While the city of war is relentlessly pounded and forcibly emptied of its people, the roar of artillery and the whir of aircraft continue, and while neighborhoods are gradually extinguished, a small oven opposite Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City remains glowing like stubborn embers amidst the rubble and smoke.
A popular restaurant was the last remaining sign of life in the besieged city, remaining a symbol of human steadfastness in the midst of the battle for evacuation, feeding those who have clung to Gaza and refused to leave, and making bread a statement against death.
“Gaza is our motherland, and no one abandons their motherland,” restaurant owner Hussein Al-Helou told Al Jazeera Net as he watched his customers milling around the place in search of a bite to eat during the siege, or a fleeting moment of safety amidst the chaos.
The restaurant seems to be a haven for those who have decided to stay, whether they are patients on recovery beds, nurses and doctors seizing a moment of rest, journalists catching their breath between rounds, or displaced people who find in these bites an artery that keeps them resisting.
