9eele - Family

I went to the northern part of the city to Beach Camp to interview Mahmoud Mohammed Jarboa, a 52-year-old fisherman and a father of ten children, seven sons and three daughters. I later wrote this narrative about Mahmoud and his family, to publish two days later.

Mahmoud was warm and welcoming. Some of his sons, daughters, and grandchildren gathered around me and the translator as we sat on plastic chairs in the sparsely-furnished living room.

A fisherman with a weathered face, Mahmoud told me of his struggle to look after his family, in light of the restrictions on fishermen. He spoke of hos his four-month-old granddaughter, the cute little baby he is holding, is sick and needs medicine that he cannot afford.

His shy 16-year-old son, Abdel Raziq, sat nearby and told me about how he was wounded by shrapnel in his right shin in February when Israeli soldiers shot at their boat as the family tried to fish. His older brother, Mohammed, was killed while fishing in early 2009.

After I had completed the interview, two of Mahmoud's granddaughters, aged five and seven, sangs songs for me about the sea. It is so sad that they cannot sail out to the horizon and see the open sea for themselves.