One week in Gaza
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The daily realities and private thoughts of a young woman living through war. Every morning, Hanya Aljamal sees the same man from her balcony. “He has this tiny garden in the middle of all this concrete stuff,” she says. “Just across the road, there’s a blown-up building. Yet he’s cultivating these little herbs and plants. And I look at that and it just looks like the purest form of resistance.” Hanya has been living in a war zone for 20 months. In daily audio diaries, she describes what she sees and hears from her balcony and in her work for an aid organisation, from drones and kites to funeral marches and sun rises. Her insights and reflections offer a window into life in a place devastated by conflict.
This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from Assignment, investigations and journeys into the heart of global events.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Simon Maibin, and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | For assignment, this is one week in Gaza. |
| 0:08.9 | It's 8.56 p.m. This is my fourth attempt at recording this, because I have this brain fog that is taking over my life right now, |
| 0:22.8 | and it is my body's way of trying to deal with trauma of everything. |
| 0:29.6 | If I was completely present, I would lose my mind completely. |
| 0:34.7 | This is Hanya al-Jammal. She's been living in a war zone for 20 months. She's the kind of person I might |
| 0:41.2 | ordinarily go and meet in person, seeing what her life is like firsthand. But Hanya lives in Gaza, |
| 0:47.3 | a 41 kilometre stretch of land on the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea. The people living there |
| 0:53.0 | are Palestinians. but since long before |
| 0:55.6 | the current war, the movement of people and goods in and out has been controlled by Israel. |
| 1:01.1 | Israel has said this is necessary for security. Since 2006, Gaza has been governed by Hamas, |
| 1:08.6 | an Islamist resistance movement that's designated a terrorist |
| 1:12.0 | organisation by the UK, the US, Israel and others. Today, Israel doesn't allow international journalists |
| 1:19.9 | into Gaza to report freely. So, to give the outside world a window into what life is like there, |
| 1:26.1 | I asked Hanya to send me an audio diary |
| 1:28.6 | and recordings of the sounds around her for one week. I am currently hanging out at the balcony |
| 1:35.2 | because it's literally the only place where I can have some peace and quiet. Perks of living |
| 1:41.4 | with another seven people in a tiny apartment. |
| 1:51.6 | Hanya is 28 and living with her parents and five siblings in a town called Bear Albalah in the middle of Gaza. |
| 1:57.4 | Today is June 1st in case I forgot to mention that. |
| 2:04.8 | Today was day three of our hot meal distribution. I am the project coordinator of that, which basically means I am the annoying person who gets to hang out in the kitchen, |
| 2:13.4 | making sure everything is right, and up to par. |
... |
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