South' used to be directions, simply. Over years of war, they have come to represent gradations of danger, directions of displacement, boundaries on a map that shift and rearrange the moment you think you understand them. North is now indelibly associated with the evacuated zones: places to avoid, places that swallow up everything once familiar. South is the place that is a single order away. Moving south has never been a choice. Instructions arrive by text message, by leaflet, or by someone screaming: "Go south!" They say it is for your safety. But this is impossible; safety too has lost its meaning.
