Living in Turkey has opened my mind and given me a future. But leaving my family behind has filled me with guilt
n 2017, I applied, in secret, for a scholarship to a university in Turkey. Even when I was accepted, I didn’t tell my parents for a while. I lived in Gaza, in the middle of– a place that I, like my parents, had never left. Growing up as one of the 2 million people trapped in the Gaza Strip, you get bored with everything. Then, suddenly, when you decide to leave, it feels really hard.
City, but they still didn’t want me to leave. My grandfather supported me. He talked to my parents and told them that it was a great opportunity for me and that it would be wrong to reject it.Israel’s restrictions means very few people are allowed to leave Gaza, so I had to apply for permission; I was due to leave in June that year, but it took six months for the Israeli government to approve my departure.
At the next check, we went into a body-scanning machine. I was with a girl with very long hair under her scarf. The Israeli officers didn’t believe it was her hair, so they made her take her scarf off. Then they started playing with her hair and she began crying. I understand that they wanted to check, but did they have to humiliate her? After they took our bags away to be searched, I found they had gone through my wallet and drawn and written on the banknotes.
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