Sharjah English School marks 50th year with time capsule unveiling
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The National
19 hours ago
- The National
Bartering returns to Gaza as hungry locals swap flour, lentils and shampoo
In Gaza, where war has choked the economy and blockades have emptied shop shelves, the millennia-old system of bartering is making a comeback. No longer a relic of ancient times or a plotline in historical dramas, exchanging goods has become a daily necessity for thousands living under Israel 's siege. Barter groups, once rare, are now among the most active online communities in Gaza. 'I used to hear about bartering in historical TV series,' Marwan Al Muqayed, 33, a father of two living in temporary accommodation in Gaza city's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, told The National. 'But now it's how I survive. It's become a way of life.' With traditional commerce crippled by closed borders, rocketing prices and a severe cash shortage, residents of Gaza are turning to Facebook and WhatsApp groups to exchange goods such as lentils for flour, sugar for rice and soap for shampoo. Palestinians are living under what UN-backed experts have called a worst-case scenario of famine, with Israel allowing only modest numbers of aid lorries to enter the strip. Dozens of children have died from starvation, according to Gaza health officials, with doctors and aid workers feeling the strain as they try to salvage the situation. Issa Al Namnam, 44, a father of six, never imagined he would be sourcing baby milk for his youngest child through Facebook. 'The war and the lack of cash forced me, like many others, to rely on bartering,' he said. 'Sometimes I need oil or sugar but have no money. So I find someone who has what I need and offer them something I have.' These grass roots exchanges have become lifelines. Mr Al Namnam once swapped flour for a can of baby milk, and traded canned meat for spices he could not find anywhere else. It's not an ideal system. 'Bartering is old and not very efficient,' he admits. 'But in wartime it's what we have.' For Mohammad Qusay'a, 29, bartering is not only practical but the only viable option. A resident of Gaza's Safatawi neighbourhood, he rarely uses money except for buying a few vegetables. 'Most of my needs I cover through exchanges,' he told The National. 'I check the WhatsApp group daily, see what people are offering and arrange swaps.' With cash in short supply and banknotes deteriorating to the point where vendors have stopped accepting them, people were left with little choice. Mr Qusay'a has exchanged items such as dates, sugar, flour, shampoo and soap. 'I got tired of struggling with useless cash,' Mr Qusay'a said. 'Bartering is the only thing that works now. It helps me provide for my family without needing money.' When Gaza's border crossings were sealed in March, Mr Al Muqayed had the foresight to stockpile a few staple goods. But as the blockade dragged on, supplies dwindled and prices soared. 'I bought what I could at the start but when things ran out I had to buy from the market and prices were insane,' he says. 'That's when I turned to bartering.' In one exchange, he traded lentils for pasta and flour. In another, sugar for oil and rice. With Gaza's economy in freefall and the currency nearly worthless, residents are left clinging to community-driven solutions. 'Prices have doubled, even tripled. People can't afford anything any more,' he says. 'Bartering might not be ideal but it helps us get through this.' Though most see bartering as a stopgap until the war ends and normal trade resumes, its role in the daily life of Gazans is undeniable. In the face of financial collapse, isolation and hardship, people are building their own alternative economy, one swap at a time. 'For now, bartering is how we survive,' says Mr Al Namnam. 'Until the war ends and the shelves are full again, this is the system we trust.'
The National
3 days ago
- The National
Hunger and heartbreak as families struggle to survive war in Gaza
Every morning, 13-year-old Mahmoud Al Mahalawi wakes up in a tent pitched beside the rubble of his family's home in the Al Saftawi neighbourhood of Gaza. Before the war, the summer months meant school holidays and time to play. Now, he says, his days revolve around 'looking for ways to keep me and my family alive'. 'I start my day thinking where I should go first, to find some water or stand in line at the tikkia [charity kitchen] so I can bring food home for my brothers,' Mahmoud told The National. He shares the responsibility for his family's survival with his father, who works whenever he can find a job. Together, they try to scrape together enough for their basic needs amid famine-like conditions created by Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid. Desperate crowds often swarm the few aid lorries allowed to enter Gaza, while hundreds of people have been killed by Israeli forces near the few food distribution sites run by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 'I've thought more than once about chasing down the aid trucks or going to the American aid centre just to get food for my family,' Mahmoud says. 'But my parents always say no. They're afraid something will happen to me.' Gazan family's relief after receiving food aid As with most families in Gaza nowadays, anything beyond basic necessities, even fruit, is out of reach because of prices inflated by scarcity and siege. Small quantities of mangoes and bananas that appeared in the markets on Monday were being sold at 200 shekels (more than $50) for 1kg of mangoes and 17 shekels for a banana. 'Sometimes I see fruit and wish I could have some. But I'd never ask my father. He can barely afford to buy us flour, let alone fruit,' Mahmoud says. 'Sometimes I feel like I just want to die. No one really feels our pain. I'm a child, just like children anywhere in the world. I should be in a summer camp, playing football, swimming – not standing in line for water or food, not living in a tent.' Like many parents in Gaza, Mohammed Abu Asr, 41, is fighting not just hunger but heartbreak. Displaced by the war from Jabalia refugee camp, he now lives in a makeshift home with his wife and four children – two boys and two girls aged between three and 15 – in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. 'Yesterday, I told my kids not to leave the house, not because of danger, but because I didn't want them to see the fruit being sold outside,' he told The National. 'If they asked me to buy some, I wouldn't be able to. I can't even meet their basic needs, like bread and flour.' However, his children saw photos on Facebook of fruit arriving in Gaza and rushed to him saying, 'Dad, the fruit is here! Please buy us some', he says. 'Honestly, the feeling of helplessness was unbearable. There's no income. And even if there were, how could I justify paying such a huge amount just for fruit when we don't have food?' For Ilham Al Asi, 38, who lost her husband in an air strike last year, the burden of survival rests on her two young sons – Ibrahim, 14, and Yahya, 10. 'I have no one in this life but my children,' Ms Al Asi told The National. 'They're the ones doing everything they can to help us survive.' Each day, Ibrahim ventures out from their home in Al Tuffah to collect firewood from bombed buildings, risking injury or worse, so his mother can cook, if there is food or flour to prepare. Yahya, meanwhile, stands in line at a charity kitchen for up to five hours each day to bring home a pot of food. 'Sometimes he leaves at nine in the morning and doesn't come back until three in the afternoon,' Ms Al Asi says. 'And what he brings back isn't even enough for two people.' She says Yahya once suffered a head injury during a crush at the food kitchen. 'We had to take him to the hospital. The crowd was so desperate. Famine in Gaza has reached an unimaginable level. People can't even secure the most basic food or clean water.' Ms Al Asi is infuriated by Israel's claims that sufficient quantities of aid are reaching Gaza. 'The occupation says it's sending aid and children's supplies to protect them from hunger. That's a lie,' she says. 'The only reality here is famine. It's killing us, children, adults, the elderly. Everyone is suffering. Everyone is dying slowly, every single day.'
Gulf Today
5 days ago
- Gulf Today
‘Sorry' is one word, why are we so bad at apologising?
Olivia Petter, The Independent Saying 'sorry' is easy. It's just one word, two syllables. You can say it faster than you can sneeze. Meaning it, however, is a lot harder. According to research commissioned by the language-learning platform Babbel, Britons have 15 uses for the word, with just one of them meaning regret. So seemingly sorry are we all the time that we don't even know what it means any more. Here are some of the ways we're using 'sorry' incorrectly: to ask someone to move out of the way. To ask someone to repeat themselves. To show empathy. To express disbelief. To disagree. To mock. And, if we're British, to preface literally any sentence ever. 'In British English, 'sorry' has evolved beyond its original role as an expression of remorse,' explains Noël Wolf, cultural and linguistic expert at Babbel, whose research also found that we use the word 'sorry' an average of nine times a day. 'It now serves as a social lubricant and a flexible tool of communication used in all sorts of everyday interactions.' It also reflects our nationwide desire to avoid conflict by way of old-fashioned, sturdy politeness. We keep calm and carry on, as is the British way. 'In a culture where directness can feel impolite, and personal space, both emotional and physical, is protected, 'sorry' can smooth over moments of friction, no matter how minor,' says Wolf. The problem with such an overuse of the word is that it has become diluted beyond recognition, and now we're unsure how to apologise properly for something that actually warrants remorse. How can any of us truly be sorry if we don't know how to say it? If we're saying it too much, does the word even mean anything any more? And why do so many of us resort to insipid platitudes when apologising? Few sentences are more grating to hear than 'Sorry if I upset you...' These are some of the questions asked by Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy in their book Getting to Sorry: The Art of Apology at Work and at Home, which examines the reasons why we might be wired to apologise badly, in both our professional and our personal lives, and why it's holding us back from having meaningful relationships with others – and with ourselves. A central tenet of their argument relates to the rise of celebrity apologies: public statements made via social media, or representatives, that are designed to enshrine the celebrity's reputation by minimising bad behaviour. Or occasionally denying it altogether. We've seen this play out countless times in the public eye, with everyone from Drew Barrymore and Lena Dunham to Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis issuing statements to address allegations against them. Not to mention Britain's endless list of terribly sorry politicians. Often, the apologies are long-winded, PR-executed masterpieces. Occasionally, they're laughably weak and serve as the jumping-off point for an entirely new genre of meme; there are, in fact, several lists compiling the 'worst celebrity apologies'. 'They tend to centre the person apologising rather than the people receiving the apology,' says Ingall. 'Rarely do they say exactly what they're apologising for, making them sound fake and like clear attempts to squirm out of trouble rather than a legitimate attempt to make amends.' The result, Ingall posits, is that they set a precedent for apologising badly; for finding every excuse possible to shift the blame and avoid taking accountability, in a bid to protect our reputation – as if we, too, have a globally recognised public image to consider. 'This is because our brains are designed to protect us, to help us see ourselves as the hero of our own story,' explains Ingall. 'If we didn't think we were decent people, it would be hard to get through the day. This means that when we're faced with the cognitive dissonance of 'I'm a good person but I did a bad thing', we tend to fix that uncomfortable dissonance by telling ourselves what we did wasn't really that awful, that we don't really have to apologise, and that the other person always overreacts.'
